An There’s an interesting new study out that states that within 15 years of quitting smoking, smokers see their risk of heart attack drop to the same level as non-smokers.
The study states that these conditions apply for an average smoker. For a heavy smoker — a pack a day or more for 32 years or longer — the risk of heart attack remains elevated even 15 years after that smoker quits.
The study compiled statistics from over 4,400 people over the age of 65 — smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers. The study found that 21 percent of nonsmokers and 21 percent of former smokers who had quit 15 years earlier or more experienced heart failure — the same rate.
However, of the heavy smokers’ group, that number was 30 percent. Current smokers experienced heart failure at a whopping 50 percent clip.
The message from doctors involved in the study? The body can heal itself from the ravages of tobacco, if given the opportunity:
“Our body can heal itself,” Bich Tran, a public health and epidemiology researcher at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, told Reuters Health by email. “Within 12 hours or few days after the smoking, the level of carbon monoxide in blood will decline and the circulatory system will start repairing the damage.”
Curt Schilling wrote an open letter to himself on a site called “The Players’ Tribune” about the dangers of chewing tobacco.
Curt Schilling as you know, was a longtime chewer who last year developed oral cancer. After months of chemo and radiation, he is cancer-free and is now a big anti-chew advocate.
Schilling isn’t my favourite player out there. He’s a bit of a blowhard, I don’t like his politics and I don’t have a lot of patience for athletes who feel the need to rub their faith in people’s noses, but when it comes to the issue of chewing tobacco, he’s on the right side.
A lot of his letter gets preachy — I’ll skip over that — but he says some great things about chew in his piece:
Tomorrow at lunch, a kid is going to dare you to take a dip of Copenhagen. If you say yes, like I did, you’ll be addicted for the rest of your life. Well, the rest of your life up to the point when you are diagnosed with cancer.
I get what you’re thinking. You’re 16 — you’re invincible, just like all your buddies. If you were to jump ahead 33 years, you couldn’t write a better dream than the one your life is going to be.
With one exception.
If you say yes tomorrow, you will become addicted to chewing tobacco and you will get mouth cancer.
OK, there is a long preachy part, I get the point that Schilling is trying to make, but it’s really preachy. Anyway, then Schilling returns to his chew use:
You will develop sores, you will lose your sense of taste and smell. You will develop lesions. You will lose your gums — they will rot. You will have problems with your teeth for the rest of your life.
You will meet men — many good, honest men — who chewed. None of them will have their entire face. They will be missing jaws, chins, cheeks, noses and more. None will live more than a year or two after you meet them. All of them were tobacco chewers.
You will meet Joe Garigiola. He will introduce you to Bill Tuttle. Bill will have no lower face. His entire lower jaw is gone. It was that, or die of mouth cancer. Well, not “that or,” because that mouth cancer would kill him inside of two years.
You will brush your teeth and your mouth will bleed. Not light blood from your gums, but darker blood from deeper inside your mouth. That’s the chew destroying your tissue. You will get message after message, but your addiction will always win, until it wins the biggest battle.
You will get message after message, but your addiction will always win, until it wins the biggest battle
If you say yes tomorrow, you will begin to kill yourself from the inside out. It’s difficult for you to understand in this current phase of your life, but by chewing tobacco, you are jeopardizing your participation in what will be some of your most important moments.
You will risk any chance of seeing your four amazing children graduate high school. You will potentially lose the opportunity to walk your daughter Gabriella (who, like her dad, will be blessed with simple yet outstanding pitching mechanics) down the aisle. You will risk not seeing Gehrig, your oldest son, pitch for four years at a New England college. You may miss your son Grant graduating high school and changing the world. And you may be absent as your youngest son Garrison — who aspires to follow in your father’s footsteps and join the army — masterfully plays goalie with a remarkable passion.
…
Your dad is going to die in five years. You know what’s going to kill him? A heart attack brought on by heart disease and lung cancer caused by tobacco use. He’ll die right in front of you.
Finally, consider this: How many kids will start dipping over the next 32 years because they saw you do it?
Do you want that on you? No?
Then my advice is simple. Tomorrow, at lunch, just say no.
Having read a lot of discussions lately about Gil Hodges, the baseball Hall of Fame and what makes a Hall of Famer, it got me thinking: “How many current players are Hall of Famer?”
I came up with my own list and I broke it down into five categories: No-Brainer Hall of Famers, Likely Hall of Famers, Off to a Good Start for the Hall of Fame, They Have a Shot at the Hall of Fame … and the fifth category is … David Ortiz. I came up with two “No-Brainers,” four “Likely Hall of Famers” and a whole slew of “Too Early to Tell, but Off to a Good Start” and “They Have a Shot” Hall of Famers. Ortiz is a unique situation that I’ll explain.
Albert Pujols
Hall of Fame discussions fascinate me. There are obviously easy picks for the Hall of Fame — guys like Randy Johnson and next year Ken Griffey Jr. are slam dunks, then there are the guys that are a bit borderline, guys like Craig Biggio or Barry Larkin. They’re the ones who create interesting debate. One thing that cracks me up in a Facebook discussion group are people who get sincerely angry over what they see as “unworthy” people in the Hall of Fame — somehow thinking that guys like Biggio and Larkin or Don Sutton somehow “disgrace” or water down “real Hall of Famers” like Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron and Lou Gehrig. I honestly don’t understand that view. I truly don’t. I feel like there’s bigger things in the world to be angry about — like great players like Dick Allen or Gil Hodges who for whatever mystifying reason simply cannot get in the Hall … or global warming … or Citizens United. Those are things worth getting angry about. I think there are probably some unworthy guys in the Hall, mostly old-timers put in via the Veterans Committee back in the day when the committee was beset by too much cronyism.
