On the Herd Today ...

[DaveFan'51]

On the Herd Show today, Colin Herd said, in discussing the Hall of Fame Inductee's, and T.O. that we " .. Need to get over the character issue, and look strictly at Stats ..." I say this is "Absolute Bull Shit"!!!!
Players that Go into the Hall of Fame for any Sport, in my opinion, should be held up to the Highest standards! Someone you tell you Kids, "Work Hard, Play Hard, Be Honest, Be a Team Player! They should be People you want to tell your Kids "Grow up and be like Him!
IF there are not these type of Standards, Why isn't Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame!!!?!
Am I wrong!? WHY!!?

 

[Mackeyser]

Wrong only in that as long as POSes like Ty Cobb are in, the character issues shouldn’t be considered.

Rose should have been in a long time ago.

Owens never drove drunk, used PEDs afaik, and never hit a woman, again afaik.

He was a narcissist and a distraction, but in the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t a POS like Cobb or a cheater like Bonds, McGuire or Sosa.

Based on the numbers, Owens was and should have been a first ballot HoFer.

 

[Kevin]

Pete Rose broke Rule 21 in baseball and signed an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti to be banned for life. Way different.

No way should the HOF get into character issues when choosing inductees. I agree with Cowherd on this, stick to the stats and leave your personal feelings out of it.

 

[Mackeyser]

Pete Rose broke Rule 21 in baseball and signed an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti to be banned for life. Way different.

No way should the HOF get into character issues when choosing inductees. I agree with Cowherd on this, stick to the stats and leave your personal feelings out of it.

Especially in light of basball’s PED scandal, that agreement needs to be revisited...or anyone from the time after the last work stoppage who used PEDs (like McGuire and Bonds) needs to also be banned. Different rules for different eras is the antithesis of what the HoF was meant to represent.

Imho

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

I am sure there are many Hall of Famers that are not admirable people. Marshall Faulk is a good example. He is no better than Michael Irvin. But he presents himself that way. We buy it. T.O.'s mistake is that he showed it.

I bet that if we were to get to know most of the modern era elite athletes, that we wouldn't like them at all. It takes a great competitive drive to accomplish what they did to reach the HoF. Most people that I have met that were ultra competitive were assholes, or difficult to be around. Then you have the ego added to it. I truly admire a guy like Kurt Warner, who can be great at a sport but remain humble. I really don't think there are many that are like that.

I am a Yankee lifer and two players that I thought highly of both turned out to not be so great. I have a friend that met Don Mattingly. He said he was your typical arrogant high school jock that blows people off. He didn't want to be bothered even for a minute. I never thought he would have been like that. Another is Mike Mussina. He grew up near me and has donated a lot of money to his home school athletic facilities and such. He coaches too. A buddy met him and said he wasn't very nice to fans in person. My old neighbor and kids were excited to meet him at a baseball camp and they came back less impressed than they previously were. In the end we are all just people. I grew up revering doctors for their intelligence and dedication, I had a few great ones work on me as a kid. As a teen I started to realise that it's only a select few that truly deserve my admiration. Ditto for athletes. So admire their accomplishments, forget the rest.

 

[bubbaramfan]

I don't want any of my grandkids to be like Pete Rose. Or TO either.

 

[I like Rams]

Especially in light of basball’s PED scandal, that agreement needs to be revisited...or anyone from the time after the last work stoppage who used PEDs (like McGuire and Bonds) needs to also be banned. Different rules for different eras is the antithesis of what the HoF was meant to represent.

Imho

According to some players, around 80% of the players were on something. It was a much more level playing field than some want to believe.

 

[Rod De Kruyf]

That's why we have some real jack-asses in the NFL today. Their parents didn't think character counts.

 

[fearsomefour]

I am sure there are many Hall of Famers that are not admirable people. Marshall Faulk is a good example. He is no better than Michael Irvin. But he presents himself that way. We buy it. T.O.'s mistake is that he showed it.

I bet that if we were to get to know most of the modern era elite athletes, that we wouldn't like them at all. It takes a great competitive drive to accomplish what they did to reach the HoF. Most people that I have met that were ultra competitive were assholes, or difficult to be around. Then you have the ego added to it. I truly admire a guy like Kurt Warner, who can be great at a sport but remain humble. I really don't think there are many that are like that.

