You can watch live (and free) on mlb.com(Link to broadcast)Announcement to come @ 2:00 however, they have a panel discussing the candidates now.Anyone watching? Discuss away....



Edit:
Damn - The Goose is in, Rice is out.

Jim Rice misses getting into the Hall of Fame by 14 votes. With only one year left on the ballot it feels like this may be the closest he ever gets.

****.

http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp

****, ****, ****, ****, ****!!

From MLB.com coverage:

Jim Rice, the former star of 16 seasons, all with the Red Sox, barely missed by 14 votes as he fell 2.8 percent (72.2) below the necessary 75 percent to gain admission to the hallowed red-brick Hall on Main Street in Cooperstown. He'll undoubtedly go in next year, when Rickey Henderson will be an obvious first-time favorite. Rice then will be on the writers' ballot for his 15th and final year.

i guess the silver lining would be your user name still makes sense....

He better get in next year...What a bummer. I blame AROD.

Well potentially good news is that no one who has received atleast 70% of the votes has failed to make it the following year.

I'm dissapointed

damn

Breaking news 2:06 PM
Close but no Hall call for Rice
Former Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice did not gain election to the Hall of Fame today, finishing just 14 votes shy of election. This was Rice's 14th and next-to-last season of eligibility on the writers' ballot.

He missed a lifetime BA of .300 by a mere 16 hits........& the HOF by just 14 votes, in his 14th year of eligibility & ironically the same # he wore on his uniform that s/b retired....also # 14.

I blame Bill James.

Is Gossage 231 votes better than Lee Smith? Is Gossage better than Lee Smith at all?

This sucks! There are a couple of slam dunks (I forget who) that will get in next year so this was is best shot. Looks like he will have to wait for the Veterans Committe to do the right thing. Hopefully, he will still be around when that happens.

MLB.com seems to think Rice will get in next year, with only Rickey Henderson looking like a lock.

Rickey Henderson

edit: assuming he doesn't come out of retirement

Tim Raines getting less than 25 percent is jaw-dropping. I expected him to receive a minimum of 50-60 percent. There is no doubt that he had a Hall of Fame career.

The Hall of Fame website played a cruel joke on me.

At 2 PM they flashed the pictures of both Gossage and Rice and I thought he was in and screamed so loud I startled my coworkers.

Well, he beat McGwire. Only his first yr. on the ballot, he'll get his due.


Results:

If you want your head to explode, turn on ESPN and listen to Keith Law.

I thought for sure he would get in this year....this really sucks !

Who the hell voted for Todd Stottlemyre? Travis Fryman? Rod Beck?

Who the hell voted for Fryman?? Or Beck ... Knoblauch, etc??

I blame Rice's road mediocrity and relatively short peak and career lengths. I am OK with him being a "very near miss", since that's exactly how I've felt about him since he retired.


Yes, substantially. Gossage posted two of the top 20 relief seasons in history based upon WXRL (interestingly neither came while pitching for the Yankees), and is arguably the third-best reliever of all time behind Fruit Bat and the Eck. Smith was very good, but his best WXRL season is only 126th-best all time (1983). Interesting note here...Eric Gagne owns three of the top 12 WXRL seasons of all time, all with the Dodgers from 2002-2004.


This is a predictable tragedy. The Rock's career was exactly the kind that would be undervalued by BBWAA meat-heads, but was Hall-worthy nonetheless. He may replace Santo and Blyleven as the worthiest omission in a few years.

Road mediorcity, perhaps but he did bat .336 lifetime @ Yankee Stadium w/ 22 HR. As a Sox fan that should trump the rest of his road stats.

Regarding his relatively short peak, I disagree with that point. He had a career batting avg. of .300 from 75' through 88'. That's 14 years of .300 ball He also averaged 27 HR & 101 RBI during that same 14 year stretch.

However, if he had a few more years of mediocrity on his resume, beyond 89' (when he hung 'em up), he may have surpassed the 400 HR plateau, which may have gotten him over the hump in the balloting.

Anyway, he’s been on the ballot for 14 seasons & just missed getting in by a mere 14 votes. I think his stats taken in context of the era in which he played is being taken into account by those who have a vote. Over the last 14 years I believe that those who have votes have done their due diligence on Rice, which is why he just missed this year & I believe he finally gets there in 09’.

