It was an online-only girlfriend:

“This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.

“To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.

“It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother’s death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.

“I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.

“In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was.

“Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I’m looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.”

Turns out Notre Dame was informed of the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax at the end of December, prior to the BCS National Championship game:

Notre Dame has confirmed the reported death of Manti Te’o’s girlfriend during the football season was a hoax.

According to university spokesman Dennis Brown, “On December 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia.

The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators.”

How can Te’o be a victim of a hoax he helped to perpetuate? For example, here’s the closing paragraph of a NYT piece on Notre Dame’s win over USC:

It was suggested to Te’o that in the shadows of the Hollywood sign, he had produced the perfect script. Not quite, he said. To have his grandmother and girlfriend around to share in the celebration, “would have been a better script,” Te’o said, “but other than that, I don’t think you can write a better one.”

Yeah, this isn’t going away.

Oh my. It seems Notre Dame and its star linebacker have been caught fibbing about his “inspirational” life story. Deadspin has the scoop:

Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax 

Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school’s football program back to glory, Te’o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te’o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.

Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI’s Pete Thamel described how Te’o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. “Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice,” Thamel wrote.

Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te’o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te’o would appear on ESPN’s College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple’s fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.

Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.

Manti Te’o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.

Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar’s office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there’s no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.

The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te’o.

The rest here.

Details here.

And for you trivia buffs, Chip Kelly got his start coaching at Columbia.

Oh, please:

This is the same Ray Lewis who was charged with two murders, and ended up with a deal to plead guilty to obstruction of justice in exchange for testimony against the two other suspects in the murders. USA Today had a great piece a few days ago on the families of the victims who don’t share in Booker’s “inspiration.”

Slayings not forgotten, Ray Lewis not forgiven

It has been 13 years since two friends were murdered in Atlanta after the Super Bowl, and their families still question the involvement of the Ravens linebacker.

Priscilla Lollar still doesn’t believe her son is dead.

Any day now, she hopes he might finally return from Atlanta, walking through the door of her home in Akron, Ohio, as if nothing happened on the morning of Jan. 31, 2000.

“If I truly accept that he’s not coming back … ” says Lollar, her voice trailing off. “I don’t discuss him in the past. I don’t really acknowledge anything.”

Deep down, she knows he’s gone. She knows it every time she turns on the television and sees Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis — a reminder that her son, Richard, has been dead for 13 years, stabbed to death outside a nightclub in Atlanta, along with his friend from Akron, Jacinth Baker.

Their murders remain unsolved. But as the anniversary of their deaths approaches — and as Lewis dances into the sunset of his NFL career — the victims’ relatives are still seething at him. While Priscilla Lollar says she’s “numb” to Lewis, others want answers. And justice.

The rest here.

Will he be forced to pay back the millions in Tour de France bonuses he bullied people into honoring or the money from a libel suit against the Sunday Times of London? From the Associated Press:

Lance Armstrong has finally come clean.

Armstrong confessed to doping during an interview with Oprah Winfrey taped Monday, just a couple of hours after a wrenching apology to staff at the Livestrong charity he founded and has now been forced to surrender.

The day ended with 2 1/2 hours of questions from Winfrey at a downtown Austin hotel, where she said the world’s most famous cyclist was ‘’forthcoming’’ as she asked him in detail about doping allegations that followed him throughout his seven Tour de France victories.

Speaking on ‘’CBS This Morning,’’ Winfrey said Tuesday she had not planned to address Armstrong’s confession before the interview aired on her OWN network but, ‘’by the time I left Austin and landed in Chicago, you all had already confirmed it.’’

’’So I’m sitting here now because it’s already been confirmed,’’ she added.

The session was to be broadcast on Thursday but Winfrey said it will now run in two parts over two nights because there is so much material. . . .

Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, has filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that accused Armstrong of defrauding the U.S. Postal Service. An attorney familiar with Armstrong’s legal problems told the AP that the Justice Department is highly likely to join the lawsuit. The False Claims Act lawsuit could result in Armstrong paying a substantial amount of money to the U.S. government. The deadline for the department to join the case is Thursday, though the department could seek an extension if necessary.

