Gunned Down Going For The Hall

The NYTimes has a great article on Tim Raines' candidacy for the Hall.

It's a fresh article that deviates from the typical nonsense of "Jim Rice is the most feared hitter of his time! All 5 years!"

I do see some preliminary problems though. For starters, he doesn't mention at all how this helps his candidacy. It makes him a better ballplayer, but I am absolutely convinced that sportswriters, particularly those who vote for the Hall of Fame are so dense that they would sink to the bottom in a sea of lead. Sports writers, time and time again, have shown me nothing but pedagogy, herd instinct, cowardice, an aversion to taking responsibility for things they have said or written and an absolutely absurd unwillingness to consider how helpful statistics can be in both appreciating and understanding the game.

Tim Marchman of the NY Sun wrote an article on the absurdity of asking whether Tim Raines was worthy of the Hall. Tim Raines is one of the top 10 left fielders of all time. Yes, he has had a far better career than Manny Ramirez unless Manny has a 2001 Bonds' turnaround in his career.

This is a minority opinion. Buster Olney doesn't consider Tim Raines to be worthy of the honor. Neither does Peter Gammons. This is madness.

But things are not as they always were. From what I've seen in the professional blogosphere (a sphere that this blog is not included in), Tim Raines' candidacy is gaining more traction as I believe people proficient with the internet would be more likely to understand baseball from a sabermetric perspective.


Joe Posnanski is one such example.

Who knows? Perhaps there is a change in the wind. Or perhaps it's just a brief breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp of sports journalism.