Blyleven not getting in remains the biggest injustice of all. How can you continue to keep out the number five strikeout leader of all time? Blyleven had the best curve ball of his day, and contrary to those who believe he was betrayed by playing only for bad teams, he does have a ring with the 1979 Pirates and the 1987 Twins. He had 287 wins and a career 3.31 ERA. Why this guy continues to not get in is a real travesty.

I'm sorry, but Rice not getting in does not surprise me. With all the physical gifts he had his numbers should have been much, much higher, especially his power numbers. His 1978 season was a great one, but one where I believe he could have done several times over. Rice was never as clutch as Ortiz, he would always seem to strike out or hit into DPs more often than come through with big hits. There is no question that he is the strongest player I ever saw, I just expected more out of him than what he did in his body of work.

And this sportswriter thing is overrated. If Eddie Murray and Steve Carlton are in the HOF (whom both had either worse or zero relationship with the writers), sportswriters won't keep Rice out. In Rice's case it is all about numbers, and though they are very good, they just aren't quite Cooperstown-worthy.

Bob G

Yeah, I saw that too. Then I heard the results and I wanted to scream. I still want to scream.

I thought he had a pretty good chance when I saw yesterday that 14 of the 15 people at espn who have votes were voting for him. OTOH, CHB predicted his election and he's never right about anything.

Chuck Finley got a vote? What's he known for, other than getting beaten up by the chick from the Whitesnake video?


Rice? Meh. I always felt he didn't play long enough, 16 years, to put up the numbers he needed to be a shoo-in. His last 3 years were sh*t, and there were 3 years in the early '80s when the Red Sox sucked that Rice had some pretty average seasons due to injuries and whatever (<25 HR, <100 RBI).
So he played 16 years but only 10 of them were very good, and he received at least one MVP vote in eight of them.
He wasn't as 'dominant' or as 'feared' for as long as people like to remember.
Don't get me wrong. Rice was my favorite player as a kid, but sentimentality aside, I don't think he is HOF worthy.
In order for the HOF to mean anything, some people get let in, and some people have to be left out. Jim Rice is among the latter.

Who falls off this year? I am disgusted that Jim Rice was not voted in. I do think the Goose Gossage election is deserved but I wonder how Blyleven and Lee Smith keep falling short. Can the Veterans Committee give Rice a push?

I guess I'm in the minority.
if you've been on the ballot this many times and not gotten in. you're not a Hall of Famer.
period.

it's not the Hall of Very Good.

Blyleven, because he never pitched for a big-market club. That's unfair.

Smith, because, well, he just was never that good. Any B-grade pitcher could have done what he did. He led the league in saves and games finished a few times. Meaningless statistics.

Rice is really a marginal candidate. I'd go for Evans first, and he's marginal, too.

I hate that Blyleven keeps getting snubbed. I really think his numbers are Hall worthy.

I didnt realize that Lee Smith really was not that dominant, which is why the Jeff Reardons of the world dont get in either.

Totally agree that Dewey deserves a push, but I really think Rice deserved it

I have to differ on Lee Arthur Smith. He actually had a better career than Gossage. He had a career ERA-plus of 131, compared to Gossage's 126. He had five years of 90 IP or more. Gossage also had five, not counting one year when he was a starter.

The WHIPs were close: Smith, 1.256; Gossage, 1.232. And that's with Smith pitching a lot of his career in Wrigley and Fenway and Gossage pitching a lot of his in Pig Stadium and spacious Jack Murphy Stadium.

Lee Smith was a much more prolific accumulator: 478 saves to Gossage's 310.

Smith doesn't come close to getting enough votes to get elected but he's underrated, IMHO.

Players on the ballot for the 1st time in 2009: Steve Avery, Jay Bell, Mike Bordick, John Burkett, David Cone, Ron Gant, Mark Grace, Rickey Henderson, Charles Nagy, Denny Neagle, Jesse Orosco, Dean Palmer, Dan Plesac, Rick Reed, Greg Vaughn, Mo Vaughn, Matt Williams, Mike Williams

Aside from Rickey, I can't see anyone else on that list being close. Maybe Cone, Grace and Matt Williams hang on a couple years. Next year will be Rickey and Jim Ed.

And yet, somebody voted for Travis Fryman. No, wait, two people for him.

The BBWAA should be stripped of its voting privileges for all honors.

Blyleven, Santo, Raines, Dick Allen, Dewey, Rice, Dawson, Whitaker...no.
But two dipshits voted for Travis Fryman.

