The Pecan Park Eagle

THANK YOU, KPRC-TV FOR A TRIBUTE TO 2015 HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE CRAIG BIGGIO THAT JUST ABOUT SAYS IT ALL!

Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros finally got his just due today, Tuesday, January 6, 2015. The BBWAA announced that he had been selected for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame on the basis of his 82.7% support from those electors who voted on this year’s ballot. His 454 votes place him 42 votes above the minimum 412 votes he needed and a full 7.9% above the 75.0% he needed for a passing grade.

Biggio achieved his overdue induction in the third year his name has been on the HOF ballot. He was joined on the approval list by three pitchers who were making their first eligible appearances for consideration, lefties Randy Johnson and John Smoltz and right-hander Pedro Martinez.

Notable to Houston fans is the fact that their great former 1st baseman, Jeff Bagwell, fell far short of the numbers needed with only 306 votes (55.7%), ending the long held dream of Houston fans for a Biggio-Bagwell tandem induction. Now everybody, including Craig Biggio, will be getting behind Bagwell’s release from the unfair steroids era stigma against all sluggers from that first decade of the 21st century. Jeff Bagwell is very much a deserving candidate for the HOF too in his own right.

Sadly notable too is the fact that a 7-time Cy Young winner of 354 MLB games named Roger Clemens received only 206 votes (37.5%) for the HOF.  Hopefully, our American baseball culture eventually will reach a point in which a fair and realistic treatment of the steroids stained masses are not simply treated as though they never existed or did great things on the field, but that’s a story for another day that just gets clearer as one we currently ignore. Ignoring Clemens and the others is not the final answer to our treatment of accomplishments that are impossible to ignore. If that matter is left up to the BBWAA voters, their apparent answer is to treat any muscular power game achiever from that era as guilty by appearance and association and stewed for 15 years on the HOF ballot until the disappearing ink that wrote their names there in the first place quietly disappears.

At any rate, here’s a table on voting for the four 2015 inductees whose names were written on the ballot with permanent ink, but with some getting the blurry print treatment that only resolves to clarity over variable years passage of time. It took Craig Biggio’s name three years to become clear to 82.7% of the voters. There is otherwise no logically objective reason why it took him three years to get voted in. Unless the writers/voters suffer from some form of egoistic snootiness, there is no other plausible reason we can think of why it took Craig Biggio even this long to get voted into the Hall. Unless the writers are giving Head Coach Biggio extra credit for the two state championships in baseball that his St. Thomas Eagles won in Texas private school play since 2007 retirement, we can’t think of anything else baseball-related that’s made him more worthy in 2015 than he was in 2013 and 2014.

As we were saying, here’s the chart on votes for our four new HOF inductees:

Craig Biggio’s field achievements are almost legendary:

1) He played 20 seasons of MLB ball, all with the Houston Astros, from 1988-2007.

2) He batted .281 lifetime, collecting 3,060 hits along the way.

3) As  member of the 3,000 hit club, Biggio ranks 21st on the total current list of 28 players who have done so.

4) His 668 doubles are the most ever achieved by an MLB right handed batter – and fifth all time for all hitters.

5) Craig Biggio is the only player in MLB history to have compiled 250 homers, 400 stolen bases, 600 doubles, and 3,000 hits.

6) His 53 game-starting homers as a lead off hitter is the record for NL batters.

7) Craig Biggio holds the modern day MLB record with 285 career Hit By The Pitcher (HBP) events.

Thank you too, Craig Biggio and family, for being the stellar contributors to our community you have been over the years. All of your work with the Sunshine Kids is the stuff of appreciative legend in the hearts and minds of Houstonians. And you’ve probably forgotten this one, but please allow me to remind you of something I said both to you and about you back in 2004 during my time as Board President of the Texas Baseball of Fame and you were one of our inductees. It didn’t take any psychic powers on my part to state the obvious when I observed from the podium that “you should think of your induction tonight as little more than a dress rehearsal for that bigger Hall that lays in waiting for you down the road.”

Congratulations, Craig! You made it. You deserved it. You’re there. And you’re our guy too – Houston’s Craig Biggio! What a glorious day this is!