I am a Yankee lifer and two players that I thought highly of both turned out to not be so great. I have a friend that met Don Mattingly. He said he was your typical arrogant high school jock that blows people off. He didn't want to be bothered even for a minute. I never thought he would have been like that. Another is Mike Mussina. He grew up near me and has donated a lot of money to his home school athletic facilities and such. He coaches too. A buddy met him and said he wasn't very nice to fans in person. My old neighbor and kids were excited to meet him at a baseball camp and they came back less impressed than they previously were. In the end we are all just people. I grew up revering doctors for their intelligence and dedication, I had a few great ones work on me as a kid. As a teen I started to realise that it's only a select few that truly deserve my admiration. Ditto for athletes. So admire their accomplishments, forget the rest.

Don Mattingly, along with any other athlete, movie star, rick star etc, doesn't owe time to anyone. It's nice when people are cool, but, they aren't required to be.
If you've known someone in that position it is more understandable why some are not.

 

[fearsomefour]

According to some players, around 80% of the players were on something. It was a much more level playing field than some want to believe.

Exactly.
Plenty of guys still are.
Then the tricky reality of how a PED is difined of course. Why let facts get in the way?
NFL PED policy is a bit of joke of course as is MLB.

 

[Ken]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think McGuire or Sosa ever tested positive for a banned substance. What McGuire admitted taking was not banned by MLB at the time he was using it. Don't know about Sosa. Bonds I believe was caught. But in any case, I don't believe any of those players should not be considered for the HOF. MLB voters, IMO, are being hypocritical if they won't vote for a player for HOF because they took, or may have taken, PEDs that were not banned by MLB at the time.

 

[Rmfnlt]

I truly admire a guy like Kurt Warner, who can be great at a sport but remain humble. I really don't think there are many that are like that.

I am a Yankee lifer and two players that I thought highly of both turned out to not be so great. I have a friend that met Don Mattingly. He said he was your typical arrogant high school jock that blows people off. He didn't want to be bothered even for a minute. I never thought he would have been like that. Another is Mike Mussina. He grew up near me and has donated a lot of money to his home school athletic facilities and such. He coaches too. A buddy met him and said he wasn't very nice to fans in person. My old neighbor and kids were excited to meet him at a baseball camp and they came back less impressed than they previously were.

I think it's got to be tough for famous people (I know... "cry me a river ).

They can't go anywhere without a bunch of people clamoring for their autograph... or whatever. It's got to add up to having a short fuse at times... even the best of them.

Heck, I bet you could find fans who felt dissed by even Kurt Warner (maybe he was in a hurry and the fan felt he was just being an ass).

Who votes these guys into these HOF's? It's on them to decide if ethics and attitude comes into play.

Bad attitude (TO)... gambling (Rose)... roids (Bonds and others)... each one is unique. But I don't equate them with any player who physically attacks another human being. That's OFF LIMITS!

 

[Mackeyser]

According to some players, around 80% of the players were on something. It was a much more level playing field than some want to believe.

And the percentage of cyclists was almost certainly much, much higher. And... guys caught were still banned and titles stripped.

 

[Mackeyser]

Pete Rose broke Rule 21 in baseball and signed an agreement with then-commissioner Bart Giamatti to be banned for life. Way different.

No way should the HOF get into character issues when choosing inductees. I agree with Cowherd on this, stick to the stats and leave your personal feelings out of it.

Let’s not pretend that the signing was full of integrity.

Giamatti HATED Rose and multiple sources have confirmed that there would be amnesty if he stayed away and clean. He’d be able to get in the Hall at some point.

He did everything that baseball asked and baseball screwed him in sanctimonious fashion while feigning indignance during the PED scandal.

Rose only ever bet on his team to win and MULTIPLE forensic data analyses have confirmed that he did not alter his starting lineups or substitution patterns in his capacity as manager.

So, beyond believing in himself and putting his money where his mouth was, he never violated the integrity of the sport.

That can’t be said of ANY PED user, for example.

 

[Angry Ram]

Based on the numbers, Owens was and should have been a first ballot HoFer.

His numbers are inflated because of longevity and bouncing around a bunch of irrelevant teams the latter part of his career. He's never dramatically changed a team he's been on (Philly was a great team before and after he left, and they got to the Super Bowl without him in the playoffs that year).

