Starr Gazing: Raising Hall of Fame Standards

Tonight in Seattle, or one of the next few nights there, Baltimore Orioles first basemen Rafael Palmeiro will lace his 3,000th base hit, thus joining one of baseball's most exclusive clubs. Only Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray have ever compiled 3,000 hits along with 500 home runs.

My baseball friends say that, as a result of this rare milestone, Palmeiro is destined for Cooperstown--that either 500 home runs or 3,000 hits is usually sufficient to punch your Hall of Fame ticket. Thus the combo makes it a "no-brainer," they say. Palmeiro, who will turn 41 in September, has shown no inclination to retire and put it to the test. With 566 home runs to date, he may pass both his fading teammate Sammy Sosa and the 600 mark next season--putting him fifth all-time behind only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Willie Mays.

But what so many of us love about baseball is that it is the most delectable brain food. Every decision on the field, every analysis of a player or a team off it, is subject to discussion and, quite often, contention. And while Palmeiro may be a "no-brainer" for most folks, my brain keeps insisting that he is not Hall of Fame material. His is, without doubt, an admirable career. But it is that of a first-rate ballplayer who has sustained his productivity over time. In the fields of nonglory, that used to earn you a gold watch. In baseball, everybody seems to think it mandates a far greater entitlement.

That notion ignores how dramatically the game has changed. Of the top 100 single-season home-run totals, we have witnessed 57 of them since 1987. We don't have to rehash all the reasons--both legitimate (new ballparks, lighter bats, dilution of pitching talent) and illegitimate (juiced balls and players)--to know that home runs and related stats have been significantly depreciated. Yet we haven't really readjusted the standards by which we judge our modern sluggers. We treat Palmeiro's 566 home runs as if they were an equivalent to the 573 hit--mostly in the '50s and '60s--by Harmon Killebrew, who is Palmeiro's next notch up on the career home-run ladder. Hall of Fame inductees should be players who were transcendent among their baseball generation. Palmeiro has endured more than transcended.

Though he was pretty much a perennial American League top-tenner in the power categories throughout his prime, Palmeiro has never led the league in any of the game's holy trinity of stats--batting average, home runs or runs batted in. He has never come in higher than fifth in MVP voting. And perhaps most telling, he has never even been regarded as the best player at his position in his own league, let alone the game. In the AL he has played second or third fiddle to everyone from Eddie Murray and Mark McGwire to Mo Vaughn and Jim Thome to Frank Thomas and Carlos Delgado to David Ortiz and Mark Teixeira. That is reflected in the fact that, in a career now spanning two decades, Palmeiro has been an all-star just four times. This week, Kansas City first baseman Mike Sweeney, a superb hitter whose name has never been mentioned in the same breath with Hall of Fame, went to his fifth all-star game in 11 seasons. (Yes, I know Sweeney benefits from the fact that the woeful Royals must get at least one all-star slot, but still ... )

It is hard for me to fathom how a player who's not a consistent all-star can morph into a Hall of Famer at career's end. By contrast, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg, the two players who will be inducted into the Hall later this month, were chosen as all-stars 12 and 10 times respectively. Indeed, consider all the hitters from Palmeiro's era who have been inducted since 2000 and their all-star selections--Ozzie Smith (15), Dave Winfield (12), Gary Carter (11), Kirby Puckett (10), Eddie Murray (8), Paul Molitor (7). They reflect an elevated stature.

This is not a uniquely baseball phenomenon. The era of the homer launch has its counterpart in the NFL, where longer schedules and souped-up offenses have quarterbacks posting numbers that would have been unimaginable for "Slingin'" Sammy Baugh or even Johnny Unitas. Baugh never threw for 3,000 yards. Johnny U's 3,099 passing yards, which led the league in 1960, would have ranked him 15th last season, just ahead of Detroit's Joey Harrington. Here's my Palmiero equivalent: name the quarterback who ranks sixth all-time in passing yardage. It's Vinnie Testaverde, an NFL nomad who will get zero consideration from pro football's Hall of Fame.

