Tuesday, January 8, 2013

My Hypothetical 2013 MLB Hall of Fame Ballot

Results of Major League Baseball's Hall of Faming voting are scheduled to be announced tomorrow, and just like each of the past few years, I'm posting here my hypothetical Hall of Fame ballot.  In other words, if I had a vote, for whom would I vote.  If you've read any of those posts, you know that I have a rather inclusive set of standards for the Hall of Fame -- I'd assume among the more inclusive you will find.  So, consistently, I would want to vote for more than the 10 players to which one is limited.  Given the additions to the ballot this year, that limitation becomes even more pronounced, as I will demonstrate momentarily, and as Jayson Stark has noted and Jim Caple has discussed more specifically and fully.

So, to begin, let's revisit the ballot from a year ago.  Last year, the 10 names I would have chosen were Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Fred McGriff,  Barry Larkin, Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith, and Alan Trammell.  Had I had the option to vote for more than 10, I also would have included Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Juan Gonzalez, Edgar Martinez, Bernie Williams, and Ruben Sierra.

Of those names, Larkin was elected last year, while Juan Gonzalez and Ruben Sierra failed to garner at least five percent of the vote on last year's ballot, so each is now removed from the ballot.  The other 13 remain, and they are joined by 24 new players who have reached eligibility.  The newly eligible players include a long list of heavyweights, such as Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa.  To me, all six of those players belong, and the only one about whom I might even entertain doubts Schilling, though those doubts would be very slight, as I looked at his case a few years ago and determined that I found him worthy.

So, I'm adding six names to a ballot that would already have nine holdovers, and that's not even counting the other four I would have liked to have included last year as well as others new to this year's ballot whom I would like to include but for whom I know I wouldn't have room.  In other words, if there was ever a case for the 10-player limit being a problem, this year seems to show it.  I fear a few players who might otherwise have garnered five percent of the vote will fall off the ballot and thus lose eligibility (until they become eligible for the veterans' committee years from now or until the rules change), simply because of the numbers game.  And that is a problem, because while some might say a 10-player limit is good because it forces folks to make difficult decisions, I would argue that it excludes some views of what constitutes a Hall of Famer, like my view, and I would think that the point of having hundreds of voters is that among them we would find a smattering of different philosophies that, put together, create a consensus.  When some philosophies are already excluded, though they needn't be, we fail in gaining an adequate consensus. You know, it's kind of like how democracy is supposed to work ...

All of that said, then, if I had a ballot and, regretfully, could only vote for 10 players, this would, in rough order of my sense of their worthiness for induction, be my ballot:

Barry Bonds
Roger Clemens
Craig Biggio
Mike Piazza
Mark McGwire
Sammy Sosa
Rafael Palmeiro
Fred McGriff
Tim Raines
Jeff Bagwell

Perhaps you may have already noticed that despite the fact that I mentioned earlier that I have determined Curt Schilling quite worthy, he's not on that list.  Simply put, there isn't room, and I couldn't justify him over any of the 10 names I've given, and there you go.  Someone I feel is very strongly worthy of induction would not even make my ballot.

Schilling would be number 11 on my list.  Numbers 12 and 13 are a bit heartbreaking, as number 12 Jack Morris came close last year and is in his next-to-last year of eligibility, and number 13 Dale Murphy is in his last year of eligibility.  Meanwhile, I would continue to want to vote for Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Don Mattingly, Edgar Martinez, and Bernie Williams, in roughly that order.  I now stand at 19 players for whom I would want to vote, and I still need to cover the remaining newly eligible players.

Among such players, the name that most jumps out at me is Kenny Lofton.  He's not a no- or little-doubter like the other six newly eligible players I've mentioned, but a look at his career numbers moves him quite comfortably onto the list of players for whom I'd want to vote, probably at number 14, right behind Dale Murphy.  So, that gives me 20 for whom I'd want to vote, with 17 more players to consider.

