Chapter 71.5: Baines Motel in Cooperstown

I was poking around some blogs recently and found a good discussion about the Hall of Fame prospects of Harold Baines. While I never lived in Chicago or any of the cities where Baines starred, I'm enough of a baseball fan to know a pure hitter when I saw him.

Baines was a clutch performer and his RBI totals back me up. While he only topped 100 RBIs twice, he averaged more than 90 per year. That's not too shabby, especially when you're talking about a 22 year career. He nearly reached 2,900 hits, and I'm sure that if the work stoppages hadn't occurred he'd have hit at least another 125-130 knocks, which would have placed him close enough to 3,000 that the White Sox (or some AL team) would have brought him back for a season to garner the last remaining hits to reach the magic number.

I suppose the knock against Baines is that he was a designated hitter; his 1,652 games at DH remain the all-time high, I believe. But the DH has been around for 35 years now and even traditionalists like myself recognize that it's a part of the game. I believe it's time for the best DHs of all time -- Baines and Edgar Martinez -- to be shown the respect they deserve. Baines now, and Edgar in a couple years when he's eligible to be voted into Cooperstown.

Baines never got the accolades that many of his contemporaries received, and the White Sox were rarely very good during that era. He did play in a World Series for the A's (1990, in the loss to the Reds) and his lone hit was a two-run homer. And he was an all-star as late as 1999 -- two years before his retirement -- albeit for a mediocre Orioles club, before he was traded to the Indians for their successful playoff push (and eventual post-season loss). Baines was one of those guys that winning clubs liked to get in their clubhouse: a winner who led by example. His number was retired by the White Sox while he was still playing, and un-retired for his two returns.

While I don't think we'll see him inducted when the announcement is made on Tuesday, I hope to see his numbers increase. That only 5.3 percent of baseball writers voted for him last year is a crime; Harold Baines deserves better.