If we're talking about numbers, his best are with SF and they are on par with Torry or Ike's. The rest??? Padded.

I don't even care about the drama, because everyone knows all that. Jerry Rice and Cris Carter have legacies and were WRs that had huge impacts on the game. Too Overrated, not so much. I fail to see how he was a "game changing, dominant WR".

 

[RamDino]

Terrell Owens is worthy of being in the Hall. That said, I think it's fair to say that he was a dick. He was a dick everywhere he went, and nothing ever changed. Should a guy like that be in the Hall of Fame? Over Isaac Bruce? I just don't think so.

 

[Elmgrovegnome]

Don Mattingly, along with any other athlete, movie star, rick star etc, doesn't owe time to anyone. It's nice when people are cool, but, they aren't required to be.
If you've known someone in that position it is more understandable why some are not.

No they aren't required. But In the end we are all just people. Kurt gets that. It doesn't matter if your famous or not. It's polite to be respectful. It's rude to be dismissive or blow someone off. And without the fans there is no professional sport, or Hollywood stars. Blowing off a fan in a calm quiet setting is just rude and unappreciative. I never blow people off when they start talking to me. Many professional athletes love the fans because they realize that they are the reason they are paid to play the game.

 

[fearsomefour]

No they aren't required. But In the end we are all just people. Kurt gets that. It doesn't matter if your famous or not. It's polite to be respectful. It's rude to be dismissive or blow someone off. And without the fans there is no professional sport, or Hollywood stars. Blowing off a fan in a calm quiet setting is just rude and unappreciative. I never blow people off when they start talking to me. Many professional athletes love the fans because they realize that they are the reason they are paid to play the game.

I get it.
I just don't care that much.
I'm not unfriendly but I dont want to be chatted up by people when I'm out and about. It bothers me.
I can't imagine being approached 30 times a day by people, half of them wanting something.
Part of the trade off I know.
I can empathize with the other side of the coin however.

 

[tomas]

Wrong only in that as long as POSes like Ty Cobb are in, the character issues shouldn’t be considered.

Rose should have been in a long time ago.

Owens never drove drunk, used PEDs afaik, and never hit a woman, again afaik.

He was a narcissist and a distraction, but in the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t a POS like Cobb or a cheater like Bonds, McGuire or Sosa.

Based on the numbers, Owens was and should have been a first ballot HoFer.

How Ty Cobb was framed ( as a racist by "lamestream sports" liberal media)
The two things everyone knows about Ty Cobb are that he was a phenomenal baseball player and that he was the worst racist ever to play the game.

But one of these things is mostly wrong.

Cobb, the first player voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the holder of more than 90 records upon his retirement and still the pace-setter with a .366 lifetime batting average, could be rude, but not nearly as nasty as you think. And far from being the most notorious racist in baseball history, he was an early and vocal supporter of integrating the big leagues.

Modal TriggerIn his new biography, “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty” (Simon & Schuster), Charles Leerhsen opens with a comedy routine that details some of the many myths about the Detroit Tigers superstar.

Was he a wife-beater? “He was an everything beater,” offered comic Jim Norton. “A horrible racist. A Demerol addict . . . in 1907 Cobb fought a black groundskeeper . . . and ended up choking the man’s wife when she intervened.”

“On several occasions he brutally pistol-whipped African-American men whose only offense was to share a sidewalk with him,” wrote a biographer of Hall of Famer Tris Speaker.

In Ken Burns’ “Baseball,” Cobb is called “an embarrassment to the game.” Most notoriously, we all know that Cobb stabbed a black waiter in Cleveland and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Except none of these allegations is true.

The thinker
Cobb, contrary to legend, was not a Southern redneck but an upper-middle-class boy, often derided for acting aristocratic in the locker room, where he would read literary novels and biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon. Both of his parents were genteel. His father, a state senator and “something of a public intellectual,” in Leerhsen’s words, once broke up a group of men plotting a lynching and was an outspoken advocate for the public education of black Americans.

When Cobb was 18, his mother shot and killed his father, mistaking him for an intruder after he returned unexpectedly from an out-of-town trip. At trial, she was acquitted.


You might call Cobb the inventor of Moneyball — roughly, the idea that baseball is about smarts.