Among those remaining 17, two players who amassed more than 2,500 hits and whose resumes look otherwise good are Steve Finley and Julio Franco.  I'd put both of them in rather readily, and then we get to the hard part, and for that, I'd like to say that I erred a couple of years ago.  For the 2011 ballot, I indicated that Kevin Brown would be the first player off my list.  Soon thereafter, I changed my mind on that choice, and in retrospect, I think he belongs.  I say this now because in the end I think that Kevin Brown had a better career than the next player I'm considering, whose pitching career overlapped with Brown's quite a bit:  David Wells.  Wells for me is a very borderline case.  In a lot of ways, his career statistics aren't that far from those of Jack Morris, though I think things like more wins and lower ERA, among other factors, make Morris better, so I don't want to say Wells has as good of a case as Morris.  (For a glance at some of these stats as well as stats for everyone on this year's ballot, see here.)  In the end, the strongest things Wells has going for him are his 239 wins, his perfect game, and his persona.  I think it's just enough, though just barely, which puts me at a total of 23 players for my ballot.

The first one off the list this year is Reggie Sanders, who has some intriguing elements to his resume.  For instance, he's one of only a handful of players who both hit 300 home runs and stole 300 bases.  However, he barely crossed both of those plateaus, and with less than 1,700 hits and a batting average of .267, he doesn't make it.

Nor does Shawn Green, who inched over 2,000 hits (2,003 to be exact), drove in 1,070 runs, and hit more than 300 home runs in his career, all of which provided some basis for consideration but didn't add up to enough to make my list.

Sandy Alomar, Royce Clayton, Jeff Conine, and Ryan Klesko all also had resumes that provided the basis for a little bit of consideration.  So, too, did a trio of relievers -- Roberto Hernandez, Jose Mesa, and Mike Stanton -- who all had some interesting numbers and careers and for whom I did want to make an effort to consider because in general I think relievers are too easily overlooked and because in this particular case all three rank among the top 15 in MLB history in appearances, with Stanton second only to Jesse Orosco on that list.  Yet, in the end, none seemed to warrant inclusion.

Meanwhile, though I did glance at their statistics, Jeff Cirillo, Aaron Sele, Todd Walker, Rondell White, and Woody Williams received only very brief consideration before not making my list.

So, in all, though I could only vote for ten players (and, of course, I can't actually vote for any), I would want to vote for 23 if I had a Major League Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Stressing Education

Apparently, some folks at CNBC have come to the conclusion that being a university professor is the least stressful job heading into the year 2013.  As the piece that reaches this conclusion explains, "If you look at the criteria for stressful jobs, things like working under deadlines, physical demands of the job, environmental conditions hazards, is your life at risk, are you responsible for the life of someone else, they rank like 'zero' on pretty much all of them! ... Plus, they're in total control. They teach as many classes as they want and what they want to teach. They tell the students what to do and reign over the classroom. They are the managers of their own stress level."

As someone who is a university professor and who has had other jobs, I can say that this is ludicrous, and it's made even more ludicrous by the inaccuracies in the description.  I don't get to "teach as many classes as [I] want."  While I do have some input into what I will teach, I do not get to teach whatever I want.  I do not "reign over the classroom"; I do set rules, but I'm also obligated to follow rules set up by my university and college, and I don't simply "tell the students what to do." 

Meanwhile, the piece's stated "criteria for stressful jobs" appear to have been applied inadequately to my job.  I have plenty of deadlines, so I'm not sure where that comes from.  While, yes, I don't do heavy lifting or other tasks often designated as "physical demands" for hours on end, there are physical demands in my job that often go overlooked (until, for instance, as happened to me a couple of years ago, one develops back pain that lingers several months after a session of sitting at one's desk grading papers ... to meet a deadline, by the way ...)  In terms of environmental hazards, between 2007 and 2012, my campus office was in a building that suffered and continues to suffer from strong, persistent mold problems.  Perhaps you might think that's an anomaly, but then we might look around the country at the number of faculty members with offices in buildings in various states of disrepair while universities build sports facilities, new amenities, and other structures servicing non-academic priorities.