Way at the end of this CBS Report of Lance Armstrong admitting to Oprah about his illegal doping, is this:

CBS News has also learned Armstrong has indicated he may be willing to testify against others involved in illegal doping.

Once all the information was out and his reputation shattered, Armstrong defiantly tweeted a picture of himself on a couch at home with all seven of the yellow leader’s jerseys on display in frames behind him. But the preponderance of evidence in the USADA report and pending legal challenges on several fronts apparently forced him to change tactics after more a decade of denials.

I like it. If you’re going to go down in a sport that everyone knows is shady, you might as well bring the lot down with you. I assume eventually his argument will be, “yeah, I cheated. But so did everybody else and I was still the best.”

There’s some question if Brent Musburger, fast on the heels of his creepy infatuation with the girlfriend of Alabama’s A. J. McCarron during the BCS National Championship game, called ESPN’s sideline reporter — Holly Rowe — “smokin’” at the conclusion of last night’s Baylor–Kansas basketball game.

Early reporting had Musburger call Rowe “really smokin’ tonight“. . .

“Once again, your final score, Kansas 61, Baylor 44,” Musburger said in the manner he has hundreds of times before. “Coming up next, SportsCenter. For Fran Franschilla and Holly Rowe, who was really smokin’ tonight, I want to say ‘so long from Lawrence.’”

. . . But ESPN has since pushed back declaring Musburger said “it was really smokin’ tonight,” not “who was.”

Here’s the video and I hear “it” as well.

But does that really matter? If Musburger had said a male sideline reporter was “smokin’” tonight, I doubt if anyone would have read anything sexual into it. Yes, Musburger (and the producers in the ESPN truck) were creepy during the National Championship game, but I think the PC word police need to move on with this one.

Each year Rome plays host to the Catholic equivalent of the World Cup, the Clericus Cup. Sixteen five-a-side teams made up of seminarians and priests vie for the title. The Vatican, once a supporter of the event, has officially backed off, criticizing it for “moving away from its goal of educating young people about fair play and sportsmanship.” The young seminarian in the video tells it best, especially when he reveals that he takes inspirational verses from St. Paul and puts them into his shin pad, and admitting that winning is the ultimate goal. Naturally . . .

Typically, stories about pitch invaders during soccer matches tend to involve hooligans interrupting the game to threaten or even cause bodily harm to a player or referee. This time, the pitch invaders during a friendly soccer match between Turkish side Galatasaray S.K. and German side VfR Aalen were two dogs that seemed to be fighting over a plastic bag. They were finally carried away by the grounds crew.

In a Daily Beast piece entitled, “I Was Deluded to Believe Lance Armstrong When He Denied Doping,” Friday Night Lights author and onetime Will Leitch nemesis Buzz Bissinger acknowledges that he got played:

My [August 17, 2012 Newsweek] cover story about Lance Armstrong, my affirmation of faith, was the worst piece of opinion I have ever written. I did a disservice to myself. More important I did a disservice to readers. I did believe what I wrote at the time. I do believe in staking out strong positions. We all do as columnists today, because of the world we live in, craving to differentiate ourselves from the thousands who populate the Internet every hour. . . .

All professional athletes are narcissists; it is the nature of what makes them competitive, and Armstrong, along with Pete Rose, is in the highest echelon. I used to believe that people like that had deluded themselves into their denials for so long, they actually began to believe them, created an alternative reality.

I now realize that I was the one who was delusional to ever think that. Armstrong lied for so long because he knew his career would be destroyed if he told the truth. He knew he would lose not only stature but tens of millions of dollars. Since the best defense is a good offense, he used legal action any time the allegations of blood doping and illegal enhancers were brought up. It was a smart gambit, since it is hard to believe that anyone would have so few scruples as to sue for defamation, like he did with The Times of London, when in fact the body of evidence now shows there was no defamation at all.

More here.

Good morning.

