"I checked Jeff Bagwell's name on my Hall of Fame ballot the other day and did so without a single reservation. It would be wonderful to see him and Craig Biggio go in together in 2013, Biggio's first year of eligibility. But there's no need to make Bagwell, who is on the ballot for the first time, wait. Besides, doing it this way will give us an excuse to throw a big party for each of them. For a dozen years, Biggio and Bagwell were the Houston Astros, and there was a time it was incomprehensible to think of walking into the home clubhouse at Minute Maid Park and not seeing them. They both had a larger-than-life presence, and managers routinely turned the clubhouse over to them for leadership, enforcing rules and playing the game the right way. Hall of Fame voting is an inexact science, especially when it concerns a player you don't know well. Sometimes, all you have are the numbers. In Bagwell's case, the numbers hold up nicely. But he was more than that. He was a winner and a leader, a quiet leader, the best kind. He was a great hitter and also a great baserunner and defensive first baseman. He was Top 10 in National League MVP voting six times and a four-time All-Star. He finished 51 home runs short of the magical 500-homer threshold, but steroids have distorted that number anyway. Actually, there are all kinds of ways to decide if a player is worthy of a Hall of Fame vote. One is to consider his entire body of work. For instance, Bert Blyleven and Don Sutton may never have been the most dominant pitchers of their era, but both had long, amazing, Hall of Fame-worthy careers. And then there are players like Sandy Koufax. He had just five Hall of Fame seasons, but they were astonishing: 111-34, 1.95 ERA, 176 starts, 100 complete games, 316 walks, 1,444 strikeouts. To some of us, a player needs at least 10 Hall of Fame seasons to be voted in, but when you're the best that ever lived for five years, you sail in." Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/justice/baseball/7354116.html
