Baseball Hall of Fame Gets Goosed

By Aaron on January 8th, 2008

Congratulations to Rich “Goose” Gossage for being the only nominee to merit election to the Hall of Fame.

I have a memory of Gossage pitching against Don Baylor of the Baltimore Orioles during a night game. Goose was in his wind-up and the stadium lights went out for a moment. When the lights went on again, Baylor was face-down in the dirt in the batter’s box. He got up, looked at Goose, looked at the umpire and smiled a big smile. NO WAY was Baylor going to risk a wild pitch from that generation’s most dominant reliever.

I won’t call Gossage a closer. That’s a new invention. Gossage used to pitch 3 innings frequently, ling before the days of “set-up men” who specialize in the 7th and 8th innings to be followed by a closer who gets the ball with the bases empty in the 9th.

Player	Total Votes	Percentage
Rich Gossage	466	85.8%
Jim Rice	392	72.2%
Andre Dawson	358	65.9%
Bert Blyleven	336	61.9%
Lee Smith	235	43.3%
Jack Morris	233	42.9%
Tommy John	158	29.1%
Tim Raines	132	24.3%
Mark McGwire	128	23.6%
Alan Trammell	99	18.2%
Dave Concepcion	88	16.2%
Don Mattingly	86	15.8%
Dave Parker	82	15.1%
Dale Murphy	75	13.8%
Harold Baines	28	5.2%
Rod Beck	2	0.4%
Travis Fryman	2	0.4%
Robb Nen	2	0.4%
Shawon Dunston	1	0.2%
Chuck Finley	1	0.2%
David Justice	1	0.2%
Chuck Knoblauch	1	0.2%
Todd Stottlemyre	1	0.2%
Jose Rijo	0	0%
Brady Anderson	0	0%