Here are several go-to links to make the second Monday of 2013 a bit more bearable:

• The St. Louis Dispatch’s Bernie Miklasz analyzes the current Cooperstown voting process and suspects that it’s harming the Hall of Fame’s bottom line.
• In Nate Silver’s New York Times analysis on this year’s Hall of Fame vote, Mr. FiveThirtyEight notes the impact of this year’s newly eligible candidates had on the vote totals of returning ones:  

Perhaps the clearest effect of the crowded ballot, however, was realized among candidates who were returning to the ballot from last year. Of the 13 players who carried over from the 2012 ballot, nine received a lower share of the vote, including Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly and Bernie Williams.

This is atypical; instead, players usually add votes with each additional year they spend on the ballot. Since 1967, when the Hall of Fame adopted balloting rules similar to the ones it uses now, about two-thirds of holdover players gained ground from their prior year’s vote percentage.

• In his third year on the Cooperstown ballot, Larry Walker pulled in a disappointing 21.6 percent of the BBWAA vote. In a message to Sports Illustrated’s Joe Lemire, he expressed gratitude to those who backed him:

I was actually shocked by some of the articles I read in which people supported me. They studied my home and road splits and the Coors Field effect and how they would compare to other people’s numbers after doing all that analysis. I don’t know how they do it all and what it involves, but I saw the final result and I thought, ‘OK, cool, I like that.’ Somebody took that time to try and figure out the reasons why I should be in.

• One day after the Hall of Fame vote results were made public, MLB announced stronger testing for performance-enhancing drugs for the coming season and beyond, which includes checking for use of human growth hormone.
• Now that Adam LaRoche re-signed with the Nats, Mark Zuckerman of Nats Insider asks what Washington lineup for 2013 makes the most sense.
• Meanwhile, Marc Normandin of SB Nation looks at teams that may have need of Michael Morse.
• The proprietors of theScore have launched a new blog, Fanatico. According to Dustin Parkes:

We want to offer an alternative to sports writing that has too often either congratulated itself for its ignorance (“I don’t use the Tweeter.”) or dismissed the unknown as unworthy of attention before giving it any whatsoever (“I don’t understand it. Therefore, it’s scary and stupid.”).

• Trish Vignola of Full Spectrum Baseball looks back at the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, home to the Philies from 1887 until the middle of 1938. Regarding the park’s high wall in right field, Vignola writes:

In 1915, the right field wall was raised to forty feet in an attempt to keep deadball home run hitters, the few that there were, in the ballpark. By 1929, the Phillies added a screen. Frank Jackson of “The Hardball Times” attributes these renovations to the introduction of a livelier baseball. The total height of the wall was now sixty feet.

There is evidence that the Baker Bowl’s right field wall set precedence and was a forerunner to such classic ballparks as Fenway Park. We see evidence in the right field wall at Baker Bowl in what would become the Green Monster of Fenway. Like the Green Monster, the Bowl’s right field wall was initially cluttered with ads. Eventually, that gave way to a well-documented enormous Lifebuoy soap advertisement. The ad boasted that “The Phillies Use Lifebuoy.” The iconic ad was known to prompt the response from a local vandal, “And they still stink.”

• A five-episode, 30-minute series, Costas at the Movies, starring, yup, Bob Costas premiers tonight at 8 p.m. EST on the MLB Network. As told by the Hollywood Reporter, the “broadcaster will interview the stars and filmmakers behind classic baseball movies.”

• Justin Upton appeared to be headed to the Mariners until he exercised the no-trade clause in his contract. Other teams remain interested in the Diamondbacks outfielder, however, including the Braves, Mets, and Rangers.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!

No one agrees on what “Hall of Fame numbers” are. No objective criteria exist.

Here’s a game that statistically oriented fans are wont to play: Draw up the list of who would be in the Hall if it were up to you. Then devise statistical standards that accommodate your Hall of Famers but almost no one else. Declare those standards intuitively obvious. Write up your formulas into an article without explaining that you reverse-engineered from the results you wanted the formulas to produce. Then send the article to the editors of Baseball Prospectus, but don’t expect them to run it.

If you’re tempted to play that game, at least go to the trouble of expressing your numbers as ratios to the league average. Curt Schilling’s lowest single-season WHIP was 0.968, in 2002. Impressive, yes, but Bob Gibson did a lot better in 1968, with 0.853 — except he didn’t, because the league average that year was 1.120, compared with 1.369 in 2002. Schilling in 2002 posted a WHIP that was only 70.7 percent of the league average. Gibson in 1968, 76.2.