I could go on, and other have, such as this blog post that addresses CNBC's claim.  I also want to be clear, as I'm sure that I have to be, that I am not complaining.  I'm not suggesting that I don't like my job and that I wish I was doing something else.  Not at all.  Rather, I am attempting to suggest the inaccuracies of the assumptions that appear to have contributed to this CNBC piece, and I am attempting to challenge the misperceptions that might accompany such assumptions.

And it's on that level of misperceptions that I want to focus a little more fully, with a goal of suggesting what this might demonstrate about how teaching is popularly represented in American culture.  Namely, one of the criteria mentioned in this piece is being "responsible for the life of someone else," with the indication in the piece that this criterion applies little, if at all, to university professors.  I assume that this means that university professors aren't associated with saving or protecting lives in crisis moments.  For instance, if I were an EMT who responds to an automobile accident or a fire fighter who rescues people from a burning building, I'd then rank high for this criterion.  There is a difficulty in that connection.  After all, haven't many teachers faced situations in which we have been in a position to respond to students needed counseling, and we have directed them to the appropriate entities at our institutions to do so?  Maybe there's a qualitative and/or quantitative difference between that and the EMT/fire fighter examples, but my question does still seem worth noting.

Meanwhile, the context of "responsible for the life of someone else" seems even more worthy of note.  Even as we hear consistent calls for "accountability" in education -- calls that often get answered by approaches that demonstrate inadequate senses of what education entails (you know, stuff like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top) -- we continue to malign and devalue what teachers do.  When they seek to have some control over their working conditions and the standards by which they are evaluated, they are often portrayed as lazy miscreants hoping to live scot-free off others' money.  In prominent discussions of national security, tons of emphasis is placed on building weapons and using surveillance technologies, without real consideration of how better education systems might lead to a better and more secure society.  Recent discussions on guns in schools include proposals to arm teachers, put armed guards in schools, and the like, without adequate focus on helping our educational institutions have the means by which to help individuals of all sorts work within society rather than against it.

Hell, one of the most prevailing public perceptions is that teachers don't even do anything.  After all, as the saying goes, "those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  (And don't get me started on the problems of that particular bromide.)

What I'm getting at is that the CNBC piece suffers from what I think is a larger cultural problem in regard to education.  Rather than seeing education as vital to society -- as something that not only affects peoples lives, but does so in profound ways -- this piece, like so many other elements of contemporary U.S. culture, reflects a sense of education as a sort of easygoing, unstructured relatively low-impact set of exercises that might have a bit of value, but whose value is largely marginal.  Yet, education can do and mean so much more than that, and when we really invest ourselves in the process of educating, that meaning becomes so much more profound ... and, concurrently, so much more stressful.  After all, it now means something.  Why wouldn't it be stressful?

Perhaps there are university professors out there for whom this is a rather stress-free existence, but then again, there are likely EMTs, fire fighters, entrepreneurs, soldiers, athletes, appliance installers, and so on who fit that same bill.  Indeed, our culture is replete with examples of individuals in all kinds of fields -- even purportedly "stressful" fields -- who seem to have or take it easy in those fields.  Yet, for the many, many of us who take our jobs as university professors seriously, doing so also means quite a bit of stress.  How we structure a course might influence whether or not someone sees value in a field.  How we lead a discussion might help a student feel accepted and valued rather than marginalized.  How we offer comments on papers and how we cover course content might propel students to new insights and valuable connections or at least toward pursuing paths that might lead them to such insights and connections.

This can be -- and is -- wonderful, inspiring, rewarding, and all of those things, but in investing oneself into it in order to make that happen, one also realizes how much more it matters, and that means one acknowledges so much more the responsibilities one has in connection with the lives of others.  That, then, means stress.  And just as it seems so easy in contemporary U.S. society to recognize as leadership (rather than complaint) the soldier, the police officer, or the small business owner who acknowledges the stress of what he or she does, maybe it's time to do an even deeper job of recognizing the same about people who teach.  Unfortunately, this CNBC piece does just the opposite.