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Tag: hall of fame
Ex-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Nominated To NHL’s Hall Of Fame Board

Ex-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Nominated To NHL’s Hall Of Fame Board

In Canada, hockey is on the five-dollar bill. In America, it is known as another of ex-Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s vices.

In case you missed it, something of a media scrum occurred over the weekend. The Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF), the Toronto-based institution that venerates the sport’s greatest players and contributors, announced that Rob Ford had been selected as one of three Toronto politicians the city appoints to the HHOF board.

The nomination of Ford, who admitted to smoking crack cocaine while in office and once half-tackled a city councilwoman on live television, among other unprofessional acts, has now upset many hockey red bloods, who see it as a pratfall by the Hall and a slight to the good conscience of the hockey world.

Sportsnet broadcaster Damien Cox tweeted a slew of incendiary responses to the nomination, including “So Toronto Catholic school board won’t let Rob Ford coach football. But Hockey Hall of Fame embraces him. Someone should be fired.”

Yet, and this is to the Canadian media’s credit, the overall response to this news has been amused skepticism. And perhaps that’s because the former mayor has recently undergone cancer surgery. Or, it could be a matter of distance making the heart grow fonder and the press is happy to see the Great White Ford back on the social scene. And after all, as the Toronto Star points out, it could be worse. Ford, who is still involved in politics as a city councilor, could have been appointed to a board with some actual power such as the Affordable Housing Committee or the Budget Committee.

In some ways his appointment to the HHOF board is not such a bad decision. Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, Ford does more or less embody the spirit of hockey. He’s a Toronto Maple Leafs fanatic known for his loud, crass, incredible candor. Outspoken, patriotic, indulgent, and brazen, Ford is not the face that hockey needs, but the mug it is going to deal with.

Ford’s role on the board will not be to nominate anyone for the Hall. He will be a part of the process that chooses the selection committee — the group of 18 journalists and Hall of Fame members — who vote on the nominees. Similarly, as it was Toronto that nominated Ford for the board, it is up to the city to remove him.

The Hall, for its part, was quick to distance itself from Ford and the controversy his nomination has stirred up. A couple of snarky tweets and a statement made it clear that the city of Toronto has the right to nominate and elect up to three individuals to the 18-member board. They added, somewhat cheekily, that the HHOF doesn’t get to decide whom the city of Toronto chooses as its representative to the board any more than it decides who gets to be the mayor of said city.

Promising to do everything within his power to promote the sport to children, Ford said, “I like rolling up my sleeves and showing up to meetings and getting it done.” (Ford’s appointment occurred in December; he has attended one meeting so far.)

A Hall of Fame, by its nature, stokes controversies. But Ford’s appointment is not an injudicious snub. After all, the controversy appears to be a good distraction for a sport that would rather avoid questions of drug abuse to self-medicate concussions, racist behavior towards black players, and of course, the perennial question of whether fighting should be condoned or not.

As the sixth most popular sport in the States, Rob Ford’s nomination to the HHOF board may just be the kind of publicity the sport needs. Just in time for the playoffs.

Photo: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford via Facebook

This Year’s NCAA Tournament Produces A Final Four Of Coaching Giants

This Year’s NCAA Tournament Produces A Final Four Of Coaching Giants

By Blair Kerkhoff, The Kansas City Star (TNS)

Who has the coaching advantage at this year’s Final Four?

There’s a coach who has been enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.

Two others, Kentucky’s John Calipari and Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan, are Hall of Fame finalists.

The outlier is Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, who will be a Hall of Fame slam dunk, as he leads the Spartans to a Final Four for the seventh time.

“They’re really the best of the best,” Krzyzewski said Monday. “It’s really an honor for me to be in a Final Four with those three programs and those three coaches because they’ve all understood the commitment to excellence that a program needs to make.”

The national semifinal battles match Duke and Michigan State in Saturday’s opener in Indianapolis at 5:09 p.m. Kentucky meets Wisconsin around 7:49 p.m.

No Final Four newbie coaches here.

The Badgers and Wildcats will meet in the semifinals for a second straight year. Duke and Michigan State are back in the Final Four for the first time since 2010.

Each of the coaches has won an NCAA championship. Krzyzewski has four titles in his previous 11 Final Four appearances. If Duke wins the tournament, Coach K will stand behind only UCLA’s John Wooden with the most titles at five. Wooden has 10.

Izzo’s Spartans won the 2000 championship, and Calipari’s Wildcats defeated Kansas for the 2012 title.

Although this is Ryan’s second Final Four appearance, he owns four NCAA Division III championships coaching Wisconsin-Platteville in the 1990s.

Two of those teams went undefeated, which gives Ryan a bit of insight into what Kentucky, 38-0, is attempting to accomplish.

