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Bill Gilbert: Analyzing the 2016 HOF Vote

January 13, 2016

SABR Analyst and Pecan Park Eagle Contributor Bill Analyst takes a look today at the 2016 Hall of Fame Vote.

Analyzing the 2016 Hall of Fame Vote

By Bill Gilbert

The Baseball Writers Association of America elected 2 players to the Hall of Fame this year, Ken Griffey. Jr. (99.3%) and Mike Piazza (83.0%). Griffey’s percentage was the highest ever recorded, exceeding Tom Seaver’s 98.84% in 1992.

Of those on the ballot who were not elected, Jeff Bagwell (71.6%) and Tim Raines (69.8%) were the closest and should be in good position for election in 2017.

Fifteen of the seventeen holdovers on the ballot received a higher percentage of the votes in 2016 than in 2015 led by Mike Mussina (+18.4%), Edgar Martinez (+16.4%), Bagwell (+15.9%) Alan Trammell (+15.8% in his final year on the writers ballot), Raines (+14.8%), Curt Schilling (+13.1%) and Piazza (+13.1%). The only holdovers to lose ground were Gary Sheffield (from 11.7% to 11.6%) and Nomar Garciaparra (from 5.5% to 1 8% which removes him from future ballots)

The voters are still largely negative with regards to players associated with Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds each picked up about 7.5% but are mired in the mid 40% range.

There was a significant change in the voting population in the 2016 election. Writers who have been inactive professionally for 10 years are no longer eligible to vote, reducing the total number of ballots cast from 549 in 2015 to 440 in 2016.. Thus, some players on the ballot who received a higher percentage of votes actually received fewer total votes.

Following is a list of candidates that received votes in the election this year. For the holdovers, vote totals for last year are also shown.

Player	Ballot Years	2016 Votes	2016 %	2015 VOTES	2015 %	Vote Differ 2016	Vote Differ %
Ken Griffey	1	437	99.3
M Piazza	4	365	83.0	384	69.9	-19	13.1
Jeff Bagwell	6	315	71.6	306	71.6	9	15.9
Tim Raines	9	397	69.8	302	55.0	5	14.8
T Hoffman	1	296	67.3
C Schilling	4	230	52.3	215	39.2	15	13.1
R Clemens	4	199	45.2	206	37.5	-7	7.7
B Bonds	4	195	44.3	202	36.8	-7	7.5
E Martinez	7	191	43.4	148	27.0	43	16.4
M Mussina	3	189	43.0	135	24.6	54	18.4
ATrammell	15	180	40.9	138	25.1	42	15.8
Lee Smith	14	150	34.1	166	30.2	-16	3.9
F McGriff	7	92	20.9	71	12.9	21	8.0
Jeff Kent	3	73	16.6	77	14.0	– 4	2.6
L Walker	6	68	15.5	65	11.8	3	3.7
M McGwire	10	54	12.3	55	10.0	-1	2.3
G Sheffield	2	51	11.6	64	11.7	-13	– 0.1
B Wagner	1	46	10.5
S Sosa	3	31	7.0	36	6.6	-5	0.4
J Edmonds	1	11	2.5
Garciaparra	2	8	1.8	30	5.5	-22	-3.7
M Sweeney	1	3	0.7
D Eckstein	1	2	0.5
J Kendall	1	2	0.5
GAnderson	1	1	0.2

In addition to Griffey, two other ballot newcomers received enough votes to remain on the ballot. Both were closers, Trevor Hoffman (67.3%) and Billy Wagner (+10.5%). Hoffman’s high vote total in his first year on the ballot suggests that he should get elected fairly quick[y. In something of a surprise, Jim Edmonds fell off the ballot in his first year with only 2.5% of the votes. In addition to Trammell and Garciaparra, Mark McGwire will also be removed from future ballots since he has completed ten years without being elected.

The following seven players were on the ballot but did not receive any votes: Brad Ausmus, Luis Castillo, Troy Glaus, Mark Grudzielanek, Mike Hampton, Mike Lowell and Randy Winn.