Clayton Kershaw
There are more than 17,000 men who have ever played Major League Baseball, and a whopping 215 of them are in the Hall of Fame as players. That’s 1.2 percent. That’s one player out of 80 who has ever played. That means 98.8 percent of the guys who have ever played in the entire history of baseball are not Hall of Famers. I don’t think it somehow detracts from Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron’s accomplishments if that number is 1.3 or 1.4 percent. They’re all the elite of the elite no matter what.
Anyway, here is my list of current players. Tell me what you think.
No-Brainer Hall of Famers
Albert Pujols
Already has 500 home runs, has won a Rookie of the Year award, three MVPs and a .317 lifetime hitter. He’s a first-ballot lock. His numbers have dropped off in recent years, but he should still make it to 3,000 hits. He is at 2,500 hits and is still only 35. He should also crack 600 home runs.
Ichiro
Ichiro
Simply the best Japanese player ever. He is 41 and is sitting at 2,844 hits, so he may not make 3,000. I don’t think he needs to get 3,000 hits to make the Hall of Fame. If you include his Japan League numbers, he actually has more than 4,000 hits. In one 10-year stretch, he averaged an incredible 224 hits a year. And he has stolen nearly 500 bases and has an MVP and Rookie of the Year award and 10 Gold Gloves — add to that a .317 lifetime average. I’m a little critical of his low OPS (.771), but that won’t hurt his HOF vote.
Likely Hall of Famers
Clayton Kershaw
Really, I probably could have put him in the No-Brainer category, but he simply hasn’t played enough years yet. He already has three Cy Young awards. He is 98-49 for his career and incredibly is still only 27 and has only pitched seven years. He could win 150 games before the age of 30. He has also struck out over 200 batters five times.
Miguel Cabrera
A rare triple crown winner, three-time batting champ, has won two MVP awards, .320 lifetime hitter, led the league in home runs twice, 390 home runs and 2,186 hits and he is still only 32. Barring major injuries, he should easily reach 3,000 hits (he should do it by the time he is 37) and 500 home runs. Even if he doesn’t hit those milestones, he likely gets in the Hall of Fame.
Robinson Cano
A lot of people seem to forget about this guy. He is a .310 hitter with 218 home runs as a second baseman. He has won two Gold Gloves and has finished in the top six of the MVP voting six times. He is also only 32. In another five years (at the age of 36), he could have over 300 home runs, 2,500 hits and 1,300 RBIs.
Adrian Beltre
Adrian Beltre
Barring injury, Beltre should actually reach 3,000 hits before Pujols. He is at 2,600 hits and will be 36 in April. He also has 395 career home runs and four Gold Gloves. If he stays healthy, he should reach 3,000 hits by the age of 38. When he does, he will be only the ninth player ever with 3,000 hits and 400 home runs (one of those is Alex Rodriguez). I doubt he gets to 500 home runs, but he doesn’t need to. 3,000 hits is automatic Hall of Fame, but if he falls short, he should get in anyway. It just might take him longer.
David Ortiz’s own special category
David Ortiz
I couldn’t figure out what category to put David Ortiz in, so I just put him in his own category because Ortiz creates a unique debate. I’ve seen in a baseball group on Facebook that he is the most polarising player in the game other than Pete Rose, which surprised me, because I’m used to Boston fans who love him. Ortiz is pretty close to Hall of Fame numbers just looking at his raw stats, including 466 regular season home runs and 17 postseason home runs (His postseason resume includes a World Series MVP and an ALCS MVP). He also has 10 All-Star appearances and has finished in the top five of the MVP voting five times. I think it will help his case a lot if he can reach 500 home runs. Look at Fred McGriff at 493 home runs who can’t get in the Hall of Fame.
However, Ortiz presents a bit of a conundrum for two reasons. One is he’s been a DH most of his career and secondly, there are pretty strong suspicions that he has juiced. Looking at the DH question, I’d respond that there’s already two players in the Hall of Fame who played a lot of games at DH — Frank Thomas and Paul Molitor. Thomas played over half of his games (1,300) at DH while Molitor played more than 1,100 games at DH. I don’t understand the Hall of Fame bias against the DH. It’s a position that has been around for more than 40 years now, and guys like Reggie Jackson and Harmon Killebrew didn’t get in the Hall of Fame because they played the field.
