Pat Gillick in the HOF

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Gillick was apparently the only one elected by the Vets Committee, with Marvin Miller one vote short.

[G-Fafif]

Not George Steinbrenner? Ach du lieber!

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

I predict there will be more outrage over George not getting 50 percent of the vote than Miller falling one short!

[seawolf17]

G-Fafif wrote: Not George Steinbrenner? Ach du lieber!

I'm pre-baaaaaaaaaarfing on the inevitable Wally/Heyman outrage.

[Valadius]

Francesa is going to be insufferable.

[Vic Sage]

Valadius wrote: Francesa is going to be insufferable.

GOING to be? As opposed to when?

[Valadius]

Vic Sage wrote: Valadius wrote: Francesa is going to be insufferable. GOING to be? As opposed to when?

Fair point. He's going to be at a ludicrous level of insufferability today.

[Benjamin Grimm]

He's only insufferable if you waste time listening to him.

[metirish]

A question about Miller.

Is the vet committee mostly made up of former players?, if yes then why are they not voting him in, they benefited from him right?

[G-Fafif]

A question about Miller. Is the vet committee mostly made up of former players?, if yes then why are they not voting him in, they benefited from him right?

Per the HOF press release from July:

A Committee of 16 individuals comprised of Hall of Fame members, veteran writers and historians, appointed by the Board of Directors.

[Gwreck]

Voters were:

Johnny Bench
Eddie Murray
Jim Palmer
Tony Perez
Frank Robinson
Ryne Sandberg
Ozzie Smith

Whitey Herzog

Jerry Reinsdorf
Andy MacPhail
Bill Giles
David Glass

Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun
Tim Kurkjian of ESPN
Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated
Ros Newhan, formerly of the LA Times

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

If anyone outside the ownership quartet didn't vote for Miller, they should be ashamed.

If any ONE of the players didn't vote for Miller, he deserves to have his plaque revoked.

[G-Fafif]

Those are sixteen men who should have read Jerry Izenberg's piece in the Star-Ledger from Sunday.

The more serious the players became under Miller�s direction, the more ferocious became the owners� attempts to smear him. They still could not believe that the players had actually voted the demon into their collective household. You may recall that at that time the owners were still busily promulgating the myth that players were ungrateful (the reserve clause only held them in economic slavery for decades), fans were merely lucky recipients of management�s sacrifices and without the commissioner of baseball to tell us how many angels could dance on the head of a spitball and to rule fairly and impartially on all team-player disputes, the core of the American fabric was doomed. In truth, what was really doomed was management�s total grip on the collective, economic jugular vein of every pitcher, catcher and batter in the major leagues. For the record, this is what the Miller era did for them: Aided by the courage of an outfielder named Curt Flood, he challenged the reserve clause that bound players to their teams until death or trade do they part. He negotiated the first collective-bargaining agreement with the team owners in 1968. Two years later, he was able to get arbitration included in the collective-bargaining agreement, bringing an independent arbiter into the process and taking that role out of the biased hands of whoever happened to be commissioner. In 1974 he triggered the Catfish Hunter, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally cases that opened the free-agent floodgates. And so it went until his giant shadow ultimately changed labor practices between foul lines everywhere. He turned major league baseball players from �indentured serfs� into potential millionaires. What the owners won�t tell you, but what the players should never forget, is that he also bargained with management for improved scheduling, padded outfield walls, better-defined warning tracks and safer locker rooms � and won. Twice he has failed to be elected to baseball�s Hall of Fame. He is up for election again this week. If baseball doesn�t get it right this time, then the players ought to buy the Hall of Fame, throw out all the owners and commissioners plaques and install him on their own. Without him, they�d still be playing for a $10,000 minimum salary with no pension and no rights. He changed their business every bit as much as Jackie Robinson did. Some of the old-line owners never recovered from either of them.