For the third straight year, the writers averaged over eight votes on their ballots versus the historical average of 6 -7. If this continues, the problem of an overcrowded ballot should gradually be relieved. The change that reduced a player’s time on the ballot from 15 to 10 years will also help. The 2017 class of ballot newcomers, headlined by Vladimir Guerrero, Ivan Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, is not as strong as some recent classes which should help ballot holdovers. Schilling and Mussina should move up since no other starting pitchers with serious Hall of Fame credentials are likely to be on the ballot

Bill Gilbert

1/12/2016

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Tags:Analyst, Analyzing the 2016 Hall of Fame Vote, Bill Gilbert
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The All Time Single Season HR Team

January 12, 2016

"Hey, Kid! This is pretty tough club when a guy like me can only break into the lineup as a pitcher!" ~Babe Ruth

“Hey, Kid! This is a pretty tough club when a guy like me can only break into the lineup as a pitcher!” ~Babe Ruth

When we put together the starting lineup for the best home run hitting club in MLB history by position, including pitcher and designated hitter, one factor jumps in front of anyone who has followed the game for the past half century with totally clarity. – The members of the club who are also steroids-suspects are absolutely clear and obvious among the total ten players on the list. – Did everyone else get “4” on their first count from top to bottom?

In fact, the first three men on the homers per season list are all poster boys for the first wave of scandal noted. Then later came the cranky Yankee who claimed he wasn’t lying when he seemed to be. Also notable, and well-known, is the fact that all these guys may as well be racing a snowball on its way to the gates of hell as they chase their dreams for induction into the Hall f Fame. It isn’t happening for the same men that Time Magazine credited for saving baseball in 1998 from the unrelenting stench of the 1994 season in which the hardball business wars between management and labor resulted in the abbreviation of the schedule and the first cancellation of a World Series in ninety years.

And now, in 2016, yesterday’s 1998 home run heroes are today’s bums as far as the BBWAA voters and an apparent majority of baseball fans are concerned. What happened to us, folks, did we all just make a minor regression to our childhood comic book days for the sake of hailing McGwire and Sosa as the second coming of Batman and Robin? If we did, it simply follows from there that Time Magazine bit into the same pack of baseball card bubble gum.

Home Runs Single Season Leaders in Home Runs By Position
Name & Position	Home Runs	Year	Team	League	Rank
Johnny Bench, C	45	1970	Cincinnati Reds	NL	118 tied
Hank Greenberg, 1B	58	1938	Detroit Tigers	AL	11 tied
Rogers Hornsby, 2B	42	1922	St. Louis Cardinals	NL	191 tied
Jimmie Foxx, 3B	58	1932	Philadelphia Athletics	AL	10
Alex Rodriguez, SS	57	2002	Texas Rangers	AL	14 tied
Barry Bonds, LF	73	2001	San Francisco Giants	NL	1
Sammy Sosa, CF	66	1998	Chicago Cubs	NL	3
Roger Maris, RF	61 *	1961	New York Yankees	AL	7
Mark McGwire, DH	70	1998	St. Louis Cardinals	NL	2
Babe Ruth, P-OF	29	1919	Cleveland Indians	AL	(1 as P)

We mainly gave Roger Maris a 61 with asterisk because, over the years, we have forgotten how to write that one number any other way. That’s OK. At least, the 1961 version of Roger Maris may be in shape enough to spell Sosa in center after he makes his first long run. And if need be, we’ve also got Ruth as a guy whose career 714 homers and 60 in 1927 are both good enough to get him into some outfield duty too.

We picked Ruth as our pitcher based on his then MLB record (for any hitter) 29 in 1919 and 49 total during his six years (1914-19) as a member of the Red Sox. We know that in Boston he played some outfield too, especially in 1919, but he still pitched enough to qualify for this special club. Many sources prefer to list right handed Wes Ferrell of the 1931 Cleveland Indians as the pure pitching HR-hitting leader with 9 taters for that season. Ferrell also had 38 career HR for the pure-pitching lead in long balls for his position. Heck, we could add him as our right-handed alternative to the Babe as a second pitcher for big power club.

As per usual, these little exercises are simply part of the way we spend our staring-out-the-window-winter-time at the Pecan Park Eagle, awaiting the sounds and sights and sweet smells of another baseball spring.

Have a nice Tuesday, everybody!

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Tags:The All Time Single Season HR Team
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In A Galaxy Not Too Faraway

January 11, 2016

“Astrodome Automatons,
Our brains all work just fine!
We’re made right here in the Mother Ship,
World Wonders – No. 9!”

