The long run should end for Tim Raines next week. Jonah Keri can get his life back, the restless souls of Expos Nation should find eternal peace — my God, don’t get me started if Vladimir Guerrero gets in, too — and we can all go back to pontificating about steroids.
I mean, there will still be valid statistical debates surrounding the candidacy of Mike Mussina and maybe Larry Walker and crypto-Fascist Curt Schilling would be a fitting casualty of the wider cultural war raging in society but the real fun is going to be measuring whatever successful steps toward induction are taken by Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. This will remain the story of subsequent ballots until they are elected or run out of eligibility; more so even than the imminent election of sure-fire first-rounders such as Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.
In his final year on the ballot, indications are that Raines is going to surpass the 75 per cent threshold needed for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. Who accompanies him is in the balance, but it seems in the very least as if Jeff Bagwell and Ivan (Pudge) Rodriguez will be in the group.
Raines’s numbers are more than worthy, whether you go old school or sabermetric. His WAR is better than Tony Gwynn’s and his OPS-plus is better than Cal Ripken, Jr., Paul Molitor and other Hall members. His 808 stolen bases are fifth in history; the four men in front of him are all in the Hall. But his stolen-base percentage (84.7) is the best of all time; his on-base percentage (.385) is above the .376 Hall average — better than Willie Mays. His career hits are above the Hall average, while his batting average is slightly lower but still better than that of Frank Robinson.
I asked Raines in an interview in December to pick out two aspects of his career ledger a fan needed to know in order to understand the type of player he was.
“On base percentage and runs scored,” Raines said quickly, “because I felt like my job as a leadoff guy was to get on base and score runs for the guys coming up behind me. If I did that early and often enough, I knew our team had a chance to win.
“See, my whole thing wasn’t how many bags I stole. I always looked at myself as a team guy. But, I did a lot more things than a leadoff guy would do. I hit home runs; one year I batted third because I was the best hitter on the team, not because I was the fastest guy.”
When I started voting for the Hall of Fame, my theory was always that the deeper you had to go to make a case for a player — the more statistics you needed to bring up — the less I was likely to consider his candidacy. I’m still a ‘small hall’ voter; I believe it’s better to have arguments about why a player isn’t in as opposed to why a particular player is in and that’s why I have never used the allotted 10 votes per ballot. Give me latitude, and I’m going to take it, as indeed do many voters in a system that essentially says to a player: “We didn’t think you were a Hall of Famer last year or the year before or six years before that, but we think you are this year — even though you, uh, haven’t swung a bat or thrown a pitch since that initial ballot. So, you know: congratulations and all that.”
Tim Raines, a star on the 1980s Expos teams, was a seven-time all-star. (CP)
So, initially I was not inclined to vote for Raines. Left him off his first — I don’t know — three or four ballots. But I came around at the suggestion of a peer who didn’t just delve deep into Raines’s statistics but instead asked me a simple question: as someone who was a fan of, watched a lot of, and covered baseball in the 1980s — did it not strike me as odd that players from that era were underrepresented in the Hall?
Uh, now that you mention it: yes. Yes, it does.
One year ago, the website FiveThirtyEight looked at the underrepresentation of players from some eras and postulated there was legitimacy to Bill James’s theory that expansion created a slightly unmanageable system. According to FiveThirtyEight’s breakdown, the 1970s and ’80s combined had 23 less Hall of Famers selected than was suggested by comparative statistical analysis.
So Raines was on my ballot this year, as were Clemens, Bonds, Bagwell, Guerrero and Manny Ramirez. Yeah, I was making a point about the hypocrisy of keeping out players ‘tainted’ by the steroid scandal while our pals on the various committees — including former players — put in quasi-enablers such as Tony La Russa and Bud Selig. I voted for Jorge Posada because of his post-season impact and durability; he was the everyday catcher on the only dynastic team during my days covering the game on a day-to-day basis. That’s seven … and, sorry Pudge, no way I’m going any deeper. I’m a ‘small hall’ guy — always have been, because I don’t want to see Cooperstown become the Hockey Hall of Fame and throw in five or six names per year. In fact, I’d rather the Hall limit the number of votes per ballot to five. Or three. Exclusivity rather than inclusiveness is the way to go.
At any rate, Raines’s induction will be special because it will once again give Expos fans a chance to gather in Cooperstown — on the same weekend as the induction of Selig, who oversaw the move of the franchise to Washington, D.C. — and because it will pay homage to the ’80s and The Team of the ’80s, the latter of which becomes less and less etched in the memory with each passing season.
Perhaps more than any other eligible Hall of Famer, I believe, Raines was hampered by the fact he played so much of his career north of the border, before the regional sports channel or multiple national channels, before 24-hour news and sports and before social media. If Raines was at his height in this media environment he’d be a sensation, in the mode of Bryce Harper. Never mind what a big deal he would have been doing it as a second baseman, the position he played in the minors.
“I think it helped me to move to the outfield,” said Raines. “It would have been a lot tougher at second base. My legs would have been exposed a lot more. I was the guy that got things going for my team and teams would have come at me harder when I was in the field.
“In baseball, it doesn’t have to be something where the guys are coming after you to hurt you intentionally but, you know, if it happens, it happens,” Raines continued. “I just felt like being in the outfield allowed me to play with an open mind. My speed could make up for any mistakes in the outfield but wouldn’t make up for my mistakes in the infield.”
And so now we wait for next Wednesday’s announcement. All eyes will be on how much growth there is in the total of Bonds or Clemens. The resolution of the steroid era won’t occur until one or either of those two is voted in, and that time is coming, as surely as Raines’s has come. It doesn’t always make sense. It isn’t always on time. But Cooperstown eventually gets it right and puts its ghosts to rest and gives us another reason to talk baseball in the cold dark of January. Perfect.
