Mike's Hall Call: Griffey (obviously), but how 'bout Edmonds and Hoffman?

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Seven of my 10 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot slots were easy to fill.

There are the six guys I voted for in the past who are still trying to join baseball's most exclusive club: Jeff Bagwell, Mike Mussina, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Alan Trammell. You can read the cases I made for them in previous years here and here.

There is this year's no-brainer newcomer: Ken Griffey Jr. He is such an obvious Hall of Famer that I won't waste my time and yours explaining why.

Beyond that, I had a lot to think about.

First, there are Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. Last year, I wrote this:

If a player likely was a steroid cheat but all available evidence showed that he had a Hall-worthy body of work before the juicing began (think Bonds and Clemens), I will consider him but only beginning with his fifth year on the ballot. I want to allow plenty of time before checking that box.

This is Year 4 for both and I actually considered voting for them after Bonds' obstruction of justice conviction was overturned. But I decided my heart wouldn't be broken if they had to wait one more year, and I'm sticking to my five-year rule.

So the two players whose candidacies are really rattling around in my mind are ballot newcomers Trevor Hoffman and Jim Edmonds.

Hoffman is an interesting case. The only thing he really has going for him is the save statistic -- he had 601, behind only Mariano Rivera -- and most of us know how flawed that stat is. You come into a 5-2 game with nobody on in the ninth inning and you get a save? Whoop-de-do.

Hoffman was a classic "stat-compiler." He pitched forever, so he had lots of saves. He racked up 119 saves during his final four seasons pitching not so great (3.51 ERA, 1.118 WHIP, 12-20 record) for lousy teams. Unlike truly dominant relievers such as Goose Gossage or Bruce Sutter or Rollie Fingers or Rivera, he rarely was asked to get more than three outs. Unlike Dennis Eckersley and John Smoltz, Hoffman couldn't hack it as a starter.

I have read articles that convincingly argue that Billy Wagner, another first-timer on the ballot, was the better reliever. And I'm not voting for Wagner, either. Hoffman is a borderline case, and he's not crossing my border this year.

Now let's go to Edmonds.

When a friend asked me a few weeks ago about Edmonds, my knee-jerk reaction was "no way." But then I remembered all of his amazing catches and I decided to look into his career more closely.

He ranks in the top 60 all-time in slugging percentage, OPS and HRs. He was a hard-nosed, valuable player for some outstanding Cardinals teams, including the 2006 champions. At age 38, he was still an extremely valuable player for the division-winning Cubs, driving in 49 runs in only 250 at-bats after they picked him up during the season.

I believe ballplayers deserve recognition for the long, outstanding stretches of their careers. For me, Edmonds gets plaudits for his 11-season stretch with the Angels and Cardinals in which his WAR was third in all of baseball behind only Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. And unlike Bonds and A-Rod, there were no serious steroid allegations. During those 11 seasons, Edmonds averaged 30 HRs, slugged .554 and won eight Gold Gloves.

Oh, and in 64 postseason games, Edmonds, had 13 HRs, 42 RBIs and a .513 slugging percentage.

And you can't talk about Edmonds without spending plenty of time talking about his all-out, life-or-limb defense at an important position. Did any center fielder who played in the '90s and '00s produce more highlight-reel catches? He was on SportsCenter more than Chris Berman was. Among CFs since 1954, he ranks in the top 20 in assists, putouts and double plays. His "Ultimate Zone Rating" was eighth all-time among CFs, and his arm was rated second-best ever at the position. But if you spent any time watching him, you didn't need all those new-fangled metrics to know you were watching an amazing outfielder.

If we can enshrine Ozzie Smith mostly because of his defensive prowess at shortstop, we can't give Edmonds serious props because of his defensive prowess in center field ... AND his 393 HRs AND his .527 slugging percentage and his .903 OPS?

Despite all of that, I have a feeling that Edmonds will not get much love among my BBWAA voting peers, and I simply think he was too good a player to be 1-and-done. So I feel doubly good about giving him my vote.

Here, then, are the eight players who received check marks next to their names on my 2016 Hall of Fame ballot:

Jeff Bagwell

Jim Edmonds

Ken Griffey Jr.

Mike Mussina

Mike Piazza

Tim Raines

Curt Schilling

Alan Trammell

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And speaking of the Hall of Fame ...

I agree wholeheartedly with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's decision to keep Pete Rose out of the game. Rose gambled on baseball when he was the Reds' manager, lied about it for years and years, finally admitted to doing some of it but still lied about the depth of his gambling activity, and only begrudgingly admitted more about it after being caught in lies again.

For a long time, I believed that Rose should be kept out of baseball for his gambling as a manager but that he should be eligible for the Hall of Fame because there had been no credible evidence that he had gambled as a player.