While having breakfast this morning to the television news from yesterday, I heard something I missed in last night’s news reports of the 30-0 drubbing the Houston Texans took from the Kansas City Chiefs in the Saturday NFL wild card first round of the playoffs. Responding to an obvious question, Texans Head Coach Bill O’Brien said that it never occurred to him to lift the incredibly failing quarterback Brian Hoyer in favor of his replacement, Brandon Weeden.

How so? In talking “Brian Hoyer”, we’re not talking Tom Brady, Johnny Unitas, Roger Staubach, Bart Starr, or Joe Willie Namath. – We’re talking about the same guy O’Brien yanked early in his first faltering moment against KC in the season opener. The Texans didn’t win that one either, so why would “thinking about it” by half time yesterday have been such a crime of allegiance by the coach? After all, Hoyer had turned over the ball four times in the first half on three interceptions and a fumble, and the Texans were still in this game of much greater consequence than the season opener, down by only 13-0, with still a chance to win behind a QB with some usable ability. What could have been the big harm of checking to see if Weeden had even a little more lightning left in the bottle he brought to last week’s game?

We do get your earlier point, Coach, that Weeden had little knowledge of the full Texans playbook, but, look – as we tried to express in our consolation column yesterday – at least, the newcomer Weeden had demonstrated in victory last week that he knew how to execute the plays he had learned. – Isn’t there a chance Weeden might have been a better choice than Hoyer, a guy who was well on his way by halftime to showing the world that he may have known all the plays in the Texans playbook, but that he could not seem to make any of them work as planned? When a guy’s only chance of seeing his passes caught is when they are picked off by members of the other team, it doesn’t exactly inspire team confidence or get the home crowd into the game – expect to boo their own QB.

And you are telling us all of this happened yesterday – and it never occurred to you to take Hoyer out and put Weeden in?

C’mon, man!

If all you need to do is put lineups on the field and never change them, even if the plan isn’t working, the Texans may as well hire everyday “bozos” like yours truly and give us a crack at working for the Houston sports team owner who likes to hire, but hates to fire people until they have demonstrated their ineptness for about a decade on the payroll. As for actually doing your job as it needs to be done, it wouldn’t take me long to show that my coach hiring was a big-time mistake. Besides, our everyday “bozo” higher up employment opportunities, sadly, would be sorely limited by the fact that your current and former people in charge already have used up the best two reasons for people getting fired in other NFL cities on a much more frequent basis:

Excuses That Save Jobs with the Texans

(1) With coaches, always apologize for losses as the result of your bad coaching and promise to do better next time, whether you actually do anything or not that results in more victories on any sustainable basis; and,

(2) With general managers, never make drafting or acquiring a superior quarterback your major organizational priority. Simply draft the later round QB prospects and sign the QB free agents whom you think will fit into the offense that your current head coach, whomever that may be, is trying to install.

Maybe the NFL Really Is Rocket Science

If the NFL really is “rocket science,” the Texans are better off by geographical proximity than any other club in the league. After a 20-30 mile drive down I-45 South from 610 South, the club could get with NASA and either hire their new leadership from the Johnson Space Center staff – or, better yet, from the innovative side of things, get NASA to build them a staff of robotic automatons to run things in the front office and on the field.

Re-Purposing the Astrodome Too

Maybe the Super Bowl success of the first BB8 model coach to lead the Houston Texans to a Super Bowl victory could result in the Astrodome being re-purposed into a plant for building successful robotic leadership at all levels of human endeavor. Constructed without the flaw of human ego, these ingenuous robotic leaders would never use “it never occurred to me” as an explanation for inaction on one of their choices in a particular executive decision-making instance. Possessing the capacity for layered digital analysis of their percentage probabilities for goal accomplishment and risk in every possible option, success would become the norm – and failure would be dealt with as program flaw to be corrected.

Unfortunately, it’s too late in the day to have a couple of these BB8 political models ready for the Democratic and Republican parties as their candidates in the November 2016 presidential election. – And, please believe me, I express that regret with all sincerity!

Have a great week, even if is flawed by our own egos and inabilities to see or act upon all of our best decision-making options.

____________________

“Make Your Mark,
Before It’s Too Late,
You’ll Make Better Choices,
With Your Own BB8!”

Tags:BB8 To The Rescue
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“C” is the Choreographer of Houston Pro Sports

January 10, 2016

Houston Astros Fan

Houston Rockets Fans

Houston Texans Fan

Houston Oilers Fan Message

____________________

What’s the Remedy??? ….