[Frayed Knot]

In the past, several players admitted to NOT voting for Miller with the rather lame explanation that they didn't think it was their place to pass judgement on non-playing personnel (owners, execs, etc.)
Now that was prior to them changing the structure of the vets committee to what it is now where only a handful of players vote (instead of every enshrined HoFer) along with those others listed above, but it still wouldn't surprise me if one or more players left that spot blank.

[metirish]

Amazing, if all the players and the writers voted for him wouldn't that have been enough, and why would these four writers not vote for him?

[Guest Edgy DC]

Because writers have their own interests as well, but no, that wouldn't have been enough.

[G-Fafif]

Verducci meant to check off "Miller" but accidentally wrote in "Jeter".

[Guest Edgy DC]

Really, his presence does lend disrepute to the process a bit, doesn't it?

[Valadius]

G-Fafif wrote: Verducci meant to check off "Miller" but accidentally wrote in "Jeter".

This.

[Theoldmole]

There's no excuse for not voting for Miller. None.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Tom Verducci steps from behind the curtain to deny he's one of the Miller "no" votes.

Oh, these friggin' bloggers, with their blog nonsense. Not double-checking sources for their blog articles, these bloggers. Bloggers like this, they're really killing this blog industry.





Blogger.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Creeps. Chass didn't bother calling Verducci and Verducci doesn't bother calling Chass. Miller may be an old grump but he's just a football in this game.

[HahnSolo]

I sense no love lost between Verducci and Chass. I love how he kept derisively referring to him as a "blogger."

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Edgy DC wrote: Creeps. Chass didn't bother calling Verducci and Verducci doesn't bother calling Chass. Miller may be an old grump but he's just a football in this game.

Verducci did call Chass, it says so in the article.

Chass is rotten inside, a bad reporter, and spends a lot of energy tearing down "bloggers" not realizing he is one himself. I am certain that's why Verducci refers to him as such so many times.

[Guest Edgy DC]

You're absolutely right.

From Chass's Wikipedia entry:

Chass has said in interviews that he hates blogs. In 2008, Chass started a website at http://www.murraychass.com/. He notes that the site is not a blog, but an online outlet for publishing traditional columns. However, the website is precisely a blog.

That's a Spink Award Winner there folks.

Amazing to see him attacked not only as a blogger, but for not exercising exactly the same standards that presumably would seperate him from bloggers, and not checking out his info.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Giving credit where credit is due... this is one spicy backhanded apology.

Such a moment occurred for me last week when a mistake I made reminded me that a reporter always has to check and verify his information and not take any information for granted. In writing a column about Marvin Miller�s latest failure to be elected to the Hall of Fame, I incorrectly identified one of the five members of the committee who blocked Miller�s election. Tom Verducci wrote in his SI.com blog that contrary to what I wrote, he voted for Miller. I have no first-hand knowledge of that fact any more than I had of my reporting that he didn�t vote for Miller. The Hall of Fame does not disclose how its committee members vote. However, in this instance I will take Verducci�s word.

[Guest Edgy DC]

So there's three different pieces there.

1) First, we have a hearbreakingly sad diatribe against statistics that he drags Pat Gillick into against his will.

2) Second, if you can wade through it, we have an excellent bit about what a foolish an ethically challenged goose chase the government went on siezing the supposedly anonymous test results from the MLB players union.

3) Lastly we have that apology, which would be find if not for the unbelievable "In 99.99 percent � no, make that 100 percent � of previous articles or columns, I checked something like that and confirmed it to my satisfaction before writing it." Yeah, and Andy Pettite only used PEDs that one time he got caught.

He seems like one really unhappy Spink Award winner there.

By the way, I noted this snark in his Wikpedia entry the earlier in this thread.

Chass has said in interviews that he hates blogs. In 2008, Chass started a website at http://www.murraychass.com/. He notes that the site is not a blog, but an online outlet for publishing traditional columns. However, the website is precisely a blog.

That last line has been edited out, but the article now includes this line.

Chass graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 5.348 x 10^7 B.C.

I'm going to edit it out because he's just too easy a target.