The business of comparing player stats from different eras is fraught with difficulty. Most of the Hall’s 300 members — 163, to be exact — were nominated by the Veterans Committee. Many of the names mean nothing except to baseball historians, and the records of those you do recognize are liable to be inscrutable. Sure, you might have heard of Old Hoss Radbourn, but how do you interpret his record of 59 wins and 12 losses for the Providence Grays in 1884? He started 73 games and completed — 73. For someone whose frame of reference is MLB in 2013, those numbers are too remarkable to be meaningful. They don’t compute.

When trying to quantify a player’s Hall-worthiness, we should translate all his numbers into ratios to the league average and then compare his ratios to the ratios achieved by players who have already been inducted. In the end, though, we have to accept that any player’s standing in baseball history isn’t entirely quantifiable.

Annika Sorenstam is hardcore. She’s got the picture to prove it. (Warning: severed finger ahead):

There are few golfers on this planet that had a career like Annika Sorenstam. The 42-year-old is third all-time on the LPGA win list with 72, third all-time in majors (10) and the only player in LPGA history to shoot 59 in a round.

Sorenstam retired from professional golf in 2008 but that doesn’t mean she still isn’t a big part of the game. She appears frequently on the Golf Channel’s “Morning Drive” show and … alright, I tried. I tried to make this article normal and natural but I just … I can’t.

On Tuesday, Sorenstam tweeted a picture of an accident she had while slicing chicken for a dinner and the results are pretty grotesque.

As a person whose first inclination is often, “That’s disgusting . . . let me get a picture of it,” I applaud Ms. Sorenstam for her efforts.

Given the opportunity to honor several of the greatest players to ever pick up a bat and ball, the Baseball Writers Association of America instead chose to induct no one into Cooperstown in 2013.

A winning candidate did not emerge from the Hall of Fame balloting conducted by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and verified by Ernst & Young. There were 569 ballots cast, the third highest total in the history of the voting, but none of the 37 candidates in the 2013 vote gained mention on the required 75 percent for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Craig Biggio, who totaled 3,060 hits and was a seven-time All-Star while playing three positions (catcher, second base, outfield), topped the ballot with 388 votes – 39 shy of the 427 needed for election. His total reflected 68.2 percent of the electorate, which consists of BBWAA members with 10 or more consecutive years of Major League Baseball coverage. Five blank ballots were among those submitted. Other players named on more than half the ballots were pitcher Jack Morris with 385 (67.7 percent), first baseman Jeff Bagwell with 339 (59.6), catcher Mike Piazza with 329 (57.8) and outfielder Tim Raines with 297 (52.2).

Two great center fielders, Kenny Lofton and Bernie Williams, did not even meet the 5 percent threshold needed to secure their places on next year’s ballot. A third, Dale Murphy, received only 18.6 percent of the vote in his final year of BBWAA eligibility.

In an online chat that took place in the announcement’s immediate aftermath, Joe Posnanski of Sports on Earth summed up the feelings of many:

Let’s take a second to reflect on this, by the way. This ballot, with Bonds, Clemens, Bagwell, two guys with 3,000 hits, two guys with 600 homers … nobody got in. It’s a historic moment. Not a happy historic moment, but historic just the same.

Don’t expect this year’s induction ceremony to be one you’ll want to tell your grandkids about. As one Baseball Think Factory commenter cynically observed, “Good summer to plan a trip to Cooperstown if you don’t like crowds or plan to make reservations.”

It’s that time of the off-season again.

At 2 p.m. ET, the MLB Network broadcasts the results of the Hall of Fame votes cast by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Before the announcement of last year’s election, I indicated what my picks would be if I were a rumpled, gray-bearded sportswriter clutching a BBWAA ballot tighter than Charlton Heston ever gripped a Sharps rifle. Below are the candidates on this year’s ballot and how I would vote.

