Albert Belle – Wax Pack Gods Mom didn't throw out your memories. Sun, 06 Sep 2020 22:24:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://staging.waxpackgods.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/cropped-catcher-32x32.png Albert Belle – Wax Pack Gods 32 32 Baseball Card Collectors Sound Off on the 2017 Hall of Fame Class — Thanks Twitter! https://staging.waxpackgods.com/2017-hall-of-fame/ Fri, 28 Jul 2017 16:40:28 +0000 http://staging.waxpackgods.com/?p=3569 (This is part of a series of posts about the 2017 Hall of Fame inductions. Read them all here.)

As the 2017 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies drew near, fans everywhere were doing what fans do best — talking about the big event, second-guessing the HOF voters, and thinking about what might come next.

And when it comes to overall knowledge and strong opinions, few groups are as ardent as baseball card collectors.

After all, we’ve spent hundreds of hours over years and years pouring through our cards, memorizing every wrinkle and errant print dot on card fronts, and devouring the statistics on card backs.

So who better to chime in all things Cooperstown-related than a bunch of fellow collectors?

No one, I say.

Over the course of a couple of weeks leading up to Hall of Fame weekend (July 28-30), I posed a series of questions on Twitter, and — as you might expect — hobbyists told me exactly what they think.

Here, then, are the results of nine Hall of Fame polls, as told by our collective baseball card consciousness.

The Snubs, Hitter Division

This one sparked some good debate as the underrated Bobby Grich continued to be underrated here and his supporters reminded us of his statistical record (7th best second baseman of all time according to Baseball Reference.

This question also generated several write-in candidates, which led to …

The Snubs, Hitter Division – Round 2

This question really illustrated the classic conundrum of “famous good” players v. “SABR good” players.

Most of us who were fans during the 1980s remember Dale Murphy and Dave Parker as superstars, but the new breed of statistics like OPS+ and WAR favor Ted Simmons and Dick Allen.

For this poll, at least, old-school stars won out, but there was plenty of discussion.

We still had some leftover hitters, so it was on to …

The Snubs, Hitter Division – Round 3

Steve Garvey won this ballot in a landslide over Al Oliver, which only served to fuel the fire of the stats v. fame discussions.

Garvey and Oliver trounced Graig Nettles and Reggie Smith here, even though the latter two are way out front in terms of career WAR:

  • Graig Nettles – 68.0 WAR
  • Reggie Smith – 64.5 WAR
  • Al Oliver – 43.3 WAR
  • Steve Garvey – 37.7 WAR

This wrapped up our trip through the hitters on the outside looking in, at least momentarily, but there was still the matter of …

The Snubs, Starting Pitcher Division

It’s probably not too surprising that the ever-popular Jack Morris ran away with this one, or that Sabermetrics fans in the group were fairly disillusioned with the results.

Regardless of who your pitcher is, though, he can’t pitch a complete game every time.

That’s why we had to move on to …

The Snubs, Relief Pitcher Division

Folks weren’t necessarily enthusiastic about this group but still chose Lee Smith by a wide margin over the late Dan Quisenberry. Still, the overarching sentiment of a large swath of the group was that these relievers were underwhelming on the whole.

Having covered most of the (maybe) overlooked candidates who played during the 1970s and 1980s, we moved on to …

The Supersnubs

These guys were all superstars at some point during their careers, yet they all fell off the Hall of Fame ballot after just try. Lou Whitaker won this one in a romp, but Kenny Lofton received fairly vocal support among more recent snubs.

Of course, not all HOF debate centers around the guys who were left out.

Indeed, even the players already enshrined are not safe from fan scrutiny, so we joined that fray with …

The Overrated

Bill Mazeroski “won” this title with ease, but Jim Rice had plenty of “support,” too. He also had plenty of real support from collectors who couldn’t believe we’d even include him in this list.

Continuing with the theme of enshrined players who may or may not actually belong in Cooperstown, we turned to ..

The Firemen

(Or … Do We HAVE to Have a Reliever?)

As with the snubbed reliever poll above, enthusiasm for this group of HOF hurlers was lukewarm at best.

In the end, Rich Gossage narrowly edged out Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter.

We wrapped up our consideration of Hall of Fame specialists with …

The Old Sluggers

Collectors dig the long ball … but we picked the least-accomplished home run smasher among this group as our HOF designated hitter.

In the end, Paul Molitor edged out Reggie Jackson as the DH on our hypothetical Hall of Fame club thanks to his overall hitting excellence and maybe also because he played much more recently.

Also taking the field not all that long ago were …

The Forgotten Sluggers

Mark McGwire won this poll by a Big-Mac-Sized margin, but there were also fewer votes here than in any of our other surveys. Voter fatigue or a no-vote for all those listed?

Could go either way, but McGwire is clearly not a complete pariah among collectors at this point.

Lessons Learned

So what did we learn from all these Hall of Fame polls?

Well, for one thing, we learned that collectors hold onto their childhood affinities well into adulthood and have plenty to say when it comes to their diamond heroes.

We also learned that, as a group, we’re not blind to the statistical advances of the past couple of decades.

As mentioned above, there was plenty of discussion on both sides of the fame v. stats debate, and most had there merits. Here’s one of my favorite comments, from a collector firmly in the Sabermetrics camp:

It sums up in one quick shot the light-hearted tensions of long-time fans and collectors struggling to reconcile what we saw on the field 35 years ago with what we see in the record book todya.

What we really learned, or reinforced, was that baseball and baseball cards are fun.

More fun than ever, if you let them be.

We may lament the passing of the local card shop or real (hard) gum in wax packs, but we’ve never had such a huge and vibrant community of fellow collectors at our fingertips, 24-hours a day, as we do now.

Enjoy the ride like it’s 1984, guys!

What’s Next?

Where do we go from here?

More baseball cards, and more talk about baseball cards, naturally!

And, probably, more polls and good-natured group self reflection.

Thanks to all those who have participated so far — it’s been a lot of fun!

And let me know if you have ideas for other topics we ought to tackle.

I can almost guarantee we’ll have strong opinions and a good time hashing through them.

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