Monday, June 8, 2009

Is there no justice?

It recently came to my attention, while watching a FOX baseball broadcast, that Maury Wills has not yet been inducted to Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At first this simply struck me as odd. Then, like a constant drip to my forehead during a dose of Chinese water torture, it began to eat away at me. Maury freakin Wills isn't in the Hall??? How can this be? I asked this question over and over again. In the bat of an eye I could think of one player after another that couldn't possibly have more credentials qualifying them for induction than he.
Take a moment to consider that this is a guy who appeared in 7 All Star games and was voted MVP of the game in 1962. That same year was voted Co-Player of the Year in Major League Baseball, (With Don Drysdale...and oh by the way is inducted into Cooperstown already) and voted the National Leagues Most Valuable Player ahead of Hall of Fame inductees Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Drysdale, Stan Musial, Orlando Cepeda, Frank Robinson and Sandy Koufax amongst others. On top of these honors he was a two time winner of the National League's Gold Glove among shortstops and led the league 5 times in stolen bases. He was baseballs first player to top 100 stolen bases in a single season when he stole a then record 104 in 1962. He appeared in 4 World Series and won 3 of them. All of this as impressive as it seems on the surface pales when you consider what he really did. He changed the way the game is played. Without him I really question whether we would have ever seen Lou Brock or Ricky Henderson blossom into the performers they were. Pitchers and defenses have not been the same since. All because Maury Wills changed the way we looked at baseball. He was a constant threat and the Dodger teams he starred on showed what a team with great pitching and very little power could accomplish. Put simply, World Championships. Because a walk becomes a double, a double becomes a triple and a flyball turnes into a run.
I'm not sure who it is that needs a wake up call but I am positive that whoever they are they need to rectify this situation while Maury is still with us to share in the honor!

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