Maybe Houston Sports need a little help from a galaxy far, far away. ….

BB8
Star Wars Actor & Author
“Inside Secrets of the Astrodome”

Tags:Choke City Blues
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Consolations to the Houston Texans

January 10, 2016

Fast on the heels of their final defeat and 30-0 ouster from the 2015 post-season NFL playoffs, The Pecan Park Eagle offers a final few words of disingenuous consolation:

1.) Hang in there, Texans. You played the Chiefs even for all of ten seconds at the start of the game.

2.) You proved today beyond the shadow of a doubt that Brian Hoyer is not your quarterback of the future. His four interceptions, his one fumble, his numerous over-thrown and under-thrown balls, and his two failures to produce points with the ball and first downs deep in the red zone all spoke to the NFL’s off-season topic in Houston over the next several months: How is Houston going to come up with a first class QB, and how much is “ASAP” even a remote time-table possibility?

3) Where do all those delusional battle-red painted, horned, and bearded Texan fans go until next August, when their next opportunities for these psychotic public displays at games of a compensatory need to make up for the absence of love, attention, passion, and color in their everyday lives is again restored to them on the stage that is NRG Stadium? – Corporate board room battles, auto sales, teaching, or even fixing pot holes don’t do it for them. In fact, no job in the world provides much of the same outlet needed for the fiery human egos of those who feel overlooked in the ordinary flow of things.

4) To Texans Coach Bill O’Brien: Next time you have to pick between (a) a QB who knows all the plays, but executes none of them very well and (b) a QB who does a pretty good job of executing the few plays he does know, and with a stronger, more accurate arm, please give some thought to the (b) option.

5) To the Texan Players: As soon as the delusion clears that the Texans could possibly have hoped to reach the Super Bowl this year by proving themselves to be the team with the best marginal record in the NFL’s worst division, the ALC South, you will all be relieved to wake up to the biggest reality in each of your lives: You are each some of the wealthiest people in America – and few of you have to go back to work for months – or ever – depending, perhaps, on how much blame you get for today’s losing fiasco, or whether or not you find out later tonight that you are the only one holding the winning ticket in tonight’s near billion dollar Power Ball Lottery.

6) As they almost always said in Brooklyn and we most often say in Houston, “Wait’ll next year!”

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Tags:Chiefs 30 - Texans 0
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KC’s Last NFL Playoff Win Came in Houston

January 9, 2016

Joe Montana, QB
Kansas City Chiefs, 2003

The last Kansas Chiefs NFL Playoff win? It happened here 22 years ago, on January 16, 1994, in the Astrodome, against the old version of the Tennessee Titans we used to embrace as the “Luv Ya Blue” Houston Oilers. By this time, the team originally known as the Dallas Texans had long since abandoned that allegiance to the Lone Star State in favor of a politically incorrect identity of themselves as Native Americans on the western border of Missouri and Kansas.

With Joe Montana lighting his final puff of flames as an NFL quarterback, these KC Chiefs pushed their rally buttons hard enough that day to push themselves past QB Warren Moon and the Oilers by a score of 28-20, advancing themselves to a game against the Buffalo Bills next weekend for the American Conference spot in the 1994 Super Bowl.

1/16/94	1^ST Q	2^ND Q	3^RD Q	4^TH Q		FINAL
CHIEFS	0	0	7	21	~	28
OILERS	10	0	0	10	~	20

After trailing 10-0 at half time, Montana pulled out his professional Houston spoiler script in the second half, leading the Chiefs to 21 points in the 4th quarter and a come-from-behind 28-20 victory over the forever frustrated home boys. Montana had celebrated his last college game in the 1979 Cotton Bowl, bring the Notre Dame Fighting Irish back from a 34-14 deficit with 7:30 to go on a sub-zero frozen tundra for a 35-34 Irish win on the last play of the game. Now, here he was again, 15 years later, and nearing the end of his professional career, about to reprise a less dramatic, but painfully remindful comeback against Houston’s “Dukes of Delusion,” the Oilers.

Montana completed 22 of 38 passes on the day for 288 yards and 3 touchdowns. Moon of the Oilers, meanwhile, suffered 9 sacks, while Oilers 1,002 yards in 1993 season rusher Gary Brown was held in check by the KCD to 17 rushing yards on 11 carries.