“He didn’t outhit the opposition and he didn’t outrun them,” said a teammate. “He out-thought them.”

In a hilariously unprofessional era when ballplayers would chase umpires they didn’t like off the field, Cobb took careful notes exploiting the weaknesses of other teams. Cobb noticed, for instance, that Walter Johnson was visibly upset whenever he hit a batter — so he stuck his skull out over the plate. Johnson, afraid of beaning Cobb, would walk him instead.

Cobb once scored the winning run by stealing third and home when the Yankees were busy arguing with an umpire. Cobb, noted baseball legend Casey Stengel, was the only player who could steal home on an infield pop-up: He’d make his break when the guy who caught the ball was lobbing the ball back to the pitcher. He noticed a tell in Cy Young’s pickoff move: The pitcher would hold his hands up close to his chin when he was going to throw to first. Cobb stole easily on him after that.

Cobb enthusiastically supported the integration of major league baseball when he was asked about Jackie Robinson in 1952. He told The Sporting News, “The negro has the right to compete in sports and who’s to say they have not?”

He called Roy Campanella a “great” player, said Willie Mays was “the only player I’d pay money to see” and after Campanella’s crippling car accident, praised Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley for holding a candlelit tribute “for this fine man.”

Even back in the 1920s, Cobb would befriend Negro League ballplayers such as Detroit Stars infielder Bobby Robinson, who said “there wasn’t a hint of prejudice in Cobb’s attitude.”

One of several blacks employed by Cobb, Alex Rivers, named his son after the ballplayer and said, “I love the man.”



Cobb did brawl often — a pastime so common in his era that Dr. Spock actually recommended little boys enjoy at least one fight a day and the head of the American Psychological Association encouraged fights. On the Bowery in the early 1900s, “black-eye repair shops” offered makeup treatments to men bruised in barroom battle.

For his first couple of seasons on the Tigers, Cobb was subjected to sustained hazing by his teammates, several of whom despised him. In 1907, on his way to the clubhouse, Cobb shoved a black groundskeeper who, under the influence of alcohol, got in Cobb’s face and made a jokey greeting that the latter evidently found annoying.

There is no indication that race had anything to do with the encounter. A moment later, Cobb was attacked by a catcher on his own team, a much larger man who had a habit of beating up Cobb.

The catcher told sportswriters Cobb had previously assaulted the black groundskeeper and his wife, but this story is likely untrue. Cobb hotly denied the claim and no one asked the groundskeeper if it was true, nor were charges filed.

The catcher, his manager later admitted, was in the midst of a badmouthing campaign intended to get Cobb traded, so he was at best a questionable witness.

In 1908, among many other brawls Cobb participated in, he ignored an order from a black man laying asphalt in Detroit to stop walking, then after the two argued, Cobb started a vicious fistfight and was overheard to use the N-word against the road paver.

Today that behavior would certainly brand you as a racist, but racial slurs were commonplace then, even published in the papers.

Balance that ugly fight against Cobb’s behavior toward a 16-year-old black team mascot, Ulysses Harrison. Ballboys were badly treated at the time, paid pennies and sometimes unceremoniously dumped on road trips if they were thought to be bringing bad luck.

The Detroit News referred to Harrison as “a pickaninny” and “the Ethiopian.” But Cobb became the youth’s “main defender and patron” and on (segregated) sleeping trains let the kid sleep below his berth, hiding him from view with luggage so no one would detect him. He also let the kid share his room at segregated hotels.

After the baseball season, Cobb took Harrison back home to Georgia and gave him a job, and may well have gotten him a permanent job as a chauffeur to a Detroit construction tycoon.

Changing the story
The most famous story cited as evidence of Cobb’s racism actually had nothing to do with race. In 1909, Cobb got into a fight in a Cleveland hotel that, according to legend, led to the stabbing death of a black man.

That isn’t true. No one was killed. Cobb fought with the (white) security guard, whom he claimed he lightly raked across the back of the wrist with a pen knife, though the guard later said Cobb stabbed him in the shoulder and the hand. Cobb may have also struck a bellhop.

Cobb enthusiastically supported the integration of major league baseball when he was asked about Jackie Robinson in 1952.