Geez what a bunch of mediocre middle of the road group of players! I agree that Rickey will be Rickey and get into the Hall. I think Mark Grace is the only other one who has a chance on the first ballot.

Chance for what for Mark Grace? To not be eliminated? I dont think he is a Hall of Famer, especially not a first ballot one.

Looking at that list is like looking at the ghosts of Red Sox past...Steve Avery, John Burkett, David Cone, Rickey Henderson, Mo Vaughn

Who the hell is Mike Williams?

I didnt say he would get in, nor did I say he was a Hall of Famer. I guess what i was trying to say was that it was such a weak class, that Grace might get voted in. However, since I read your post, it seems that a weak "freshman" class would benefit the veterans, wouldn't it?

I think Mike Williams was like Big Horse of "Mr. 3000", he played a couple of cups of coffee during the early 2000s?

there are two Mike Williams, three if you include Micah Williams. All of them overlapped in the majors in 1998


Mike Williams 1998 CIN-TBD
Mike Williams 1998-2002 CHW
Micah Williams 1997-1998 KCR

Ron Neyer makes a fairly convincing argument for Alan Trammell. Here is one of Neyer's quotes, via a column from Lynn Henning of The Detroit News:

"I'm afraid I don't have an easy way to check, but I believe Trammell, even with that atypical decline phase, ranks fourth in hits among 20th-century shortstops -- considering hits gained while actually playing shortstop -- behind Hall of Famers Luis Aparicio, Luke Appling and Ozzie Smith (and for what it's worth, Trammell hit more home runs than those guys combined)."

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic...PORTS&imw=Y

Thats a hard argument to make when you look at some of the other supposed Hall of Famers and their numbers who are already in Cooperstown. Rice's numbers may not look as impressive as some current, or recently retired stars, but before the smaller ballpark and steroid boom, the power numbers are pretty impressive to go along with the nice batting average. I don't think he is a guy that should have been a lock for the Hall, but at this point, all things considered, I think he should be in.

Blyleven should have already been in ... I still don't get that ... nor do I get how Trammel is not in. He [and Ripken] set the tone for what SS of the future [today] would look like.

It's so tough to say no to Rice when you look at guys who have got in, like Billy Williams and Tony Perez and say, "Were either of them better than Rice?" If Rice put up two seasons like Williams did in 75 and 76 he would have broken the 400HR plateau with ease and waltzed into the HoF.

I used to think that no, he wasn't good enough, but then you realize there are all these guys that got in with lesser resumes and you wonder why Jim Ed gets kept out.

The omission of Trammell and Whittaker kills me as well, especially Trammell.

I really don't understand the "well, these guys shouldn't be there, so Rice should!" argument. Just because guys who probably don't deserve to be in the HOF have been inducted before doesn't mean that other borderline candidates should automatically get in. Kirby Puckett being in the HOF does not mean that Mike Mussina should be, too. Further dilluting the HOF towards the "Hall of Very Good" doesn't seem like a great idea to me.

Continually lowering the standards would not be good.

But it doesn't make a lot of sense to say, "We're drawing the line at Rice," when the line has already been drawn (repeatedly) a good deal south of Rice. He's a borderline guy, maybe, but he's not that borderline relative to the standard that has been set -- and adhered to at times during the course of Rice's eligibility.

http://www.redsoxnation.net/forums/index.p...mp;#entry605163

I have no doubts Rice will get in next year. Heck, Dawson may even get in next year. With Ricky Henderson being the only new person on the ballot next year that has a chance of getting in, I do not think Rice will be held out.

I thought it was funny that Mark McGwire did not gain any votes this year compared to last year. I think that is a sure sign that any of these other guys that are suspected of using performance enhancing drugs are going to have a hard time convincing the voters the deserve it.

While he really probably didn't deserve it (moreso in 03 than in 02), he DID make the All-Star team in 2002-2003 and is currently ranked 68th all-time in saves. Remembered mainly for his days in Philly and Pittsburgh.

Mike Williams

Someone on SOSH pointed out that Gary Carter got 72.7 percent of the vote in 02 and then got elected the next year, even with Eddie Murray becoming eligible for the first time. Maybe there's hope for Rice in 09.

OTOH, maybe the RS shouldn't take any chances. Just sign Ricky Henderson to a contract in 08 and let him appear in a game. That would push his eligibility back another five years and clear the way for Rice in the next election.