The Chiefs would lose to the Bills at Buffalo the following week, missing the Super Bowl, but starting a string of 8 playoff losses. From all we now read, the current KC Chiefs are hoping that their 9th try since their last playoff win will be blessed by one more successful shot against a Houston team, and the same club the beat to start the 2015 season, the Houston Texans.

My adult son, Casey (ne Neal), “The Shaman of Superstition”, has a little different take on the significance of the number “9” in this instance. Casey says, “Since this game day is the 9th of January, that number is mostly likely simply lining up to imprint itself for the ages as KC’s 9th playoff loss n a row.” – Good thinking, son!

Come on, Texans! Beat the Chiefs and keep on winning! Even we Astros baseball fans could use a little entertainment as we spend the rest of our winter days staring out the window – awaiting glorious spring and the start of the 2016 baseball season. – And speaking of the number “9”. – We are those fans who prefer 9 innings and 9 players on the field at one time in our game.

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Tags:Chiefs Hoping Texans Are Their Good Luck Charm
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What Does a Baseball Bench Coach Do?

January 8, 2016

1.) In the first place, a baseball bench coach does not coach the bench nor the players sitting upon same.

2.) To some variable degree, the bench coach either helps the manager coach or else serves as his clandestine ventriloquist on tough decisions during the game.

3) The bench coach is there to remind the manager of his best choices for relief pitchers and pinch hitters during the game.

4) The bench coach is available for games of checkers with the manager during lengthy rain delays.

5) The bench coach is there in the bar to pull the manager out at 11:30 PM with the consistent reminder: “It’s not good to make curfew rules for the team that you don’t plan to keep yourself.”

6) The bench coach is there to assure the manager that he could take the team to more World Series wins than Casey Stengel, if he would only stay away from the booze, the track, and/or the ladies of easy acquaintance.

7) The bench coach reminds the manager to stay in touch with his wife or girl friend on lengthy road trips.

8) The bench coach sometimes becomes the manager’s “all hell breaks loose” listening catcher when the wife and girl friend find out about each other.

9) Trained psychotherapists and naturally intuitive .200 minor league player veterans are better qualified for service as bench coaches than any righteously straight-laced former Hall of Fame player ever will be. Members of the latter group simply haven’t seen enough of the things that happen to the ordinarily flawed manager to be of much help in matters of domestic discord and/or substance abuse.

10) The bench coach who sometimes ascends to managerial status invariably then will select a virtuous Hall of Fame player as his own personal bench coach.

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Tags:What Does a Baseball Bench Coach Do?
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“BFF”s Before the World Called ‘Em “BFF”s

January 7, 2016

Dick and Laura Kirtley
Cougar Hearts Forever
at the late 2015 funeral of
Former UH Basketball Icon
Coach Guy V. Lewis

The most unforgettable people we meet in life often turn out to be the same people who never forget us over our shared lifetimes, no matter how much, or how little, we remain in constant physical contact. These are the folks who, once they do reappear, for whatever reason, never lose a step on who we each are – and what we mean to each other. When we were very young, we often called these people “pals.”

As teenagers, we may naturally as daylight even have updated our relationship status to “buddies” before finally settling on the grown up call that we are friends, in the true sense of the word, “best friends forever” – no matter where we separately go down the roads of life – and no matter how closely, or loosely, we stay in touch.

Richard “Dick” Kirtley is such a “BFF” person in my life, as is his wife Laura, whom I met a few years later, when all of us were young adults, just out of college, when she and Dick paired off as partners in life as a married couple. I even served as a groomsman in their wedding back in the summer of 1967. – How long ago and near at hand that little church ceremony down in Friendswood now seems to be. Like the old Sinatra song says, it happened “Last Night, When We Were Young.”

The demographic ties of our friendship were pretty darn strong. Dick and I both graduated from St. Thomas High School a year apart, with yours truly finishing first in 1956. I enrolled at UH – and Dick transferred to UH from Texas A&M in 1958 and soon pledged to Phi Kappa Theta, the same fraternity I had joined earlier. Dick also played offensive and defensive line for the 1959-1961 Cougar football team. Laura completed the Cougar thread. She attended UH after both Dick and I, and served as a cheerleader for the great 1966-1967 Cougar football teams of Coach Bill Yeoman and the UH basketball teams of Coach Guy Lewis and the Cougars’ first great national star, Elvin “The Big E” Hayes.

