Wednesday Bantering: Ortiz to the Hall of Fame

Happy Wednesday. I had a few days away from the everyday world. I went up to see my mom and sister and some friends. Unfortunately, I missed seeing my son because he had been exposed to Covid at work and wasn’t feeling well. He tested negative on one of those rapid tests, but the test was likely wrong.

The topic of conversation, with everyone, seemed to be mental health. A friend’s dad passed, which brings up things even when you know it is coming. And, of course, the whole pandemic has turned up the anxiety with everyone. So things that we would generally handle fairly easily, can cause us more issues than usual.

Anyway, the point is to be nice to people, listen and help out where we can. If you can take a little pressure off someone for a moment, do it.

I generally think “Let’s Talk” is as much about cheap advertising as anything, but talk to your friends and family and see how they are doing. And, if you feel you need to speak to someone, do it. Everyone needs a hand, sooner or later.

The Hall of Fame vote counts were released, and the only one voted into the Hall is David Ortiz. Congratulations to him.

Ortiz is great at PR. Bonds, Clemens, Schilling (especially Schilling) didn’t make many friends along the way. Ortiz is famous for being friendly with everyone. Maybe shallowly, but he treated everyone like they were a friend.

There is a lesson in there. When I was young, I knew this guy who could walk around a room of a hundred people and say ‘Hi, how are you?’ to every one of them. I mean, by the time they answered, he would be four people further down the line. So I thought that was a skill I needed to learn.

I would try, but the first one would start talking, and I’d stop and, well, I’d never make it around the whole room because I’d end up having one conversation in the time he could circle the room.

There is a lesson in Ortiz’s election. You can do better in life if you are good to people. Or perhaps, at least, if you want to be elected to anything, don’t have sex with an underage babysitter.

Bonds, Clemens and Schilling’s chances to make the Hall now hang on the Veteran’s Committee (or whatever they call that these days.

This is a far shorter way of saying all the above:

I’m glad to see Scott Rolen’s vote count go up. He was on 63,2% of the ballots this year, up from 52.9% last year. So it looks like he has a good shot at making it in the next couple of years.

Gary Sheffield, who made it to that 75% mark in our polls, was on 40.6% of the ballots, the same number he had last year. That was Sheffield’s eighth time on the ballot, so it is improbable he’ll be making it to the Hall.

Mark Buehrle was only on 5.8% of the Writers’s ballots, barely making it over the line to stay on the ballot next year.

The full list:

And the Owners and Players are talking.

• The Players want the minimum salary to be $775,000. The owners counter at $615,000.
• They are arguing about wages for pre-arbitration salaries.
• The Players and Owners have agreed to a ‘bonus pool’ for pre-arbitration players, but Owners want it to be $10 million, Players $100 million.
• And the Owners have dropped their wish to get rid of the ‘Super Two’ status.

The good news is that they are still talking. I can’t see them coming to an agreement in time for Spring Training to start on time.