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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Santo: Hall veterans' vote needs change

LAS VEGAS -- Ron Santo, who fell nine votes short of election by the Veterans Committee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, said the process needs to change after the committee failed to elect a new member for the fourth straight time.

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Appearing on The Waddle & Silvy Show on ESPN 1000 in Chicago, former Cub Ron Santo says he thought this was going to be his year to go into the Hall of Fame. He asks why there's a veteran's committee if it never lets anyone into the Hall. Listen
The Veterans Committee, a 64-member panel made up exclusively of all living Hall of Fame players, votes every other year on players from 1943 and after. Santo, who spent 14 of his 15 seasons with the Chicago Cubs and is a longtime broadcaster for the team, led the voting with 39 votes, or 61 percent, but needed to be on 75 percent of the ballots to be voted into the hall.

''It's a travesty,'' Santo said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ''When I saw nobody got in again, I go, 'Whoa, this is wrong.' They can't keep going the way they're going. They've got to put a [different] committee out there.''

"It'll be eight years now that they've voted and not let anybody in. And personally, I feel like there's a lot of guys that should've been in, not just me," Santo said, according to the Chicago Tribune. However, Hall of Fame chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark noted that the goal of the two-stage veterans' process is not to elect someone every time they vote, according to the Sun-Times. ''The process was not redesigned with the goal of necessarily electing someone, but to give everyone on the ballot a very fair chance of earning election through a ballot of their peers,'' Clark said, according to the report. Santo was an All-Star nine times. He finished his career with 342 home runs, 1,331 RBIs, a .277 lifetime batting average and five Gold Gloves. While the post-1943 committee did not elect anyone to the hall, a smaller panel of just 12 members voting on players from 1942 and before did add a member to Cooperstown: New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians second baseman Joe Gordon.

"They have to change it," Santo said, according to the Tribune. "They're going to still have a Veterans Committee, but it should go back to where it was [in the '90s] when Bill Mazeroski got in. I think they should have a committee of maybe 12 guys that vote, that's the way to do it.

"Evaluate everyone, but instead of having all the [Hall of Fame] players vote, maybe just a couple players, a couple broadcasters, a couple writers -- a much smaller group. That's how [Joe] Gordon got in."

Santo said his life would not change because he's not in the Hall of Fame -- but he still believes he belongs in Cooperstown.

''Getting in or not getting in is not going to change my life at all. I'm going to be me, and that's it," Santo said, according to the Sun-Times. "But I feel I deserve this. I put up Hall of Fame numbers during the greatest era of baseball for pitchers, and I played with diabetes. Only diabetics can know what I went through. It would have just been satisfying [to be elected].''

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A Tribute To The Professor

Yesterday at the Winter Meetings, Greg Maddux officially announced his retirement from the sport of baseball. In his storied, incredible career, Maddux put up numbers that would make most people think he’s the greatest pitcher ever. Whether or not you believe so I’ll leave as an open-ended debate question, but one thing is for sure, I never got more enjoyment out of watching the Braves than when Greg Maddux had the ball. Here’s some numbers that illustrate how great his career was.

The Professor: working quickly and efficiently as always.

2: Number of unanimous Cy Young awards Maddux won.

4: Number of NL ERA titles Maddux won. Since the dead-ball era, only Sandy Koufax has won more NL
ERA titles with 5. This is also the number of consecutive Cy Young awards he won from 1992-1995, something nobody else has done and probably will ever do.

11: Seasons with the Braves as the staff ace. The Braves won their division every one of these years. (except 1994, strike year). He also won a division title with the Cubs in 1989 and with the Dodgers in 2008.

17: Number of consecutive seasons he won at LEAST 15 games. Unparalleled by any other pitcher.

23: Number of years Maddux’s career spanned.

78: Number of pitches it took Greg Maddux to complete a game on July 22, 1997.

6: Number of complete games Greg Maddux pitched using fewer than 90 pitches. Probably why he was regarded as the best teammate of all time. His unselfishness didn’t regard strikeouts as something he coveted. He’d rather use his defense, work quickly, and help his team win the game than glorify his personal stats.

355: Number of career wins. 2nd highest total since the dead-ball era. Another Braves’ pitcher, Warren Spahn, holds the highest total since the dead ball era at only 8 more, 363.

999: Number of walks he issued in his career, that’s an average of 43 a season or 1.8/9 innings. This is probably why he’s regarded as the best control pitcher of all time.

3371: Number of batters Maddux struck out in his career. This ranks 10th all time. Funny thing, he was never regarded as a strike-out pitcher.

153,845,000: Amount of money Maddux has earned in his career. Highest total for a player that didn’t play for the Yankees, Red Sox, or whose name doesn’t rhyme with “Arry Bonds”. However much he made, it doesn’t seem like enough for 355 career wins.

100: Percent of the Hall of Fame vote he should get in 2014.

Seeing Greg Maddux go is one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in the Baseball world. I don’t care if he’s old, I still got extremely excited when I saw Maddux pitch in the post-season this past year. Maddux should break Tom Seaver’s record of highest voting percentage for the Hall of Fame and he should go in there with a Braves’ jersey. Here’s to you, Professor. For providing unlimited entertainment and joy to this Braves’ fan. Cheers, may you enjoy retirement more than MLB hitters will enjoy not having to face you.

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Monday, December 8, 2008

13 Curious Clauses in Baseball Contracts

Ethan Trex
by Ethan Trex

Major League Baseball’s hot stove season is underway, and as general managers and agents wear out their phones, the annual flurry of free agent signings and contract extensions is in full swing. These deals aren’t just about the money, though; they’re also about sweet, sweet perks and bonus clauses. Let’s revisit the list of curious contract clauses we first compiled last year.