Laura has built a beautifully successful real estate business over the years and Dick is now retired from a distinguished career as a teacher, a mathematician, and corporate economist. Their two kids, Ryan and Kristen, are now grown and married, with children of their own, but all of the Kirtleys are very family-close, as is their family tail gate support for home Cougar football games. Ryan Kirtley, by the way, served as my invaluable assistant during the 1980 Mad Dog mascot performance campaign for UH football at the Astrodome.

Today is just a “BFF” look at the amazing Mr. Kirtley – and a few of the life facts that both developed him and show him today as one of the most rabid UH Cougar athletes and boosters of all time.

(1) The Bryant/Father’s Health Factors. Dick Kirtley committed to playing football for Texas A&M in 1957 because he had a burning desire to play for then Aggie Coach Bear Bryant. Dick was an Aggie long enough to get his foot through the door on that experience for a single season, but Bryant’s decision to “go home to mama” (Alabama) after the 1957 season tilted the table. That being said, no one can ever take that experience from him. The guy once played for the great Paul “Bear” Bryant.

The departure of Bryant and the decline in his father’s health led Kirtley to transfer nearer to home at UH. A general consolation for us all? Kirtley’s transfer from A&M to UH probably spared the world the presence today of an obnoxiously loyal Aggie alum and replaced him with a fiercely loyal Cougar alum.

UH 28 – Florida State 8.
1st Meeting in Houston
November 25, 1961
Game Ball: Dick Kirtley, UH

(2) Kirtley Grabs Game Ball in first UH home football game with Florida State. At the end of a a resounding 28-8 victory for the Houston Cougars over the Florida State Seminoles on November 25, 1961, Cougar lineman Dick Kirtley was jogging to the Cougars’ Rice Stadium home team clubhouse, when a referee clutching the final-whistle game ball came trudging past him.

“Want this, kid?” the ref asked? Kirtley smiled and gladly accepted the short range lateral and tucked the game ball under his own arm. When he finally reached the clubhouse, he asked UH Head Coach Hal Lahar if he wanted the ball. – Lahar, who was deep in conversation with someone else at the time, turned distractedly to Kirtley before staring briefly at the ball and then abruptly uttering, “You keep it!”

Keep the game ball, Kirtley did. And he still has it. Marked as shown in the featured photo. But it’s still Dick Kirtley’s significant Florida State first Houston home game ball, even if he did receive it sort of unceremoniously.

Ask Dick what he did on the field to merit the ’61 FSU game ball and he will tell you the honest truth: “If it was intended for me, it was because I played my butt off – on both offense and defense!” Take my word for it. – Kirtley would have been telling the truth. He only had one playing gear – and that was something akin to the cartoon motions of the Tasmanian Devil.

Errol_Linden

UH-FSU-Friends Footnote: The Cougars also won the very first meeting the previous year in Tallahassee by 7-6. Normally a tackle, Erroll “Moose” Linden, another friend, lined up as a tight end and scored the UH winning touchdown on a pass play. Moose was a giant for his era at about 6’6″ and 260 pounds and he would go on from UH in the 10th round as the 135th pick in the 1962 NFL draft to an NFL career of several years with several teams. Moose and I competed together in the 1959 UH intramural tennis doubles championship tournament. We made it all the way to the finals before losing a match we “could have, should have” won. Those were the days, my friends.

Alex Cooper, UH Lineman
2012-2015
Offensive Guard
290 Lbs.
Dick Kirtley, UH Lineman
1959-1961
Offensive/Defensive Guard
205 Lbs.

(3) Big Hurts Used to Come in Smaller Bites. The photo of current Cougar offensive lineman Alex Cooper and yesteryear Cougar all purpose lineman Dick Kirtley speaks loudly for how both the game and the players have changed in the past fifty years. Today’s players are bigger, faster, and more specialized than they ever were through the first six decades of the 2oth century. The things that haven’t changed are the fact that in sports, or life itself, the sweetest success still goes to those with the wisdom, discipline, commitment, and heart to go after what’s really essential to any success that matters in all the right ways.

Dick and Laura Kirtley are both such people. They are successes in marriage, successes in family, and successes in commitment to good causes, loyalty to friends, and with a virtually spiritual grasp of the fact that good health and “La Dolce Vita” also are important to our reasons for drawing the next deep breath. – I shall love and value them individually and together through eternity for being whom they shall always be to me – “Best Friends Forever!”