The bigger issue with Ortiz is going to be the PED suspicions. Ortiz tested positive for something in 2003. He insists it was a supplement. No one knows what it is; that information has never been released. I try to point this out when people say Ortiz tested positive for steroids — “No, you don’t know that for a fact, you don’t know what he tested positive for.” I think the suspicions will hurt his Hall of Fame vote, but one thing that I think will help Ortiz a LOT is if Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell are voted into the Hall of Fame ahead of him. There are also strong suspicions about Piazza (in fact, Piazza admitted he took Andro in the 1990s, back when it wasn’t against the rules of baseball and it could be bought off a shelf) and Bagwell. Piazza got 69 percent of the Hall of Fame vote in 2014 and I predict he gets in the Hall in 2015. Bagwell got 59 percent of the vote in 2014 and I think he has a legitimate shot at the Hall of Fame in 2015 when the only shoo-ins are Ken Griffey Jr. and Trevor Hoffmann. With Piazza and Bagwell, who aren’t in the Hall for one reason and one reason only — suspicion — finally making the Hall of Fame, that will help Ortiz’s case, I believe. Hall of Fame voters are starting to ignore suspicions.
Too Early to Tell, but Guys off to a Good Start
Mike Trout
He’s only in his fourth year, but he has a Rookie of the Year award, an MVP, and two second-place MVP finishes. His numbers dipped slightly last year, but he is off to such a spectacular start to his young career, he certainly looks like a Hall of Famer already.
Felix Hernandez
Felix Hernandez
Hernandez to me is close to the “likely” category. I think he needs a few more strong years to make his case. He has a Cy Young (he could have won another one last year, IMO) and has already won 125 games before the age of 29. He has twice led the league in ERA and struck out over 200 batters six times. He could pitch another 10 years and he could win another 125 games at least. We’ll see. 250 is the new 300, I believe. One of the things that has hurt him a bit is a lack of run support in Seattle, but the Mariners are putting together a better team behind him. Another thing that hurts him is for an elite pitcher, he ends up with a ton of no-decisions (86 no-decisions in 10 seasons. Again, I think lack of run support is part of the reason for that. ); It might be completely unfair, but wins is something voters look at. Hernandez has only won more than 15 games once.
Buster Posey
A Rookie of the Year, MVP winner, batting champion (as a catcher), three-time World Series winner, .308 hitter and he’s only been in the league five years. He is still only 28.
Craig Kimbrel
I’m not a big fan of the saves stat, but he has an incredible 186 saves in his first four full seasons. And an incredible 476 strikeouts in 289 innings. He won’t be 27 until May. A Rookie of the Year award winner and already has won two Rolaids Relief Pitcher awards. Top five in the Cy Young voting twice (though relief pitchers virtually never win Cy Youngs anymore).
Andrew McCutchen
Has an MVP and two other top-3 MVP finishes. .299 career hitter with power (128 home runs) and speed (143 steals) in only six years. He is only 28 and has a lot of years left.
Madison Bumgarner
Honestly, if not for his World Series exploits, I don’t know if I would put him on the list, but you can’t ignore what he has done in the postseason so far (and I believe postseason play helps with the voting). He’s been on three World Series winners, has a World Series MVP, an NLCS MVP and is 4-0 with a mind-blowing 0.25 ERA in the World Series. He is 67-49 overall in five seasons, but he is still only 25. He could have a lot of years left.
Giancarlo Stanton
Giancarlo Stanton
He’s only 25 and already has 154 career home runs. He’s had three 30+ home run seasons out of five full seasons. He needs to stay healthy. He’s had two major injuries so far. He finished second as an MVP last year. He could have over 300 home runs before he hits 30.
Guys with a Shot — get back to me in five years
I would say probably most of these guys will not make the Hall of Fame but I am throwing their names out there for the heck of it. I see these as guys who have had solid careers so far but are probably currently short of the Hall of Fame. However, with another four or five excellent years, some of them might have a chance. What I keep thinking is, honestly, five years ago, I would not have thought of Adrian Beltre as a Hall of Famer, but he has had a nice resurgence of his career in his early- to mid-30s. These guys are all capable of a similar kind of resurgence. These are people that I put in the category of “get back to me in five years and we’ll see where they’re at.”
Yadier Molina
Yadier Molina
Simply the best defensive catcher of his generation. Seven straight Gold Gloves. He doesn’t hit a lot of home runs or drive in a lot of runs (his best RBI year is 80) so his offence gets overlooked, but he’s hit over .300 four times and is a career .284 hitter. An outstanding defensive catcher hitting over .300 is nothing to sneeze at. If he ends up with 10-12 Gold Gloves and has at least a couple more years hitting over .300, you have to take him seriously for the Hall of Fame.
CC Sabathia
Believe it or not, he is still only 34 and already has 208 wins. His productivity has gone down the last couple of years and he’s had some injuries, but if he regains his health, pitches effectively for another five or six years and ends up with 260 to 270 wins, you have to take him seriously for the Hall of Fame. He has won a Cy Young and finished in the top five of the Cy Young voting four other times.
Joe Mauer
Has won three batting titles and an MVP and is a career .319 hitter. He is still only 32, so another five or six years over .300, he has a chance for the Hall of Fame. Plus, Steve Lardy gets mad if I don’t include at least one Minnesota Twin. Last year, his numbers dipped.
Dustin Pedroia
Dustin Pedroia
A .299 hitter who has won an MVP and a Rookie of the Year award. His power numbers have dipped because of a bad thumb, but he has had surgery on the thumb. He is also an outstanding defensive player. Four Gold Gloves and amazingly has made a total of 40 errors in eight full seasons — at second base. Steve Sax once had 30 errors at second base … in one season. Pedroia averages five errors a year … at second base. His offence declined last year and he needs to regain his offensive form he had earlier in his career to have a good shot at the Hall of Fame. He’s still only 31.