Jack Morris: No
Jay Jaffe, Sports Illustrated:

Morris’ supporters dismiss his high ERAs by noting that they’re distorted by the 5.91 mark he put up over his final two seasons; through 1992, he stood at 3.73, with a 109 ERA+ but “only” 237 wins. This is hardly unique, even among Hall of Famers. [Jim "Catfish"] Hunter yielded a 4.52 ERA and an 86 ERA+ while battling injuries over his final three seasons; he finished with a 105 ERA+, one percentage point better than Morris. [Steve] Carlton was rocked for a 5.72 ERA over his final three seasons. [Phil] Niekro was lit for a 6.30 ERA ERA in his final year. [Bert]Blyleven posted a 4.35 ERA and a 90 ERA+ over his final four seasons, a span that included a full year missed with injury; he had one stellar year (17-5, 2.73 ERA) and two with ERAs above 5.00 in that span. All of those pitchers elevated their win totals by hanging on, but with the possible exception of Blyleven, none enhanced their Hall of Fame cases. Even if one merely focuses on his good seasons, Morris cracked the top 10 six times in raw ERA, but never ranked higher than fifth, and only four times ranked in the top 10 in ERA+, never higher than fourth.

Supporters have tended to dismiss Morris’s high ERAs with claims that he “pitched to the score.” The research efforts of Greg Spira and Joe Sheehan have long since put the lie to this claim. In studying his won-loss record through 1993 (his second-to-last season), Spira found that Morris was just four wins ahead of his projected record based upon run support. Sheehan, who pored over Morris’s career inning-by-inning via Retrosheet, concluded: “I can find no pattern in when Jack Morris allowed runs. If he pitched to the score — and I don’t doubt that he changed his approach — the practice didn’t show up in his performance record.” Morris’s record is more a product of strong run support than it is special strategy.

Jeff Bagwell: Yes
Larry Granillo, Baseball Prospectus: 

He truly was a corner infielder who could do it all. While he is compared to his contemporaries like Frank Thomas and Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell was a more complete player than either ever was, contributing to the Astros success with his power, his patience, his speed, and his defense. He also played in the stingiest ballpark amongst those peers. Bagwell continued to perform at a high level well into his thirties, hitting 39 home runs and scoring 109 runs in 2003 when he was 35 years old. His steals disappeared as he aged and his career average finally dipped below .300 in 2004, but it’s not enough to take away from the best all-around first baseman of the 1990s and one of the best of all-time. It’s such a shame that Hall of Fame voters haven’t been able get past their prejudices against the high-offense era in which he played (or any other, more nefarious issues some may be grappling with) to give him his due.

Lee Smith: No
Ken Davidoff, New York Post:

It’s not as hard to find a closer as you think. As Tom Verducci wrote here, in the past 10 seasons, 91 different pitchers have recorded 25 or more saves in a season. That’s why closers don’t score well at all in value equations like WAR and JAWS. The obvious exception is Mariano Rivera, because he has been so elite for so long.

Smith pitched long enough to collect 478 saves. But he’s no Rivera. No one is.

Tim Raines: Yes
Brian Kenny, Clubhouse Confidential:

Jon Heyman, CBS Sports, Eye on Baseball, on Raines:

The second greatest leadoff hitter of his era walked a lot and rarely was thrown out trying to steal (second best steal percentage for those with 300 steals). Works for those who want to see greatness (like myself) with seven superb years to start the career, but also for those who like career numbers since he hung around for 16 mostly good to very good seasons after the initial seven great ones. Should take a big jump and eventually get in.

#more#

Alan Trammell: Yes
Kurt Mensching, Detroit News:

Trammell’s OPS+ — basically a batting equivalent of ERA+ — of 110 leads [Ozzie] Smith’s 87.

Trammell leads his in most offensive categories — traditional or sabermetric.

He trails Smith in stolen bases and defense, but his defensive WAR, as noted by CBSSports.com’s Dayn Perry, still ranks among the best 10 of all time at the position to go along with four Gold Glove awards.

Larkin and Trammell trade blows in offensive categories — and [Barry] Larkin’s OPS+ of 116 is slightly better — but Trammell leads him in defensive ability.

Edgar Martinez: Yes
Ken Rosenthal, Fox Sports:

I know, he was mostly a DH. But what a DH (maybe the best ever) and one of the best right-handed hitters of his era, period. Since World War II only Barry Bonds, Mickey Mantle and Frank Thomas have finished their careers with OBPs higher than Martinez’s .418.

