Monday's Frosty Mug

I could see Hart batting around .300 for the season.

Is how irrelevant that .300 BA would be if Corey still refuses to take a walk and posts a .325 OBP.

Each had an injury shortened career (12 years). Ironically the difference was that Puckett was such a saint, because Belle had better numbers.

Belle was an ass to reporters and most other people, he’s widely suspected to have been the beneficiary of PEDs, he threw a bat at a fan in stands, he frequently destroyed clubhouse property after losses AND wins, he got caught using a corked bat AND and participating in an attempt steal one of his corked bats after it was seized by umps. One teammate, when asked why the Indians didn’t replace Belle’s corked bat with one of his non-corked bats (instead of a smaller bat with a different player’s name on it) said “Because all of Albert’s bats were corked.”

Not saying Belle wasn’t great in his day. He was. But my lasting memory of him is of him standing on the dugout step, staring at the White Sox dugout after his bat was seized and pointing to his own bicep, enraged that his prowess with the bat had been questioned, all the while knowing that the bat they took was corked and that the White Sox complaint was perfectly justified. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an MLB player’s public persona more accurately portrayed in a single moment than that one portrayed Albert Belle.

I remember Rice too. I see the criticism of the decision and the negative comparison with Belle’s numbers. Right or wrong, off the field stuff comes into play in the HOF votes, and Belle’s frequent verbal abuse of reporters combined with the rest of the above pretty much doomed his HOF candidacy before he even retired. To get in with all that baggage, your numbers have to be overwhelming, and even then that may not be enough if you’re stained with a PED problem (though I still wonder if that stigma will fade with time and guys like Bonds and Mac will get in), and Belle’s career numbers aren’t overwhelming. Rice’s aren’t either, but he was well regarded and well liked, and he put up most of his numbers in the large-park, pre-PED era (in perception, if not reality). In the end, in a thin year for the HOF that kept writers from splitting their votes as they had in the past, the guys who liked him apparently won the argument.

My favorite Belle quote, and one that demonstrates that he has some insight and reason, is one he gave when discussing the fact that he routinely refused to talk to the press and why that made him unpopular, is “Why does everyone want to hear me talk anyway?”

An excellent question.