Being the generous and angry people that we are here at HJE, we took it upon ourselves to compose a letter on behalf of Andre Dawson, which he is more than welcome to print on his letterhead and mail to all the voters who didn’t deem him Hall of Fame-worthy:
Dear Hall of Fame Voter:
Nice job. You elected the wrong bird into the Hall of Fame. Goose Gossage? Seriously? What, were you sick of hearing him shamelessly self-promote and just figured electing him was the easiest way to get him to shut up? “Oh! Look at me! I’m an old-school reliever who threw a bunch of innings and saved games!” Yeah? You know who threw more innings and saved more games when he was 35 and 36 years old? Joe Borowski. I hope they put his plaque next to Goose’s.
No, I’m just messing with you. I have no problem with Goose going into the Hall of Fame, even though I gave ten times as many mustache rides during the course of my career than that redneck did. I DO have a problem with me NOT going into the Hall of Fame.
What gives?
Remember that time I won the MVP on the last-place Chicago Cubs? You know that’s only happened twice in the history of baseball, right? The other guy who did it is named Alex Rodriguez. But, whatever. I finished in second place in the NL MVP voting twice, as well. No big deal.
Hey, maybe you forgot about the MVP award. Understandable. Maybe you’d gotten used to my blazing speed, cannon arm, and prodigious power by 1987. It was, after all, ten years after I stormed into the league, rocking 19 home runs and putting up a .282/.326/.474 line in that cavernous shithole Olympic Stadium. I was only 22 years old, but whatever. Mozart was writing symphonies when he was 8, so, no big deal, really. I had 9 outfield assists and 21 stolen bases, too, but whatever. Maybe those voters who awarded me with the NL Rookie of the Year were out of their minds.
I was just wondering if you knew of any nice trophy cases. I was thinking of getting one to hold my 4 Silver Slugger awards. My old trophy case is all filled up with my 8 Gold Glove awards. Hey! Eight! That was my number!
I was just looking back through my stats to see if maybe I could find what you saw in them to cause you not to vote for me. No big whoop, but I noticed on Baseball-Reference that some batters who are “similar” to me include Billy Williams, Tony Perez, Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, and Dave Winfield. I wonder if any of those guys are in the Hall of Fame.
Too bad character doesn’t count for the Hall of Fame, huh? I mean, you guys let in the philandering racist cheating drunks, right? I guess it doesn’t mean much that in a sport populated largely by money-grubbing assholes that I let the Cubs pay me peanuts because I wanted to play for them so badly. That was the year I won the MVP, by the way, in what might have been the greatest cost-to-value season in the history of baseball. That was when my knees were so bad it was like playing baseball with the bottom half of your legs engulfed in flame. Made no sense to complain, though. I didn’t want any sympathy.
Hey, you know I’m 35th on the career home runs list, right? Yeah. I’m ahead of Billy and Kaline and Johnny Bench, to name a few. In fact, it’d be a lot easier to name the 34 guys I’m BEHIND! Ha ha ha! Am I right?
But, you know, I guess I should be happy I only missed the Hall by 50 votes. Maybe you didn’t realize that you can vote for whomever you want, and thought you “wasted” your vote on Shawon Dunston, Chuck Knoblauch, or Todd Stottlemyre.
Or maybe you just had really, really, really stupid reasons for not voting for me. Like, you know that people have used steroids, and you would bet their life that I didn’t use steroids, but you didn’t vote for anyone because you needed to write an attention-grabbing, idiotic protest article about how the Steroid Era has tainted the game for you. Poor guy.
Or maybe you’re a pompous ass like Mike Schmidt, and you’re just happy to be in your exclusive little boys’ club, and you don’t want to allow anyone else in. I can’t really blame Mike. I’d be grumpy too if my mustache constantly reeked of ball sweat.
Anyhow, I hope you reconsider your opinion of a Hall of Fame player before next year. Or at least have the decency to die before then.
Very truly yours,
Andre “The Hawk” Dawson, HOF ’09