Thank you, guys, – and Go Coogs too!

____________________

Tags:Dick and Laura Kirtley are the essence of "BFF"
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A Favorite Jeff Bagwell Moment

January 6, 2016

Jerry Witte, 1B, 1951 Houston Buffs
Jeff Bagwell, 1B, 2001 Houston Astros
Enron Field, Houston
August 3, 2001

As we await the 5:00 PM 2016 word today on Jeff Bagwell and the Hall of Fame, aggressive snoopers on early voting among the new BBWAA members suggest that Jeff is hovering in the “.70s” on his need for the 75% total voter approval for induction this time into the Baseball Hall of Fame this coming summer.

Five o’clock? – Or is this plan another of those nuclear secret, Price-Waterhouse protected pieces of information that gets leaked at noon by some anonymous inside source? It doesn’t matter. Even if the patience of those of us who are pulling for former great Astro Jeff Bagwell this Wednesday, January 6, 2016 are going to he holding fast to our electronic instruments of the digital-quick early truth all day. Maybe there remain a few confidential processes out there that are still safe from invasive seekers of the truth ahead of schedule.

My personal favorite Jeff Bagwell moment was not even the November 2004 banquet evening in Houston when the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame inducted both Bagwell and Biggio into the state Hall of Fame. It happened during the time I served as Executive Director and Board Chair for the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame – and that one was major in my limited first-hand contact with our two Astros-local greats. I will never forget the smiles on both their faces when I turned from the speaking podium that night to say: “Craig and Jeff, we members of the TBHOF administration thought that you guys deserved this little dress rehearsal for the big Hall that awaits both of you a few years down the road.”

Well, it didn’t turn out to be that simple, and it won’t happen now as the doubleheader induction we hoped it would be, but nothing factual has happened since 2004 to change the performance arguments for both these great stars. What’s happened is the taint that has fallen so unjustly upon almost every player who worked out, worked hard, and performed with power during the so-called steroids era in MLB. In a very real way, Jeff Bagwell has become the poster boy for what happens to anyone who has been tainted by a level of distrust by association and there’s no way to prove available to you to show that you did not do what some suspicious minds think because of the general stink of the era in which you played.

We Jeff Bagwell supporters are hoping for his HOF induction as a statement of both justice and vindication. And we shall have our answer by five o’clock today – or sooner.

That being said, my favorite Jess Bagwell moment occurred at Minute Maid Park (or whatever it was being called on that night) on Friday, August 3, 2001, a night that I had accompanied old friend and now late, great Houston Buff slugging first baseman Jerry Witte to MMP to throw out the first pitch. The occasion was scheduled to honor Jerry Witte and the Houston Buffs on the 50th anniversary of their 1951 Texas League championship.

As it turns out, the Astros arranged for Jeff Bagwell to be the catcher for Jerry Witte on that special evening in which two great slugging Houston team first baseman shared a moment together – as men who played a half century apart.

Whenever it concluded, Jeff Bagwell gave Jerry a signed ball – and Jerry gave Jeff Bagwell a signed personal bat from his own playing days.

To read more about that evening, here’s a link to the column that we much later wrote about t for The Pecan Park Eagle:

Jerry Witte’s Last Ballgame.

Good Luck, Jeff! We are hoping that this is the year the BBWAA gets it right. If not, we will all stay on them until they do.

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LATE NEWS ON THE VOTE

Griffey & Piazza In; Bagwell Near Misses the 75% Minimum

Ken Griffey, Jr. (99.3%)~ Only 3 failed to vote for Junior. They should be fired.
Mike Piazza (83.0%)
Jeff Bagwell (71.6 %) ~ missed by 15 votes to reach the 330 votes (75%) level

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WTNYBLOG

Tags:2001, Aug. 3, Jeff Bagwell and Jerry Witte
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Remembering the Bluebonnet Bowl

January 5, 2016

With the 2015 college football season coming to a close on 1/11/2016 with the NCAA Division One Championship Game between Clemson and Alabama, 95% of my thoughts now flow almost fully unimpeded back to baseball, the Astros, and the MLB season coming up, but I did want to settle an old memory debt to the now moribund Bluebonnet Bowl that really did so much to establish long ago that the City of Houston intended to be a strong active player in the post-season college football scene from 1959 through these current times. This bowl, and the establishment of Houston as the annual winter base of the Lombardi Award to the best lineman of the year, were the earliest two feet in the door of that commitment.

