Since it’s still Hall Of Fame
Week and we’ve already looked at this year’s inductees, I thought it would be
fun to make a Top 5 list of players who are, without a doubt, Hall worthy, but
for various reasons have not been inducted as of yet. These are players whose
stats and impact on the game of baseball is undeniable, but—for most on the
list—the powers that be (whoever they might be) have felt it in the best
interest of the game to leave them out.
This is strictly my list. These
are players who unjustly have not gotten the honour they so deserve. It is my
hope that one day, others will put aside their prejudices and realize that it
is in the best interest of the game to induct them into the Hall. Enjoy.
Top Five Players Who Should Be In the
Hall of Fame
#5. Tim Raines
After my little intro up top, I
will have to start this profile by saying Tim Raines is probably the only
player on my list not being kept out of the Hall due to a prejudicial reason.
Most likely, Raines hasn’t been inducted yet because it hasn’t been his time.
Every year that goes by, the percentage of the votes he receives grows (this
past January, he received 69.8% of the votes while 75% is the minimum
required). I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets inducted in 2017, but that
doesn’t mean he shouldn’t already be in Cooperstown.
Raines played 23 seasons of Big
League baseball including the first 12 with the Montreal Expos, five with the
Chicago White Sox, three with the New York Yankees before bouncing around his
final three seasons with Oakland, Montreal again, Baltimore and Florida.
He made a name for himself while
with the Expos, the team that drafted him in the fifth round of the 1977
Amateur Draft. While playing only a handful of games in 1979 and 1980, Raines’s
official rookie season was the strike-shortened year of 1981 when he played in
88 games. His .304 average, and National League-leading 71 stolen bases (yup,
that’s right: 71 steals in 88 games) helped him finish second in the NL’s
Rookie of the Year voting. He also helped the Expos into the postseason for the
first (and only) time in franchise history.
Raines would continue to lead
the NL in stolen bases for three more years (78 in 1982, 90 in 1983 and 75 in
1984) while winning the NL batting crown with a .334 average in 1986. He won a
Silver Slugger Award, also in 1986, and played in seven consecutive All-Star
Games from 1981 to 1987. He would finish up with the Expos after the 1990
season and still holds single-season team records for runs scored (133 in 1983)
and triples (13 in 1985) while holding All-time franchise records in runs
scored (947), triples (82), walks (793) and stolen bases (635). Incidentally,
second place on the Expos/Washington Nationals stolen bases list is Marquis
Grissom with 266.
He was traded to the Chicago
White Sox prior to the 1990 season and spent five years with the team, helping
them to the AL West Division title in 1993. While still putting up decent
numbers, they didn’t compare to those he put up with the Expos. He stole 50
bases just once with Chicago (51 in 1991) whereas he did it seven times with
Montreal.
At the end of the 1995 season,
Chicago traded Raines to the New York Yankees, where he was no longer a
full-time player, but platooned with several players in left-field. Raines helped
the Yankees win two World Series in 1996 and 1998 before singing with the
Oakland Athletics for the 1999 season.
Midway through his season with
Oakland, he underwent a kidney biopsy and was diagnosed with lupus. He missed
the rest of the season and all of 2000 undergoing treatment and recovering.
Prior to the 2001 season, he
joined the Montreal Expos for his second stint. He didn’t play many games (47
altogether) and was traded, in a classy move by the Montreal organization, to
the Baltimore Orioles on October 3, so he could play with his son, Tim Raines Jr.
The following day, Tim Junior played centre-field while his dad played in left,
becoming only the second father-son combination to play as teammates in the
same game (the Griffeys being the other).
One final year of baseball
followed in 2002, when Raines played for the Florida Marlins, before calling it
a career at the age of 42. His statistics speak for themselves: 2502 games
played, 2605 hits, a .294 batting average, 1571 runs scored, 170 home runs, 980
RBIs, 1330 walks and 808 stolen bases.
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