1. Charlie Kerfeld, Houston Astros

After a spectacular rookie season in 1986, the rotund reliever who always pitched in his lucky Jetsons t-shirt needed a new contract. Kerfeld asked for $110,037.37, matching his number 37 jersey, to pitch in 1987. On top of that, he received 37 boxes of orange Jell-O in the deal. The Astros would soon regret this delicious bonus, though; Kerfeld, who was famously caught eating ribs in the dugout that season, would battle weight and injury problems and get sent down to the minors.

2. Rollie Fingers, Oakland Athletics

rollie.jpgFormer A’s owner Charlie Finley never thought of a gimmick he wouldn’t try, including a mechanical rabbit that delivered fresh balls to the umpire and hiring a 13-year-old MC Hammer as his “Executive V.P.” In 1972, Finley offered his players cash for growing a mustache by Father’s Day, thereby giving birth to reliever Fingers’ trademark handlebar ‘stache. The A’s went on to win the World Series that season, and Fingers’ contract for 1973 contained a $300 bonus for growing the mustache as well as $100 for the purchase of mustache wax.

3. Roy Oswalt, Houston Astros

tractor.jpgBefore Oswalt made a start in the 2005 National League Championship Series, Astros owner Drayton McLane promised to make the ace’s dreams come true if he won, specifically his life goal of bulldozer ownership. After Oswalt dominated the Cardinals to send Houston to its first-ever World Series, McLane came through with a Caterpillar D6N XL. Since Major League Baseball requires high-dollar gifts be disclosed, Oswalt signed an addendum to his contract, a “bulldozer clause,” authorizing the club to give him his new toy.

4. Troy Glaus, Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona inked the slugging third baseman signed for four years and $45 million in December 2004. As part of the deal, Glaus receives $250,000 annually for “personal business expenses,” namely the cost of his wife Ann’s equestrian training and equipment. Although Glaus bashed 37 homers for the Snakes in 2005, he also tied for the major-league lead in errors by a third baseman with 24, and despite Mrs. Glaus’ surely improving performance in the steeplechase, Glaus had to hoof it to Toronto when he was traded barely a year after signing.

5. Randy Johnson, Arizona Diamondbacks

When the Big Unit signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998, team owner Jerry Colangelo also threw in a pair of partial season tickets for the Phoenix Suns to lure in the lanky lefty. Seems like Johnson could have afforded his own tickets, but to be fair, when you’re making $52 million over four years, it’s hard to get scalpers to fall for “Can you take twenty for the pair? I swear it’s all I’ve got, dude.”

6. Carlos Beltran, New York Mets

beltran.jpgBeltran’s mammoth seven-year, $119 million deal from January 2005 showed that he had all of baseball’s five tools but lacked a conditioned ocular enhancer, a gadget that throws numbered, colored tennis balls over 150 mph to help players pick up the speed of a pitched ball. So he got a contract clause requiring the Mets lease the machine and retain an operator for it. However, Beltran only hit .266 in his first year with the club, so maybe a used copy of Tony Gwynn’s tome The Art of Hitting would have been more cost-effective.

7. Brad Lidge, Houston Astros

lidge.jpgWhen the Houston Astros (sound familiar?) re-signed Brad Lidge in January 2007, their former closer got an incentive clause promising $25,000 for winning a Silver Slugger, given annually to the top hitter at each position. Lidge probably didn’t consider this easy money; as a relief pitcher, he had only been to the plate seven times in his five-season career and hadn’t seen an at-bat since 2004. Despite an erratic season on the mound, Lidge was the model of consistency at the plate in 2007, mostly because he never had an at-bat. Houston finished 13th in the National League in runs scored, though, so maybe letting Lidge take some hacks would have been worth a try.

8. A.J. Burnett, Toronto Blue Jays

Lots of players have free-plane-ticket perks written into their contracts, but some feel that air travel really lacks that fun we’re-going-to-the-prom feeling that you can only get from a long limo ride. When flamethrower A.J. Burnett signed with Toronto as a free agent in December 2005, he required that his wife receive eight round-trip limo rides from his home in Maryland to Toronto each season. That’s around nine hours in a limo each way, which is enough time to move the little divider between you and the driver up and down roughly 3,500 times.

Some other interesting perks and bonuses:

9. Kevin Brown, Los Angeles Dodgers – The seven-year, $105 million deal Brown signed after the 1998 season guaranteed twelve round trip private jet trips from L.A. to his hometown in Macon, Georgia for his family, sparing his children from cruel flight attendants’ taunts about their dad being overpaid.

dice-k.jpg10. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox – Dice-K’s deal with the Red Sox includes a plethora of strange or excessive clauses including housing allowances and a personal masseuse, but the oddest is that he’s contractually guaranteed the jersey number 18.

11. Dave Roberts, San Francisco Giants – The deal Roberts signed in December 2006 gave him the right to buy four premium season tickets each year. He’s probably going to keep passing until management puts a decent team on the field, though.

12. Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners – Ichiro’s five-year contract extension from July 2007 contains some reasonable perks (interpreter, plane tickets to Japan), but also stipulates the club give him a Jeep or Mercedes SUV, filling the Japanese auto industry with a deep collective sense of shame.

13. Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox – The three-time World Series champ’s 2008 deal with the Red Sox for the 2008 season not only rewarded Schilling for maintaining his weight, but also gave him $1M for appearing on any voter’s three-man Cy Young ballot. Enterprising voters could have cleaned up here (“Sixty-forty split sound fair, Curt?”) if only Schilling had pitched a single inning last season. Instead, he went on the disabled list during spring training and never made it onto the mound.

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