Justin Verlander
152 wins in 10 seasons, an MVP, a Rookie of the Year award and a Cy Young (as well as second-place and third-place Cy Young finishes two other seasons). Led the league in strikeouts three times. His velocity and productivity have really dropped in the past two seasons, however. He is still only 32. If he can regain some of the form he had earlier in his career, gets over 200 wins, he has a shot at the Hall of Fame.
Max Scherzer
He is still only 30. He has a Cy Young and is 91-50 in six full seasons with over 200 strikeouts three straight seasons. I wouldn’t bother mentioning him, except Washington just gave him $210 million over seven years … they must know something.
Jimmy Rollins
He is only a .267 career hitter, and the only reason I’ve included him on this list is, believe it or not, he actually has a plausible chance at 3,000 hits. Jimmy Rollins is only 35 and has 2,306 hits. If he averages 140 hits over the next five years … he is at 3,000, and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame discussion. Rollins has won an MVP and once had an incredible season in which he had 30 HRs, 20 triples and 40 stolen bases. No one else has ever done that in the history of baseball. Add to that four Gold Gloves.
Jose Reyes
A somewhat underrated player, I believe. He has a batting title, led the league in triples four times and led the league in steals three times and led the league in hits once. And a .291 career hitter. He is still only 32 and could easily end up with more than 2,500 hits and 600 steals in another five years.
Adam Wainwright
He has finished in the top 3 of the Cy Young vote four times. Has won 20 games twice and 19 or more games four times. He has 119 wins at 33, and a career ERA of 3.01. If he wins about 70 games over the next five years … time to talk.
Joey Votto
He is still just 31. He had a down year last year, but before 2014, he had five seasons over .300 and five seasons with 24 or more home runs. He has won an MVP and came in sixth two other years. .310 career hitter who walks a lot (he has led the NL in OBP four times), hits a ton of doubles and has a career OPS of .950. An all-around solid player, but he needs to do more to get in the Hall.
Honourable mentions for discussion — Chase Utley, Troy Tulowitzki, Mark Buehrle, Mark Teixeira, David Price, Zack Greinke, Carlos Beltran, Evan Longoria, Tim Hudson, Justin Morneau, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester. I’m sure there’s LOTS of others who could be mentioned that I didn’t think of.
Raley’s, a fairly major supermarket chain in California, announced this week that it will no longer sell any tobacco products in its stores.
Raley’s is the second large store chain to refuse to sell tobacco products. The first was CVS Pharmacies, which made its decision last year.
A press release from the company states:
“This is not a decision that we’ve taken lightly. There is a very strong correlation between tobacco use and many serious health issues … At this time, the evidence against tobacco usage is simply too strong to ignore.”
Hopefully, more chains will join in. It seems to be a trend. Raley’s owns 128 supermarkets in Northern California and Nevada.
The City of New Orleans, famous for its iconic smoky blues and jazz clubs, is considering a full smoking ban which would apply to all bars and casinos.
This would be a great accomplishment for the anti-smoking movement. The political will behind smoking bans has withered in the past few years. I don’t believe there’s been a new statewide ban anywhere for at least three or four years (I believe Indiana was the last state to impose a restaurant smoking ban — in 2012. Thirty-nine states have partial or complete bans on indoor smoking, but over the past few years, the mantle of smoking bans has been passed on to cities and counties in those 11 remaining states, which are mostly in the South, all very conservative and have very anti-regulation state Legislatures.).
Anyway, Louisiana already has a statewide restaurant smoking ban. The New Orleans proposal would expand that ban to bars, clubs and taverns.
The American Cancer Society conducted a poll in mid-December finding that 67 percent of the respondents either “somewhat” or “strongly” support a total smoking ban for New Orleans, while only 32 percent “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose the total smoking ban.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they are more likely to go to bars or casinos if there is a smoking ban … and the number for regular smokers is higher — 64 percent (that doesn’t surprise me, plenty of smokers have told me they hate smoky bars, too.).
In a quote in this story from “Gambit,” a New Orleans news Website:
“We ask the New Orleans City Council to pass a comprehensive smoke-free ordinance protecting all workers,” said Amber Stevens, a cancer survivor who has volunteered with the ACS for 17 years. Stevens’ mother and husband also are cancer survivors. “I’m more likely to go into more places without breathing heavy smoke. … Why do we have to be punished? We love New Orleans entertainment as much as anyone else.”
There is opposition to the proposal, from the French Quarter Business League and (for some reason) the Louisiana State Police. The crux of their opposition is fear over lost revenues and lost taxes.
From the story:
In a Nov. 12 statement, Chris Young of the French Quarter Business League (FQBL) said the measure “will have a devastating impact on badly needed tax revenues that provide police and fire protection, maintain the streets, pays government employees and keeps the city moving ahead.” He added that the ordinance “cuts against New Orleans’ strong tradition of tolerance and diverse lifestyles.”