Race had nothing to do with this incident. Neither of the other men was ever described as black in the numerous newspaper reports at the time, though at the time reporters invariably and delightedly pointed out when someone was a “negro.” Leerhsen even dug up the census report that lists the watchman’s race as white.

Charles Alexander’s 1984 Cobb biography says both the watchman and the bellboy were black, but when asked by Leerhsen where he got that information, Alexander offered no specific source, offering vaguely that it was in news reports of the time. “It isn’t,” Leerhsen declares flatly.

Cobb eventually pleaded guilty to simple assault, paying a fine of $100 and a settlement of $115 to the watchman. Sometimes Alexander’s account is distorted beyond all recognition into a story that Cobb stabbed a black waiter in Cleveland “for being uppity.” That isn’t even close to the truth.

On another occasion, Cobb climbed into the stands to argue with a black fan (what was said is not recorded) and he once, notoriously, beat up a (white) heckler (who was missing seven fingers due to lax safety standards at his employer, the New York Times).

That wasn’t as unusual as it sounds, either: Pitcher Rube Waddell also went into the stands to beat up a fan; Babe Ruth in 1922 chased a fan through the seats and, when he couldn’t find him, challenged anybody nearby to a fight; and even the sainted Christy Mathewson, in 1905, popped a lemonade boy in the mouth, splitting his lip. Later, Cobb got in a fight with a grocer over an alleged insult to his wife, but the grocer was white, too — and in his biography, Alexander again got it wrong, mistakenly reporting the man was black.

Who made the myth

Today’s Cobb hatred comes mainly from two sources: Alexander’s mistakes and Al Stump, the ghostwriter of Cobb’s autobiography, who produced a fictionalized account so full of lies that Cobb was preparing to sue to stop its publication when he died in 1961.

Stump was such a hack that he was banned from contributing to both TV Guide and the Saturday Evening Post. “One by one he alienated the kinds of magazines that had fact-checking departments,” said a writer of that era who knew him. “That’s because he produced fiction.”

Fact-checking Stump’s work, Leerhsen found it teeming with falsehoods. For instance, Stump claimed Cobb killed one of three men who tried to mug the superstar in a car in 1912, citing “an unidentified body” found in an alley shortly after the encounter. That body simply didn’t exist, as a report in the National Baseball Research Journal later discovered.

Stump was the source of the 1994 Tommy Lee Jones movie “Cobb,” whose director, Ron Shelton, told Leerhsen, “It’s well known that Cobb may have killed as many as three people.” Asked where he got this information, Shelton said only, “It’s well known.” Shelton admitted to Leerhsen that he and Stump simply fabricated a scene in which the elderly Cobb tries to rape a girl in Las Vegas but fails because of impotence.


The real Cobb, in later years, funded a hospital and started a college-education fund for kids. In response to fan mail, he’d send letters as long as five pages.

One kid who wrote him, Koosma Tarasoff, Cobb mentored to the point of getting him a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “He was a good human being,” Tarasoff said in 2004. Another young ballplayer Cobb mentored, and whose first contract Cobb helped negotiate, had better luck. His name was Joe DiMaggio.

Our punching bag
Why the determination to brand Cobb as the worst racist ever? Stump apparently believed a more sensational book would lead to more sales. But a large part of the story, Leerhsen notes, is simply that the accurate perception of Cobb as a hothead simply got mixed up with the fact that he was born in Georgia in 1886. Bad temper, Southerner: Must have been a racist.

That’s both too broadly damning — not only were Southerners not necessarily racist, Cobb’s own father fought for better treatment of blacks — and it lets us off the hook too easily.

Detecting sin in someone else is a way of announcing to the world, and to yourself, your own virtue.


https://nypost.com/2015/05/31/how-ty-cobb-was-framed-as-a-racist/
https://nypost.com/2015/05/31/how-ty-cobb-was-framed-as-a-racist/
https://nypost.com/2015/05/31/how-ty-cobb-was-framed-as-a-racist/

 

[Mackeyser]

I will never excuse “the time” as an excuse for the use of a hurtful racial slur. When Cobb played, black people were lynched

Was just talking with my son and homophobic slurs were super common growing up. I knew even as a kid and even as various grown ups around me used them that it was wrong.

“The times” don’t inform what is right, principles do.

I feel you feel differently, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree in the strongest terms.