Fred McGriff: No
David Schoenfield, ESPN SweetSpot:

In the end, however, McGriff remains borderline. The biggest problem is that there are three first baseman on the ballot who are better Hall of Fame candidates in Jeff Bagwell, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. Obviously, there are complicating issues around those guys. Plus, there are first basemen such as Keith Hernandez, John Olerud and Will Clark, who arguably had similar value to McGriff, albeit compiled in ways that didn’t appeal to Hall voters (on-base percentage, defense). For now, I say McGriff is just short. And that’s not an easy assessment to make for a guy with 493 home runs and over 1,500 RBIs.

Larry Walker: Yes
Joe Posnanski, Sports on Earth:

There is no question that Walker’s home-road splits are over the top:

Home: .320/.374/.546 Road: .277/.330/.459

But still . . . oh, wait, those aren’t Larry Walker’s home-road splits. Those are Jim Rice’s. Sorry.

Home: .348/.431/.637 Road: .278/.370/.495

Ah, right, those are Walker’s splits. But since those are just super-sized versions of Jim Rice’s splits anyway — and Rice just got voted into the Hall of Fame — I don’t think they are disqualifiers. Walker was a terrific all-around player who stood out in a crazy offensive era.

Mark McGwire: No*
Al Yellon, Bleed Cubbie Blue:

Everyone with as many home runs as McGwire has is in. He eventually came clean about his PED use, and has become a respected hitting coach.

Posnanski on McGwire:

I still believe Mark McGwire should be in the Hall of Fame. But this year’s ballot, in my mind, is overstocked. And with a 10-player limit — a limit I feel certain the Hall of Fame and BBWAA will at some point reconsider — he does not make the cut.

* McGwire is a “no” this time since, as noted above, no more than ten candidates may be chosen.

Don Mattingly: No
Craig Calcaterra, NBC Sports, Hardball Talk:

Nope. People say “but for the injuries . . .” I say “he had a lot of injuries.” The Hall should be about the career a guy had, not the one he would have had if x, y, z didn’t happen.

Dale Murphy: No
Jaffe:

Even by the most generous standard, measured against all Hall of Fame hitters, he’s 2.3 WAR shy of the average Hall of Famer on peak value, and 22.1 WAR shy on career value. Among centerfielders, he ranks 25th in JAWS, below 12 Hall of Famers as well as several other very good players including Kenny Lofton, Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltran, Jim Edmonds, Jimmy Wynn, Willie Davis, Cesar Cedeno, Vada Pinson, Chet Lemon, Johnny Damon and Fred Lynn.

Rafael Palmeiro: No
Dayn Perry, CBS Sports, Eye on Baseball:

Apply context to Palmeiro’s rate of production throughout his career, and you find he doesn’t compare favorably to Hall of Fame first basemen as a corps. It’s little wonder, then, that his career WAR is below the average of the enshrined first basemen. Keep in mind that Palmeiro’s career value is the driver for his case. With Palmeiro, you have a player whose counting stats are far, far more impressive than his context-adjusted indicators.

There’s also the matter of Palmeiro’s peak. By the very lofty standards of Hall of Fame first basemen, Palmeiro’s peak — i.e., his very best seasons — is a bit lacking. That sounds absurd to say about a player who thrice put up an OPS+ of 150 or better, but again, we’re talking about Hall of Famers who manned the position at which the offensive bar is the highest. In part, that’s why JAWS rates Palmeiro as having a seven-season peak that’s a tick or two worse than the average HoF first baseman. The standards are ruthless and exacting, but they’re supposed to be.

Bernie Williams: No*

Lincoln Mitchell, Faster Times:

The arguments against Williams are clear.  He was not great defensively, was never one of the best hitters in the game, was surrounded by better players and did not play much past his prime.  The arguments in favor of Williams candidacy are less obvious, but also very powerful.  Williams was a very good hitter who had a very long prime.  Between 1995-2002, a period of eight years, he hit .321/.406/.531, good for an OPS+ of 142.  He did this while playing a key defensive position decently.  Although he retired at age 37, thus truncating the decline phase of his career, he remained a useful player until the end hitting .281/.332/.436 during his last year with the Yankees.