The Louisiana State Police projects a loss of $100 million in tax revenues over 2 years from the ban. A loss of $50 million a year? Seriously? Tourists will stop going to New Orleans because of a smoking ban? When most of those tourists are coming from parts of the U.S. that don’t allow smoking anywhere (39 states, remember)? Pshaw! (The American Cancer Association essentially said the same thing…)
Later this month, a special committee will be voting on baseball’s “Golden Age” Hall of Fame nominees. These are players primarily from the 1960s and earlier (though a few played into the 70s). At the top of that list is yet again Gil Hodges.
I’m part of a Facebook group of very dedicated people working hard behind the scenes to help get Hodges finally into the Hall of Fame (I mostly just read and learn). Why he isn’t is in the Hall of Fame is beyond me, there are a few flaws in his overall statistics, but honestly, they’re minor, and his numbers stack up pretty well with a LOT of players who are in the Hall of Fame. Frankly, his numbers are pretty comparable to his teammate Duke Snider’s, who made the Hall of Fame 34 years ago.
The only reason I can think of is Hodges died quite a while ago, in 1972, a relatively young man at 47. At the time, he was a fairly successful manager. I believe if he had lived longer and had been in the public spotlight longer, he might have been in the Hall of Fame by now. Unfortunately, “out of sight, out of mind,” likely hurt him with a lot of voters over the years. It’s such a huge oversight that he isn’t in the HofF.
One thing hurting Hodges in the Golden Age Committee vote is there are some extremely strong candidates in the 2014 nominees (the committee now only votes every three years, so if Hodges doesn’t make it, his family will have to wait until 2017.). The vote is taking place later this year.
(As an aside, I noticed there seem to be a LOT of Chicago White Sox on this list. I think White Sox players tend to get overlooked because the Cubs get more attention.)
Here’s some of the biggest names being considered, including a couple of Steve Lardy’s Minnesota Twins boys! I use sort of a guide as “HofF worthy years,” “Good years, but not HofF,” and “Injured/bench player/poor years”. One thing most of these players had in common was relatively short careers that ended in their mid-30s, which is why they have trouble getting in the Hall of Fame. It’s totally subjective, but I just use it as a point of discussion, nothing more:
Gil Hodges
HofF worthy years: 7
Good years, not HofF: 4 (tough one, because of a couple of these years were actually pretty good — .254, 32, 102 and .265, 32, 87 — and could easily go in the HofF category, but I’m trying to be tough)
Injured/bench player/poor years: 7
Strengths:
8-time All-Star
370 HRs, 10th all-time at the time of his retirement
370 HRs, No. 1 for right-handed home runs all-time at the time of his retirement. Yup, No. 1.
30 or more HRs, 6 times
100 or more RBIs, 7 straight years
80 or more RBIs, 10 times
20 or more HRs, 11 times
Was a big part of a team that won 7 pennants and two World Series titles
3 Gold Gloves
And this helps, too … managed a World Series winning team in 1969 with the New York Mets.
Hodges even walked a lot (he had seven seasons of 70 or more walks, I see him as a prototype of the high walk/high strikeout power hitters that are the rage today), to make up for an OK batting average. His career OPS was .846 (higher than HofF’ers Carl Yazstremski, Reggie Jackson, Kirby Puckett, Roberto Clemente, Eddie Murray and several others.)
Weaknesses:
Never won an MVP, never even in the top 6
The only other weakness I can find is his career batting average was just .273, and he only ever hit over .300 twice. However, he did hit over .280 six times and his career OBP was a solid .359 — hey, that’s the same as Ichiro’s OBP! Keep in mind Harmon Killebrew is in the HofF with a batting average of .256 and Reggie Jackson with .262, Cal Ripken Jr. with .276 and Andre Dawson with .279.
Other very good candidates
Tony Oliva (A Steve Lardy boy!)
Tony Oliva
HofF worthy years: 6
Good, not HofF worthy: 4
Poor years/bench/injured: 4
Strengths
Won three batting titles
8-time All-Star
Hit over .300 6 times
.304 career average
Twice finished second in MVP vote
Rookie of the Year winner
Led AL in hits five times
Led AL in doubles four times
20 or more HRs five times
80 or more RBIs eight times
Weaknesses:
Only two seasons with over 100 RBIs
Only one Gold Glove award
Only seven seasons with more than 500 at-bats
Oliva had a very short career, only had 6,300 at-bats (the equivalent of 11 full seasons), and he played in fewer than 1,700 games. He didn’t become a full-time player until he was 25 and was done by the time he was 36. This has likely kept him out of the Hall of Fame; he simply didn’t compile a lot of numbers. Oliva got hurt a lot — he only had seven seasons in which he played more than 132 games. You can see why Tony Oliva is in a grey area for the Hall of Fame. A brilliant, yet short, career. Playing in Minnesota likely didn’t help him, either with the lack of publicity.
Jim Kaat
Jim Kaat (Another Lardy boy)
Jim Kaat actually got the most votes during the Golden Era Committee’s last vote in 2011 for someone who didn’t make the Hall of Fame. Only Ron Santo garnered enough votes to get in.
HofF worthy years: 6
Good, but not HofF-worthy: 6
Poor years/injured: 13
Strengths
15 Gold Gloves
Won 283 games
Won 20 games three times
14 or more wins 11 times
25th all-time in innings pitched (4,500, the equivalent of 250 innings a year for 18 years)
Led the AL in wins in 1966 (25)
Weaknesses
Had 13 bad and/or injured seasons or was coming out of the bullpen
Only made 3 All-Star teams
Never won a Cy Young (his best year, there was only one award, and that went to Koufax, other than that, never seriously a Cy Young candidate)
Career ERA of 3.45 in pitching-heavy era is just OK.