Earlier this year, however, ESPN's Behind the Lines did produce credible evidence that Rose did bet on baseball during his playing days.

Given that I have every reason to believe the ESPN report and no reason to believe Rose -- a pathological liar and self-promoter -- I am very glad he has never eligible for enshrinement.
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Nobody is easier to hate than A-Roid

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First Down

Alex Rodriguez says the last year has been a "nightmare." Poor, poor, pitiful him. I mean, could there be a less-sympathetic figure in sports than A-Roid?

Barry Bonds and Pete Rose look freakin' noble compared to this guy.

I'd rather root for Mike Tyson or Bill Belichick.

Why should anybody believe A-Rod didn't juice when he was a young player in Seattle? Because he says so? That's a good one! If he handed me a quarter, I'd assume it was counterfeit.

Second Down

I am seriously pissed at Time Warner Cable for denying me Showtime -- and the last few episodes of Dexter.

We'll all have the last laugh when cable companies are completely unnecessary, a time that is coming sooner than TWC and its brethren think.

Third Down

In his most recent "Real Time," Bill Maher used his main "New Rule" to rip the North Carolina GOP for its unapologetic, mean-spirited return of the state to the 1950s -- when blacks, Latinos and women knew their place (and knew it wasn't North Carolina).

And to think, I hated Chicago politics.

Fourth Down

Went into my local Costco the other day and they had a table with large, framed, autographed photos of NFL stars. The guy featured most prominently:

Tim Tebow.

In a Jets uniform.

No punchline. None necessary.
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Jinx no, curse yes: Reds' Bailey makes no-hit statement

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I'm often asked to name the best events I covered during my sportswriting career, and I'm lucky that I can rattle off a pretty nice list:

1991 World Series (Twins over Braves in 7 amazing games); 2002 Super Bowl (Tom Brady's legend is born); Michael Jordan's last NBA Finals game (the steal, the shove, the swish, the pose); 1994 Stanley Cup (Rangers win first Cup in 54 years); 1982 ALCS (as a kid reporter right out of college for AP, I was assigned to write about the Angels of Reggie Jackson, Fred Lynn, Rod Carew, Bobby Grich, Don Baylor and Gene Mauch); 2005 NCAA Midwest Regional final (Deron Williams carries Illinois to an amazing comeback victory over Arizona); and so on and so on.

But you know, sometimes the "regular" events that turn into something special ended up being even more memorable. Scott Erickson, who for two years allowed the most hits of any pitcher in baseball, threw a no-hitter for the 1994 Twins. The Vikings lost to the Bears when their punter dropped a snap; teammate Keith Millard ripped the punter after the game and then, one week later, suffered a career-ruining knee injury. Before the Bulls' first game of the post-Jordan, post-Pippen, post-Jackson era, Bill Wennington promised fans over the P.A. system that the team would compete hard; Wennington then didn't jump for the opening tip. Good stuff, eh?

Though I no longer cover events big or small these days, I still occasionally get treated to an event I won't soon forget.

Homer Bailey's no-hitter on Tuesday night is in that category for two reasons:

1. I didn't watch the game until the ninth inning. Channel-surfing, I paused momentarily when I got to that game and saw a clip of the final out of Bailey's no-hitter the previous season. Fox Sports Ohio announcers Thom Brennaman and Jeff Brantley immediately brought me up to speed: Bailey was three outs away from yet another no-no.

Some other announcers and team networks would have pretended the no-hitter wasn't happening because they wouldn't have wanted to "jinx" the pitcher. As a viewer, however, I'm glad Brennaman, Brantley and Fox Sports didn't prescribe to that ridiculous ritual. If they had, I would have kept clicking and would have missed the final three outs. Because the announcers and the network did their jobs, viewers like me got to see history being made.

Bailey became only the 31st pitcher in big-league history to pitch more than one no-hitter. He also became only the second -- following his idol, Nolan Ryan -- to throw the last no-no in the majors one season and the first in the next season. Cool.

2. Afterward, Bailey was interviewed by the station's Jeff Piecoro, who asked the pitcher about the seventh-inning leadoff walk he issued to Gregor Blanco -- San Fran's only baserunner in an otherwise perfect game.

Piecoro: "It's right after you had an at-bat. You didn't have really time to relax between innings. Did that have anything to do with it?"

Bailey: "No man, I mean I just f---ing walked a guy. This game's pretty tough."

That's right. Minutes after throwing a no-hitter, celebratory shaving cream still all over his face, Bailey threw an F-bomb on live TV.

He said it matter-of-factly, too. Just another adjective.

Sports. The only Reality TV worth watching.
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