“I know what it’s like to be 10-0, 15-0, 25-0 and what that does to a team,” Ryan said. “It actually makes our practices better. I just thought it made us better while we were undefeated because of how you learned to deal with outside pressures.”

Last year, Kentucky won a nail-biter 74-73 on Aaron Harrison’s three-pointer with 6 seconds remaining. Ten seconds earlier, the Badgers had missed a chance to take a three-point lead when Traevon Jackson missed a free throw, Wisconsin’s only miss in 20 attempts, leaving the lead at two points.

“This will be a really hard game for our team,” said Calipari, whose Wildcats are coming off a two-point victory over Notre Dame in the Midwest Region final. “We know that.”

Krzyewski and Izzo say the same thing about their game, but Izzo isn’t buying any suggestion that the Blue Devils and Spartans have a rivalry during the current coaches’ tenures. Duke leads series 8-1.

“Somebody said, ‘You guys have a good rivalry,’ ” Izzo said. “I said you can’t have a rivalry when it’s 8-1. It will be fun to see if we can change that around.”

Photo: Seth Youngblood via Flickr

Stats, Not Politics, Kept Schilling Out Of Cooperstown

Stats, Not Politics, Kept Schilling Out Of Cooperstown

The announcement of the newest National Baseball Hall of Fame class took a political turn when pitcher Curt Schilling asserted that his support for the Republican Party kept him out of Cooperstown. This past week, Schilling told a Boston radio station that John Smoltz, who was elected in his first year of eligibility, won support through his Democratic leanings, while Schilling’s conservatism cost him votes. Of course, there’s no reason to believe that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America is a left-wing organization. Furthermore, it is unclear how Schilling determined that Smoltz, who once campaigned for Ralph Reed and compared same-sex marriage to bestiality, is a Democrat. But, most important, it should be noted that Schilling fell short of induction because of his performance on the field, not his politics off it.

Schilling had a fine career with the Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Red Sox, but he was never a clear-cut Hall of Famer. Pitching from 1988 until 2007, he compiled a career record of 216-146, a 3.46 ERA, 3,116 strikeouts, and a 1.137 WHIP.  ERA+, a statistic that contrasts a pitcher’s performance with the league average in a given season, places Schilling at a very solid 127 throughout his career. He finished with a total of 80.7 Wins Above Replacement. These numbers — particularly the strikeout totals — are undeniably strong, but leave him as, at best, a borderline candidate for the Hall of Fame.

To take this point further, compare Schilling’s career statistics to those of his contemporaries whose Hall of Fame campaigns have gained less traction. Mike Mussina, for example, received 80 fewer votes this year despite putting together similar career numbers. While Schilling finished with more strikeouts, Mussina had more career wins. Their ERA, WHIP, ERA+, and WAR numbers are practically identical.

Baseball-Reference.com lists Kevin Brown as Schilling’s most comparable player. Yet Brown appeared on only 2.1 percent of ballots cast when he was first eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in 2011 – few enough that he was removed from all future ballots. Mussina and Brown were never public about their political views. However, Mussina did appear in a documentary about crossword puzzles alongside Bill Clinton, a fact that should have helped his standing with the BBWAA, according to Schilling.

Schilling’s supporters point to his success in the postseason as key to his Hall case, and he was an undeniably great playoff performer. He pitched to a 2.23 ERA as a central figure on three World Series-winning teams. And painful though it might have been for a Yankee fan, Schilling’s bloody sock from the 2004 ALCS has gone down as one of the more indelible images in recent baseball history.

However, playoff performance, with its small sample size, is a faulty method for evaluating a player. Why should Schilling’s 133.1 postseason innings trump the 3,261 he compiled in the regular season? What’s more, plenty of players can point to their own moments of October glory. Brown, who led a mediocre San Diego Padres team to the 1998 World Series, and Mussina, whose excellent relief appearance helped the Yankees win Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, were no slouches.

Ultimately, Jack Morris’ stalled and controversial Hall of Fame candidacy makes the most apt comparison for Schilling’s Hall of Fame odds. Morris’ career numbers were good, but not great. Like Schilling, his case rested on his postseason success, especially his 10-inning, complete-game shutout in the 1991 World Series. Many so-called “baseball traditionalists” praised Morris as a legendary big-game performer, while the more statistically inclined argued that the small postseason sample size should not overshadow his somewhat pedestrian career numbers. In the long run, the stats won out and Morris’ eligibility ran out after the 2014 ballot.

Schilling’s Hall of Fame credentials are murky, and the fact that he does not believe in evolution is the least of his problems. While some voters may be swayed by his success in the postseason, several of his contemporaries were equally or more effective over their careers. Following the Morris example, Schilling should continue to face an uphill struggle to win the votes necessary for induction.

Stephen Abrams-Downey is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research. Readers can email him at sabramsdowney@yahoo.com.

Photo: Aaron Frutman via Flickr