Ahh, Canada. Where the air is fresher, the water colder, and the politics gentler.
Indeed, at a recent Canadian Parliamentary pow-wow, Chris Brittle, the representative for St. Catharines of Southern Ontario, called upon the voters of the Baseball Writers Association to vote Tim Raines into the Hall of Fame in this, his final year of eligibility.
Check it out:
Read more about it here at Cut4.
Indeed, Raines is a difficult case for the Hall of Fame. On the one hand, he did accumulate 66.4 WAR over his 23 year career (81st overall in MLB history), but he had just six seasons over the 5.0 WAR mark, and just the one five-year peak stretch from 1983-1987.
Now don’t get me wrong, that’s a brilliant career by every other standard, but a Hall of Fame peak tends to last longer than any one five-year stretch and the defensive metrics didn’t exactly love him. All in all, I think Raines should probably just miss the Hall of Fame, but hey, I’m no elected official, ey?