Jim Kaat, another of Steve Lardy’s boys from Minnesota, is what’s known as a “compiler,” the opposite of Tony Oliva, guys that aren’t necessarily considered elite players of their era, but they avoided a lot of injuries and played a long time. Kaat was a horse who started 625 games and completed 180. Kaat pitched into his early 40s, though his last really good year was at the age of 36. He had some poor seasons (9-17, 13-14, 12-14 and 6-11).
My feeling is many of Kaat’s statistics are comparable to Burt Blyleven’s (other than strikeouts). Blyleven only was an All-Star twice, only won more than 17 games twice, but made the HofF with 287 wins by sticking around forever, pitching a ton of games and innings and compiling a lot of stats in the process. Blyleven’s election to the HofF will make it easier for guys like Kaat, Tommy John and Jack Morris to get in. Guys who were good for a long time without necessarily being elite. Kaat’s amazing 15 Gold Gloves helps him, too.
Minnie Miñoso
Minnie Miñoso
HofF-worthy years: 8
Good, not HofF-worthy: 3
Poor years/injured/bench: 4
Strengths:
.298 career hitter
Hit over .300 8 times
7-time All-Star
Led league in stolen bases three times
Four times in the top 4 in MVP vote
Finished second as Rookie of the Year
Won three Gold Gloves
Good power/speed combo numbers: 10 times 10 or more HRs, 9 times 10 or more steals, 7 times 80 or more RBIs, 11 times 89 or more runs scored
Led AL in triples three times
Weaknesses:
Like Oliva, a very short career, only 6,579 ABs in his career. Wasn’t a full-time player until he was 25 and was done as a full-time player at 35.
For a speed guy, actually had a poor percentage of successful steals — barely 60 percent
I have to be honest. I never heard of Minnie Miñoso until recently, but in looking up his stats, they were very solid. Very similar to Oliva’s. (And they are both Cuban, too) More speed numbers, not quite as much power, but close.
Miñoso is definitely a solid candidate. A guy with decent power, drove in runs, scored runs and hit for average. He simply didn’t have a long enough career to compile numbers, which is why he has waited so long to get in the HofF. That and he played a lot of his career in Cleveland and for the White Sox.
Luis Tiant
Luis Tiant (A Pepe guy)
Pepe’s favourite player when he was a kid.
HofF-worthy years: 6
Good, not HofF-worthy: 5
Poor years/injured/bullpen: 8
Strengths:
Won 20 games four times
Twice led the AL in ERA, including an incredible 1.60 one season
3.30 career ERA is solid
187 complete games and 49 shutouts (21st all-time)
Weaknesses:
Only made 3 All-Star teams
Only won 15 or more games 6 times in 19-year career
Had some bad seasons (9-20, 1-7, 8-9, 11-11)
Never won a Cy Young, never finished higher than fourth in voting
Tiant is another borderline guy. He had a few really brilliant seasons, but had a number of mediocre or bad years, too, which is why he is a fringe Hall-of-Famer. His career reminds me a bit of Curt Schilling’s, only Schilling has a postseason resume Tiant wasn’t able to compile.
Dick Allen
Dick Allen
HofF-worthy years: 8
Good, not HofF-worthy: 3
Poor years/bench/injured: 4
Strengths:
Solid .292 batting average
Hit over .300 7 times
Career OPS of .912 (Still 53rd all time despite all the inflated OPS’s of the Steroid Era, ahead of Mike Schmidt, Willie McCovey, Willie Stargell, Harmon Killebrew and many other Hall of Fame sluggers)
MVP award
Rookie of the Year award
7-time All-Star
1 HR title; 1RBI title
30 or more home runs 6 times
20 or more home runs 10 times
351 HRs; 25th all-time at the time of his retirement
Weaknesses:
Only 6,330 ABs, only played in 1,750 games. His last full-time season was at the age of 30 and he was out of baseball by the time he was 35. He only had 1,597 ABs after the age of 31.
Only had five seasons in which he played more than 128 games
Played for five teams
Very much like Oliva and Miñoso, one of the reasons Dick Allen isn’t in the Hall is his relatively short career (and the fact that he was controversial and was embroiled in a lot of conflicts with teams he played for). He had some astonishing power numbers in the middle of his career (40 HRs in 524 ABs in 1966, 32 HRs in 438 ABs in 1969, 34 HRs in 459 ABs in 1970, , 37 HRs in 506 ABs in 1972, 32 HRs in 462 ABs in 1974). Those are some amazing numbers.
I found this ad campaign absolutely fantastic from the consistently amazing Truth campaign (paid for by the American Legacy Foundation, which comes from Master Settlement Agreement funds — the tobacco industry itself pays for these ads, which has at times really pissed it off.).
It’s a series of images of young Hollywood actors puffing away with the meme “Unpaid Tobacco Spokesman” to creep shame these actors into realizing they’re setting a lame example for kids. They don’t look hip with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth, they don’t look cool, they just look stupid. The ad ends with “They’re the new face of Big Tobacco, and they don’t even know it.”
