A Moment of Reflection

Warning: This is a post about sports, specifically voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame. If that frightens you, run away now.

So, the voting results were released today and former Cardinal Bruce Sutter is the only player getting inducted this year, at least by the writers. I don't really care about that. Sutter was traded from the Cardinals to Atlanta before the '85 season, when I was only two, so I don't remember him. I'm here to talk about Willie McGee.

This was Willie's second year on the ballot. Last year he got on 5% of the ballots, the bare minimum required to stay on the ballot for the next year. He wasn't so lucky this year, getting only 2.3% of the votes.

Let me be clear that I don't believe Willie should be in the Hall of Fame, though I would like the Cardinals to retire his number (and before some Cardinal fan points it out, yes Ray Lankford had better numbers, but is he as beloved? No. And number retirments are as much for the fans as the player I believe). In his career, over 2201 games, Willie hit .295, with an OPS (on base + slugging percentage) of .729, for an OPS+ of 100, which is exactly league average. He hit only 79 home runs, had 856 RBIs and 352 stolen bases, and 2254 hits. Those aren't Hall-worthy, though I'm sure they're better than some (Phil Rizutto New York media bias). Still I wanted to share something a story about him, from 1997.

In 1997, Willie is 36, in his second season of his second tour with the Cardinals. He's the fourth outfielder, the guy who gives the starters a day off, or the first one to play if one of them is injured. On July 2, 1997 the Cardinals are playing the Twins. Both teams are well, not good. The game goes into extra innings, tied 1-1. In the bottom of the 10th, Willie comes up and takes a low pitch over the centerfield fence. Game over, Cards win, sweet. As Willie goes around first base, he pumps his fist in the air once, as is his right, as hero of the game. The next day, I read in the paper that he apologized publicly for that, saying that the fist pump showed the Twins up. I always thought that was pretty cool of him, and probably why he was one of my favorites. End of story, return of comic related posts tonight.