Wednesday, November 30, 2005

On the writers and the Baseball Hall of Fame

This column from the Norfolk paper explains that the ballot for this the last year when the baseball writers could vote in Pete Rose to the Baseball Hall of Fame does not have his name on it, and so he's left with the veterans if he is to ever get into the Hall.

Some of my friends are passionate about Pete, I am not. Years ago, there was a Pizzeria Uno on King Street in Old Town Alexandria, and upstairs they had a life-sized picture of Pete from the 1975 World Series, with one arm slung around Fred Lynn of the Red Sox, happy as a clam, and with the other hand giving the photographer the finger. That sums him up for me: great baseball man, poor impulse control.

Among those who actually are on the ballot, with not much chance of success, is Dave Parker, who would get my vote just for his throw from right field to home plate during the 1979 All-Star game in the Seattle Kingdome that was shown every week during the closing credits of Mel Allen's This Week in Baseball, with that great violin and horn music in the background (a six second snippet of which can be heard here, where they are selling it for downloading to cellphones). He did it in slow motion, a strike from 300 feet, every Saturday.

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