Right Off Russell

If there has ever been a better 2nd baseman int he modern era than Robbie Alomar, I have not heard of or seen him play.  To me, during his prime stretching from the beginning of the ’90’s until 2001, Alomar was a top 5 player in the game.  I put him right up there with Bonds, Griffey, Manny Ramirez and Frank Thomas as the dominant players of their decade.  Alomar did not put up some of the gaudy offensive numbers of his contemporaries that attracted more attention, but Alomar could beat you in so many ways and he did it consistently.  He was the best defensive player I have seen not named Ozzie Smith and he could do it all with the bat.  Here is what former teammate BJ Surhoff had to say about Alomar:

“Robbie could beat you with the bunt, with the extra base, with the homer. He could beat you with a stolen base. He could beat you by going from first to third, a base-running move. He could beat you by making plays in the field,” Surhoff said. “Robbie’s a baseball player.

There has been speculation that many baseball writers did not vote for Alomar because of the 1996 incident where he spit in the face of home plate umpire John Hirschbeck.  The incident was certainly a black mark on Alomar’s career and painted him in a very negative light for the rest of his playing days.  Alomar has since become good friends with Hirschbeck, who recently endorsed Alomar as a Hall of Famer.  Foxsports.com baseball writer Ken Rosenthal, who covered Alomar as a Baltimore Sun writer, had this to say about Alomar and the Hall of Fame vote:

“I was stunned. I expected he would go in, and he should have gone in,” said Ken Rosenthal, senior baseball writer for Foxsports.com and a voting member of the BBWAA. “This is not simply a Hall of Famer. This is one of the greatest second basemen of all time. … For him not to go in on the first ballot, frankly, reflects poorly on us as an organization.”

Rosenthal, who covered Alomar for The Sun, said he has never witnessed a player better than Alomar was in the first half of 1996.

“That was best all-around play I have ever seen, offensively, defensively,” Rosenthal said. “He did it all. This guy played the game one level above.”

As a player Alomar is without a doubt a Hall of Fame performer, but clearly the baseball writers are not just voting on a player’s performance on the field.  The question is do we want the writers making these personal conduct calls?  Sure the spitting incident was a bad thing, but there are players who have conducted them-self in much less flattering ways that are in the Hall.  Baseball writers are going to have to make a whole bunch of these types of decision in the coming years as more alleged steroid users become eligible for the Hall of Fame. 

Alomar did make a huge mistake.  But it was a one time mistake and he has clearly made amends with the umpire involved.  In this case the writers are making Alomar pay for the one blemish on his record, and in this case they are wrong to do so.  They can save their righteous indignation for players in the steroid era.  What are your thoughts on Alomar and the HOF vote?