Cooperstown News and Notes

1. Congratulations to Goose Gossage on his election into the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's great to see closers get some recognition, with Goose's election this year and Bruce Sutter's in 2006. Goose was truly dominant for a number of years, and fully deserves this great honor.

2. There has never been a player who has ever received at least 63.6% of the vote in any given year and who has not eventually been elected. This bodes extremely well for Jim Rice, who fell just 16 votes short of induction at 72.2%, and Andre Dawson, whose 65.9% is 50 votes shy. Both players absolutely deserve induction - and as noted below, I think this year's vote indicates that we'll see them both enshrined in the next two years.

3. 2008 was also good news for Bert Blyleven, whose candidacy I have supported and who picked up a whopping 76 more votes (after backsliding, along with Dawson, from 2006 to 2007). He is now at 61.9% support. I'm not sure if he'll eventually make it, but this is encouraging.

4. We've debated the candidacies of Lee Smith and Jack Morris in years past. I support both of them, and particularly think it's hard to exclude Smith now that Sutter and Goose are both in - but at 43.3%, and with no significant upward movement, I don't think the big guy will ever make it. Morris has gone up and down a bit...but again, without any real jump, it doesn't look good for a guy who was the game's best big-game pitcher for a decade.

5. Tim Raines got only 24.3%. I recognize that he's not a first-ballot inductee, and that many others have come from similar depths to ultimate induction. But I expected more than this. Let's see if he can garner more support in the next few years.

6. McGwire is stuck at 128 votes. Not even a quarter of the voters support him. Whether you agree or not...it's safe to say that Big Mac isn't moving up unless/until there's either a sea change of opinion regarding the steroids scandal, or McGwire adopts a different PR stance.

7. Looking ahead:

a. The only truly viable candidate in 2009 is Rickey Henderson, who is a lock to make it on his first try. Given the voters' general willingness to give a guy the extra push when he gets past 70%, I expect Rice to find those last few votes and join Cooperstown next year. But, the voters don't like voting in too many at once, which should mean that Dawson gains a little bit but doesn't quite get there.

b. In 2010, we'll see Roberto Alomar, Edgar Martinez, and Fred McGriff on the ballot. All should get serious consideration, but none will be a first-ballot success. Unless Dawson's totals in '09 takes a major dive, I think he'll be the beneficiary of a weak 2010 class and make his way to the Hall in two years.