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The weather has been scary the past few hours here in St. Louis. Thunder I have never liked, as I am easily startled. I played some poker, (badly) read some politics, and just sat around. I should pray, or read the Bible. We’ll see if I actually do this. I am hopeful that the Cardinals do not suffer another soul-crushing defeat like last night; 10-9 to the Washington Nationals they fell, on a sudden two-run homer from Elijah Dukes. And that after clawing back into the game down 7-0, capped by a Joe Mather home run (good on ya, rookie) to make it 9-8 Cards in the top of that same 10th inning. I feel for poor Ryan Franklin. It wasn’t that bad a pitch, from what I could tell, and it was a fastball with something on it, you might say. Dukes hit it to straightaway center; it was not a “Crawford box” (let the reader understand) shot by any stretch. The boys need to put it out of their minds before tonight’s contest, a series-opening game against the hated Astros in Houston. My grudging respect for them has noticeably declined since the retirement of Astros legend Craig Biggio, who rightly is a mortal lock for baseball’s Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible. Even at the announcement of his retirement, various self-important snobs weighed in on the comments sections of articles, calling Biggio a “glorified David Eckstein” and overrated. Such an occasion can be a time for fruitful debate about the meaning of statistics, and the creation of meaningless ones, but I have another goal, which will become clear. This is a story about Omar Vizquel, one of the more celebrated shortstops in the American League of the 1990s. My mental encyclopedia entry for Omar Vizquel says: “One of the best defensive shortstops in the history of baseball, Vizquel earned a reputation as an error-free playmaker, saving runs on plays both routine and spectacular.” [Of course, the entry would include relevant statistics, as well.] As I was forced to reconsider my fawning opinion of Omar Vizquel in light of some of the statistical analysis in the comments, it got me thinking. And what I thought next was this: Stat-heads are ruining baseball. Every generation overrates the greats that they watched. No less for my generation, who is about to induct an alarmingly high percentage of the players it watched, most likely due to marketing and technology. But given that sports Halls of Fame are by their very nature idolatrous (think about it), I say we should allow for the fondness of memories in watching the game as fans play a role. (If I had my way, if it were up for a vote, I’d vote for Gary Gaetti, a perennially good but not often great player with a decently impressive resume.) Because it’s baseball, not rocket-science! Baseball, though it relies more heavily on statistics than other team sports, is inherently subjective and relies more on the experiences of the game than its raw data for its charm. Here’s a good example: Albert Pujols is a great player. By almost any measure, he is a dominant player, who’s very likely to reach 500 HR before he retires. And yet dare to ask a St. Louis native who the greatest Cardinal of them all is, even granting Pujols’ status as a Hall of Famer in the making, and there is only one answer: Stan Musial. When Albert retires, the answer will be the same. You’ll get some argument for Ozzie from the young fans born after 1980, or for Gibson, but that answer, I guarantee you, will never change. If there were a Cardinal Fan’s Catechism, that’s question 1. But Major League Baseball itself is built around such subjectively derived catechesis; arguing over the greats (and by extension, the Hall of Fame) is a dispute over competing meta-narratives. And the meaning is this: If we collectively decide to admit players to the Hall who are “overrated,” such is our right. And it is a natural thing that it has already occurred, and will occur again, in someone’s eyes. It’s unwise to trample people’s heroes. With that in mind, I’d happily vote in Omar Vizquel. I watched him very little compared to some, but I wonder what Venezuelans think, eh?

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