I was fortunate to have seen the first two games in person, all of the UH Cougar appearances, of course, and a few of the others. They were beautifully timed to the needs of our Cougars for a venue to show their stuff to a national audience, and, win, lose, or draw, that they did. I recall the 1969 36-7 bruise the Cougars put on Auburn as a generator of feelings similar to the ones we grabbed in sweet joy in the Peach Bowl last week with the 38-24 win over Florida State.

This time, we long of tooth Coogs understand that it takes more than a one-time bombing of national awareness that “these guys are good” sentiments to earn a place at the big table. We must continue to excel – and do more.

Fortunately for UH fans, young Coach Tom Herman understands that fact as well as any of his more age-worn coaching cohorts.

Today we remember the Bluebonnet Bowl as one of those places you played to boost your school’s opportunities for post-season recognition by a national audience – and, mostly on New Years Eve, no less. “The Blue” is the father of the 2000 Houston Bowl and the grandfather of the 2008 Texas Bowl at NRG. And it is most deserving of its own place of honor in our local sports history – even if we did only get to this mention in the last week of the now passing away college football season.

Have a great sunshiny cold day in Houston, neighbors!

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A Brief History

The Bluebonnet Bowl was an annual college football bowl game played in Houston, Texas.^[1] A civic group was appointed by the Houston Chamber of Commerce Athletics Committee in 1959 to organize the bowl game. It was held at Rice Stadium from 1959 through 1967, and again in 1985 and 1986. The game was played in the Astrodome from 1968 through 1984, as well in 1987. When held in the Astrodome, it was called the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl. The proceeds from the bowl games were distributed to various Harris County charitable organizations. The game was discontinued following the 1987 season due to poor ticket sales and lack of a title sponsor.^[2]

The Bluebonnet Bowl generally featured a team from Texas against an out-of-state opponent; 19 out of the 29 games involved a team from Texas. From 1980 to 1987, with the exception of 1981, a team from the Southwest Conference played against an at-large opponent.

The bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas.

Bowl games returned to Houston in 2000 with the Houston Bowl, and then the Texas Bowl since 2006.

~ Excerpt from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebonnet_Bowl

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Bluebonnet Bowl Results, 1959-1987

G#	DATE	WINNER	LOSER
01	12/19/59	CLEMSON 23	TCU 7
02	12/17/60	ALABAMA 3	TEXAS 3 (TIE)
03	12/16/61	KANSAS 33	RICE 7
04	12/22/62	MISSOURI 14	GEORGIA TECH 10
05	12/21/63	BAYLOR 14	LSU 7
06	12/19/64	TULSA 14	OLE MISS 7
07	12/18/65	TENNESSEE 27	TULSA 6
08	12/17/66	TEXAS 19	OLE MISS 0
09	12/23/67	COLORADO 31	MIAMI (FL) 21
10	12/31/68	SMU 28	OKLAHOMA 27
11	12/31/69	HOUSTON 36	AUBURN 7
12	12/31/70	ALABAMA 24	OKLAHOMA 24 (TIE)
13	12/31/71	COLORADO 29	HOUSTON 17
14	12/30/72	TENNESSEE 24	LSU 17
15	12/29/73	HOUSTON 47	TULANE 7
16	12/23/74	HOUSTON 31	NC STATE 31 (TIE)
17	12/27/75	TEXAS 38	COLORADO 21
18	12/31/76	NEBRASKA 27	TEXAS TECH 24
19	12/31/77	USC 47	TEXAS A&M 28
20	12/31/78	STANFORD 25	GEORGIA 22
21	12/31/79	PURDUE 27	TENNESSEE 22
22	12/31/80	NORTH CAROLINA 16	TEXAS 7
25	12/31/81	MICHIGAN 33	UCLA 14
26	12/31/82	ARKANSAS 28	FLORIDA 24
27	12/31/83	OKLAHOMA ST 24	BAYLOR 14
28	12/31/84	WEST VIRGINIA 31	TCU 14
29	12/31/85	AIR FORCE 24	TEXAS 16
30	12/31/86	BAYLOR 21	COLORADO 9
31	12/31/87	TEXAS 32	PITTSBURGH 27