Four for the Hall

The Base Ball Writers Association of America -- the BBWAA, whose name is probably the final vestige of the obsolete style of splitting baseball into two words -- elected four stars of the 1990s and 2000s to the Hall of Fame. Four thoughts for four inductees:

* Much is being made of Mariano Rivera's unanimous election, the first in Hall history. The unaminity is unimportant, but I'm glad it finally happened because the BBWAA electorate, or at least part of it, couldn't seem to shut up about how it had never happened.

* The purging of the voting roster a few years back clearly got the desired result. This year's election continues the recent trend of multiple inductees -- and unlike most, it actually cleared out some of the backlog of deserving candidates. Rivera and Roy Halladay were first-time candidates, but Mike Mussina and Edgar Martinez have been on the ballot for a few years.

* Halladay's first-ballot election is intriguing because his career was relatively brief -- "only" 16 years and 203 career wins, which are pretty low for Cooperstown. I don't think he was even close to being the best pitcher, or even the best starting pitcher, on the ballot -- I'd take Mussina over Doc, and probably Curt Schilling as well -- but he had a good run in which the consensus had him as one of the best starters in baseball. High quality and enough duration to get in. Johan Santana -- off the ballot -- had the former but not the latter.

* The selection last month by the "Today's Game" committee of two lesser specialists in Lee Smith and Harold Baines probably cleared the way for Martinez's election and Rivera's unaminity. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, a beat writer I follow, had resisted voting for Martinez for years because he was limited to DH; he switched this year in part because of Baines and in part because he recognized that he was very likely to vote for David Ortiz in a few years. Here again, the purging of the "inactive" voters -- member of the BBWAA no longer involved in covering the game -- resulted in a younger electorate more accepting of specialists.

Getting some stuff on the ball

If Mariano Rivera wasn't spitting on the ball here, what was he doing?

Update: I just threw up the link this morning and took off to run some errands.

Since then, MLB (according to the New York Post) has declared the scanty evidence of Fox's video to be inaccurate, that Rivera was not spitting directly on the ball. 

My thoughts:

1) I do wish Fox had stuck with this camera shot a bit longer. It's not like nobody knows that Mike Scoscia's in the dugout. But their production values are similar to Joe Girardi handling his relief corps — hyperactive. We don't get to see what followed Rivera's spit — or even where it landed.

2) I really doubt that Rivera has made a habit of doctoring the ball. If he does, he doesn't do it so blatantly.  

3) There are far fewer pitchers suspected now of doctoring the ball — by scuffing it or applying a "foreign substance" — than there were 20, 25, 30 years ago. Why? The very reason this is a subject today — there are dozens of video cameras recording virtually every move a pitcher makes. A cheating pitcher is far more likely to be caught on tape now than in Gaylord Perry's heyday.

4) If Rivera was loading one up, it was an odd time to do it — the no. 9 hitter up in a bunt situation. Throwing a spitter in those circumstances just increases the chances for a fielding misplay.

Say ... that's what happened, isn't it?