Theoldmole

And yet the Mets have had two Ambiorixes.

Yankees' hunk of.....?

Ewell Blackwell?

I don't consider Killebrew a borderliner.

Monte Ward, on the other hand, was a hero AND a great player.

I love Endy. I had been planning to write that even before I saw Vlad's note.

Hal Chase was more slimeball than controversial. And he's not in the Hall, is he?

Monte Ward has to be the most controversial. I mean, starting your own league...

If Rod Gilbert likes Bay, then he's OK with me.

The Odd Couple, with my beloved Woodie Broun, remains my favorite Shea scene.

Seize God?

Bill James lists him as second only to Rogers Hornsby in his imaginary ranking of "controversial" personalities. Wow. Where's this list?

Dick Allen got an unfairly bad rap and belongs in the HOF. Besides, he had that great line about AstroTurf: "If a horse won't eat it, I don't want to play on it."

Do you suppose Trammell and Whittaker get less HOF respect than they deserve because they played their whole careers for one team, and never got free agent bigbux headlines?

For a lot of people, Maranville is the poster boy for "shouldn't be in the Hall," but the guy played 19 seasons as a full time regular at shortstop, which is not unimpressive.

Bay, the Mets' newest slugger, always has had a dry sense of humor, Hertz says. When Hertz accompanied their mutual friend, NBA great John Stockton, to Stockton's Basketball Hall of Fame induction in Springfield, Mass., Stockton and Hertz visited Bay at Fenway Park. Stockton threw out the first pitch before a Red Sox game with Bay catching. Just before Stockton wound up, Bay yelled, "Don't bounce it," Hertz says. "That's his humor."

Bagwell and Larkin would be my picks.

I have a friend who was sports editor of the Daily World (successor to the Worker) for several years. I'll ask him.

It didn't make SportsCenter, but one of history's most influential sportswriters died this week at the age of 98. His name was Lester Rodney. Lester was one of the first people to write about a young Negro League prospect named Jackie Robinson. He was the last living journalist to cover the famous 1938 fight at Yankee Stadium between "The Brown Bomber" Joe Louis and Hitler favorite, Max Schmeling. He crusaded against baseball's color line when almost every other journalist pretended it didn't exist. He edited a political sports page that engaged his audience in how to fight for a more just sports world. His writing, which could describe the beauty of a well-turned double play in one sentence and blast injustice in the next, is still bracing and ahead of its time. He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Instead he was largely erased from the books. If you have never heard of Lester Rodney, there is a very simple reason why: the newspaper he worked at from 1936-1958 was the Daily Worker, the party press of the U.S. Communist Party. Lester used his paper to launch the first campaign to end the color line in Major League Baseball. I spoke to Lester about this in 2004 and he said to me, "It's amazing. You go back and you read the great newspapers in the thirties, you'll find no editorials saying, 'What's going on here? This is America, land of the free and people with the wrong pigmentation of skin can't play baseball?' Nothing like that. No challenges to the league, to the commissioner, no talking about Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, who were obviously of superstar caliber. So it was this tremendous vacuum waiting." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-zirin/more-than-a-sportswriter_b_401408.html

Did the Mets do anything?

No votes for Todd Zeile? Well, including me.

I liked Castillo better than most of you guys -- he was my second choice over Valentin, but I liked him too.

I left Doc off, which is probably crazy. Of course he should go in, but not next. Let him do a little more penance.

I can't believe that Karl Ehrhart has more votes than Fonzie.

I went with Pelfrey. In spite of last season, I see a pretty consistent development there. I realize that makes no sense, but I'm sticking with it anyway.