As befits a holiday week, there's ... just ... not ... that ... much ... going ... on.
So I'm going to post just two headlines here, and let you have at them.
- Today's ESPN.com debate on Hall of Fame worthiness is between Larry Stone and Phil Rogers on the merits of Jim Rice. My vote on Rice: No. Rice had a fine rookie season (he would have won the ROY in any other year; he lost it to his teammate Fred Lynn), and after that, I would judge that he had six seasons that could be called "HoF-dominant". His career numbers aren't as good as Andre Dawson's (more walks, but fewer HR, steals, runs, hits, RBI, and wasn't as good a defender - 25% of his career games were as DH), and after age 33 he had three mediocre years and then retired. (As usual, Rogers gets the facts wrong, saying Rice retired at 34 -- he was actually 36 in 1989, his final season.)
- The Cubs official website actually wasted an entire page on this Carrie Muskat profile of Shawon Dunston and what he might expect from his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot. If you believe the article, most of his credentials rest on the "Shawon-o-Meter", the sign held up in the bleachers showing his batting average. He'll need 5% of the vote to even stay on the ballot past this year. Dunston was a popular player, but despite his lengthy 18-season career, not a very good one -- his lifetime OBA (.296) resembles Neifi Perez' (.297). Oh, and Carrie? It's the Smithsonian Institution, not "Smithsonian Institute", and the Shawon-o-Meter isn't "enshrined" there, it's in its archives; here's a little more information from one of the actual creators of the Shawon-o-Meter, which I found in about 30 seconds of googling. Amazing what you can do when you do a little bit of research before you write.