There is a decided irony in the case for Palmeiro's Hall candidacy. Just before the season, he sat alongside Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, two more storied ballplayers, at the congressional hearing on steroid use in baseball. All three had had rumors circulating about them (and in the case of Palmeiro and McGwire, direct accusations in the best-seller by their former teammate, Jose Canseco). McGwire refused to discuss those allegations and, as a result, may have sabotaged his Hall hopes, once regarded as a "no-brainer," too. Sosa denied using drugs, but his conspicuous body shrinkage along with the equally conspicuous shrinkage of his production at the plate, has cast a shadow over his career. Only Palmeiro, who denied using steroids with finger-pointing vehemence and who has remained a productive hitter, seems to have emerged with a decided boost in public esteem.

Nonetheless, the All-Star Game is a useful reminder that not only is Palmeiro not in the game's pantheon, he is not often among its annual elite. Stats alone--particularly certain stats--can no longer be allowed to be the measure of the man. Judging a Hall of Famer should be far more akin to assessing obscenity, at least in the fashion of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who famously put it: "I know it when I see it." Well I know a Hall of Famer when I see one. And Rafael Palmeiro isn't one.

American League Supremacy

The All-Star Game is a valid reflection of one other thing besides player stature and that's league supremacy. Back in the '70s, when Cincinnati's star-studded "Big Red Machine" ruled the roost, the National League won 11 All-Star Games in a row. With Tuesday night's victory, the American League is now undefeated since 1996. AL superiority is an inevitable byproduct of the free-spending ways of its teams, led by the Yankees and Red Sox. The heart of that AL lineup Tuesday night included the highest-priced free-agent sluggers--A-Rod, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Miguel Tejada--in the game.

None of this would be relevant but for MLB commissioner Bud Selig's silly decision a few years back to juice the All-Star Game by awarding the winning league home-field advantage in the World Series. Make no mistake about it. That is a not an insignificant advantage. The last seven World Series that went the full seven games were all won by the home team. The Yankees may not have capitalized on the bonus two years ago. And, of course, last year the series got nowhere near seven games. But the Red Sox certainly found it easier to maintain their momentum opening the World Series in Fenway Park. By the time the Cardinals got back to St. Louis, all was pretty much lost. With its 7-5 all-star victory, the American League has claimed that advantage once again--and right now appears like they can maintain it in perpetuity.

Olympics: You're Out!

I wrote last week about how the anti-American sentiments at the International Olympic Committee--not stemming from the war in Iraq, but from U.S. missteps in the Olympic movement--gave New York virtually no chance to win the 2012 Olympics. A lot of readers reflexively (and not at all reflectively) accused me of America-bashing. I wasn't. I was just reporting the truth. Now the IOC has put an exclamation point on it by booting baseball and softball, arguably the sports, along with basketball, most identifiable as American, from the Olympic Games starting in 2012.

Former Major League Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, writing in The New York Times this week, blamed the stunning rejection on steroids and arrogance. Major League Baseball never made a serious effort to accommodate the Games by sending its best players, at least in part because Olympic drug-testing was so much more stringent than MLB standards. Vincent regards the ouster as a grievous blow to the development of the international game and urges a power play by American officials to somehow reverse the decision.

But he is not exactly clear, in explaining and apportioning the blame, whether he regards the arrogance as theirs or ours. But if you want a clue as to why the IOC's distaste for us has become rather pronounced, just read Vincent's concluding message: "How can a serious argument be made that baseball and softball are not as popular as sports with deep Olympic roots like rifle-shooting, archery, sculling and Greco-Roman wrestling, whatever that is?"

Well, sir, "whatever that is" is a sport with connections millennia back to the ancient Greek Olympics. It has, at least within my memory, produced a pair of super heavyweight American heroes: Jeff Blatnick, who in 1984, two years after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, battled back to win the gold medal, and Rulon Gardner, who somersaulted his way into our hearts after beating the unbeatable Russian champion at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Neither wrestler made much money off his Herculean efforts. Neither shirked from drug tests. But raising the question at least clears up the matter of whose arrogance was responsible for this latest Olympic debacle.