The ads are part of the Truth.org group’s “Finish it!” campaign, meaning the finish line to stamping out teen smoking is within site.
Included are the guy from Twilight … Edward something, Kristen Stewart, Mary-Kate Olson, Orlando Bloom (Ok, he’s 37, not so young), Chris Brown, Rihanna, Emma Roberts, etc. Young actors or singers. I even saw a flash of Keifer Sutherland in this ad.
This article from Al-Jazeera America features the Truth campaign and its wild success, and flatly says, “The End of Teen Smoking is Here.”
Well, I don’t know about an absolute like that, I suspect we’ll never completely stamp it out, but the latest statistics are stunning. According to the Legacy Foundation, the teen smoking rate today is 9 percent, compared to 23 percent 15 years ago. (I know it’s been dropping dramatically, but 9 percent seems really low — according to the Centers for Disease Control, that rate was 14 percent in 2012.)
The AJA article points out that teens often follow what celebrities are doing on social media and the Truth campaign takes that phenomena and turns it on its head.
In nonprofit meetings across the country, I have no doubt that starry-eyed directors are telling their employees to come up with something that will go viral. The ice bucket challenge to support a cure for ALS was a moon shot, a one-in-a-million public relations hit that set a new standard for nonprofit outreach. Celebrities, politicians and a lot of people in your Facebook feed posted videos of themselves dumping bucketfuls of ice water on their heads, and a portion of them went on to learn about ALS and donate money for research. (The Truth campaign) It was a triumph of creativity and conformity at the same time.
What’s awesome about this Truth campaign is that it was Hollywood for decades and decades that for reasons that to this day mystify me, became the biggest FREE unofficial marketing force for cigarette use throughout much of the 20th century. Countless movies beginning in the 1930s showed smoking as being either tough, suave or cool, and this continued well after the 1964 Surgeon General report … and it was all for free. The tobacco industry didn’t pay a nickel for all that free advertising over the couse of decades. Not … a … nickel. Hard to believe. Big Tobacco didn’t start paying for product placement in movies until Superman II in 1980 and the MSA agreement in 1998 brought that to a halt, and yet smoking in movies actually went UP over the next decade.
Why? Because Hollywood is still stuck with some weird fixation that somehow smoking is cool, hip and suave (the music industry is much the same). They’re still stuck in the 1940s. Well, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and countless other stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age, died of cancer caused by their smoking. Only when studios were threatened with R ratings for depicting smoking in movies did studios really make the effort to curb smoking in movies.
The AJA article does acknowledge that one major factor for the rate of teen smoking dropping, is the meteoric rise in the use of e-cigs among teens. So, it might be roughly the same number of kids still using nicotine products. That’s the down side of these numbers.
Anyway, what’s awesome about the Truth campaign is that it’s helped change the playing field — where once smoking was cool and hip, now it’s seen as stupid. Years ago, Hollywood actors were the icons of making cigarettes cool, now those same techniques are being used to make entertainers look stupid for smoking.
The AJA article:
Reducing teen smoking is no doubt a worthy goal, and the Legacy Foundation has done a better job than most nonprofits getting its message to the people who need to hear it. The foundation received its last major settlement check in 2003 but made it last through prudent financial management. It has successfully undone much of the tobacco industry’s harmful misinformation and it did it in 15 years with rhetoric instead of punishment. Teen smokers can blame Truth when their friends hassle them for lighting up, and the organization deserves credit for that.
As an aside, I would be DYING to know what some of these celebrities think about being featured in this ad. I doubt very many of them are happy about it.
Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen last week celebrated his 80th birthday by announcing he would commemorate the day by smoking a cigarette.
Cohen, who was famous back in the day for being the last of the chain-smoking lounge singers, actually quit smoking 30 years ago.
According to this CBC article:
Cohen, who vowed to start smoking when he turned 80, told the crowd when asked if he would start next week: “Yes, does anybody have a cigarette?
“But quite seriously, does anyone know where you can buy a Turkish or Greek cigarette?” he said to laughs. “I’m looking forward to that first smoke. I’ve been thinking about that for 30 years. It’s one of the few consistent strings of thoughts I’ve been able to locate.”
I found this kind of an interesting story and I discovered a blog dedicated to Leonard Cohen with an entry about how he went from the “Marlboro Man” to an “anti-smoking troubadour.” The post focuses on how Cohen’s song “Everybody Knows” was used in an Australian anti-smoking campaign. This line in “Everybody Knows” which is apparently about cocaine, could easily apply to cigarettes:
“And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you’ve done a line or two”
There are a bunch of articles and links on this blog about interviews done with Leonard Cohen in which he is chain-smoking through the interview. Here is my favourite entry on this post:
Cigarettes, once an obligatory accoutrement for Cohen, have apparently been vanquished. In a June 12, 2008 interview, Cohen discusses his drinking and smoking patterns on earlier tours and how he stopped smoking:
Q: You’ve been working in a room for years; now you’re on a stage. What are the pros and cons?
A: This way, without drinking and smoking, it’s a very, very different situation. Anyone who’s been a heavy drinker and heavy smoker and has the good future to survive that and give it up knows what a very different kind of daily existence one has. I was smoking a couple of packs of cigarettes a day. And I was drinking heavily on these tours.
Q: How did you stop drinking? Did you go into a program?
A: I lost my taste for it. Just like cigarettes. I lost my taste.
The point of the blog post is that while Cohen quit smoking himself, he kind of epitomized the idea that cigarettes were cool in the 70s and 80s, and when asked why he quit, didn’t exactly come across as an advocate against cigarettes. He just said he simply quit. Here is the ad (Warning, Australian ads are really graphic):
Last week, Kevin Millar, former “Cowboy Up” Red Sox and one of the more entertaining voices on the MLB Network, appeared on Dan Patrick’s radio show on ESPN Radio, and Dan Patrick specifically asked him a number of questions about chewing tobacco in light of Tony Gwynn’s recent death from cancer.
To recap, Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer, which appeared in the same cheek as where he always chewed. Baseball is being pressured to ban chewing tobacco on the field. The MLB actually wants to do it, but the players’ union is resisting. Chewing tobacco is already banned on the field at the minor league level and by the NCAA. For some bizarre reason, chew is deeply ingrained in the culture of baseball. A culture that is proving difficult to break.
Millar gave a really honest, articulate and poignant interview, not mincing words about how stupid chewing tobacco is and how he badly wants to quit. Here are a few snippets from the interview.
Miller on how he always chewed when he went out on the baseball field, and now still has the habit of chewing when he goes out to golf.
“This whole thing (with Tony Gwynn) has really opened my eyes. I know it’s a bad habit. I always did it on the field and now on the golf couse … I’m wired that way. Tuesday, I didn’t grab my can on my way to the golf course because of the whole Tony Gwynn situation. I want to quit. There’s got to be a time when you say ‘enough is enough.'”
Millar said he didn’t start chewing until 1996 when he was given his first can of Copenhagen by former big league pitcher Pascual Perez.
“For some reason … only on the baseball field. I never was a guy who needed it in hotel rooms or on the bus. I don’t know if I thought it was a cool thing to do because you’re a ballplayer or what.”
Patrick brought up the point that some people have claimed that chewing tobacco is a Performance Enhancement Drug (apparently because you get a charge of energy from the nicotine?). Patrick pointed out that perhaps baseball could ban chew on these grounds. Millar disagreed.
” It’s an addiction. It’s a choice. It’s a bad choice. I don’t that it’s a performance enhance. It’s just a bad choice,” he said.
Patrick made his own poignant comment of why did it take Tony Gwynn’s death to get so many ballplayers thinking about chew?
“I hate the fact that it took the death of a hall of famer to realize what it can do to you,” Patrick said. “Why did it take that?”
“We know it’s stupid every time you stick your finger in there and grab a pinch,” Millar responded. He suggested one reason more players don’t think about it is because they think that what happened to Gwynn could never happen to them.
Millar also talked his father, who required a quadruple bypass after just 12 years of smoking. He acknowledged that not everyone who smokes who chews get cancer because there is a genetic component to cancer, but boy, I loved his next statement, because he hits it dead-on. The fact is, not every chewer dies of oral cancer and not every smoker dies of lung cancer, but boy, you sure increase your risk:
“You think ‘it’s not going to happen to me, right. It’s not going to happen to me’ I used to watch Johnny Pesky at 83 years old with a full chew in …. he passed away at 92, 94, he did it for 60 years. At the end of the day, you’re playing Russian roulette,” he said.
“But when it hits home, it makes you think. I have four little kids. I want to be around,” Millar concluded.
The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids put out an interesting report last week about the various additives tobacco companies are putting into cigarettes today to make them more addictive and hence more deadly. According to this graphic from CTFK, there’s a number of things the tobacco industry has done over the past 50 years to make cigarettes more addictive. I’ve read all about how the tobacco industry has been known for manipulating the level of nicotine in cigarettes. (Something the tobacco industry continues to deny) Anyway, here is an interesting infographic. The various ways the industry increases the intake of nicotine:
Increased Nicotine: Tobacco companies precisely control the delivery and amount of nicotine to create and sustain addiction.
Bronchodilators: These added chemicals expand the lungs’ airways, making it easier for tobacco smoke to pass into the lungs.
Levulinic Acid: Added organic acid salts, like levulinic acid, reduce the harshness of nicotine and make the smoke smoother and less irritating.
Menthol: Menthol cools and numbs the throat to reduce irritation and make the smoke feel smoother.
Sugars and Acetaldehyde: Added sugars make tobacco smoke easier to inhale and, when burned in cigarettes, form acetaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical that enhances nicotine’s addictive effects.
Ammonia: Added ammonia compounds produce higher levels of “freebase” nicotine and increase the speed with which nicotine hits the brain.
“Most people would think that 50 years after we learned that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, cigarettes would be safer. What’s shocking about the report we issued today is that we’ve found that a smoker today has more than twice the risk of lung cancer than a smoker fifty years ago, as a direct result of design changes made by the industry,” Matt Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said in an interview with ThinkProgress.
(One note about the Matt Myers quote. I would disagree with one aspect of his comment. A two- to three-pack-a-day smoker was not uncommon 50 years ago, and that’s almost unheard of today with the breadth of smoking bans, so smokers are not smoking nearly as much as they did 50 years ago. But, his point is taken.) Pretty chilling stuff. The industry has done everything in its power to try and make cigarettes more physically addictive to keep their customers until death do them part.