Another way to assess Williams candidacy is to determine how many center fielders in the history of the game had clearly better careers.  The list is shorter than one might initially think.  Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., and Jim Edmonds are on the list, but after that it is hard to find a better all around center fielder.  Many other players were better with the glove, a few like Dale Murphy were better power hitters and some good leadoff men, like Richie Ashburn played center field, but it is not obvious that any put together better careers than Williams.

One way to see this is that Williams played 1,924 games in center field during a career where he posted an OPS+ of 125.  In the history of the game, only eight players have played 1,700 or more games in center field with an OPS+ of 115 or better.

* Williams is a “no” this time since, as noted above, no more than ten candidates may be chosen.

Sandy Alomar Jr.: No

Craig Biggio: Yes
Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated:

Biggio’s value resides not so much in his 3,000 hits as much as it does a seven-year prime that began soon after he moved to second base and his power suddenly spiked (.303/.397/.473). He also was an exceptional baserunner and adept fielder. Like [Robin] Yount, Biggio figures to fall right around the 75 percent threshold. (Roberto Alomar and Barry Larkin were better players, and neither made it on first ballot.) It’s a close call, but if he does have to wait, it won’t be for long.

Barry Bonds: Yes
Davidoff:

Bonds was far from the only player who likely was using some illegal help during the latter part of his career, and that he nevertheless dominated his era.

And really, let’s get over ourselves here. Bonds is the all-time leading home run hitter. Number two Hank Aaron has confessed to using amphetamines, also an illegal PED. Number three Babe Ruth did his offensive damage in a time when only white players were allowed. There is evidence that number four Willie Mays used amphetamines. Number five is Alex Rodriguez.

There’s no such thing as a “clean” statistic. Every statistic reflects its era.

Jeff Cirillo: No

Royce Clayton: No
The 43-year-old former shortstop is more likely to earn an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor (Moneyball) than pick up the 5 percent of the vote required to remain on the ballot next year.

Roger Clemens: Yes
John Perrotto, Baseball Prospectus: 

These achievements can’t be misremembered: a record seven Cy Young Awards, seven ERA titles, five strikeouts titles and 11 All-Star Game appearances.

Peter Abraham, Boston Globe, on Clemens:

Before there were pink hats, seats on the wall and Red Sox Nation, there was The Rocket. His turn in the rotation was an event that caused everybody to take notice. Clemens had a 3.06 ERA and 192 wins with the Sox before there was a hint of improper behavior. His perjury acquittal aside, Clemens probably did some things he regrets. But there is no discounting his place in history. Clemens is one of the three or four best starters the game has seen.

Jeff Conine: No

Steve Finley: No

Julio Franco: No

Shawn Green: No

Roberto Hernández: No

Ryan Klesko: No

Kenny Lofton: No
Jason Lukehart, Let’s Go Tribe:

Still, if you’re looking at a player’s hitting, Lofton doesn’t have the portfolio of a Hall of Famer. An OPS+ of 107 would be among the lowest in the Hall, most of the players below that mark are among the most questionable inductees. Those below a 107 who most modern fans might agree are deserving Hall of Famers tend to be among the greatest defensive players in history, guys like Brooks Robinson (104 OPS+) and Ozzie Smith (87 OPS+). If you’re looking to make a case for his induction, you must argue he was a special player in other aspects of the game. . . .

Certainly Lofton does not have the defensive reputation of those two, or of Willie Mays or Andrew Jones, but just about any fan old enough to remember him would tell you Lofton was an excellent fielder. He won four Gold Gloves, finished in the top five among A.L. outfielders in putouts four times and in the top five among A.L. outfielders in putouts five times. Lofton scores well on the newer fielding metrics at both Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs too (though Baseball Prospectus is not as bullish on his defense). . . .

Except in extreme cases like Brooks Robinson and Ozzie Smith, the Hall of Fame voting body has shown a strong tendency to value hitting far above all other parts of a position player’s body of work, which isn’t the way Lofton’s case needs to be viewed.

José Mesa: No

Mike Piazza: Yes
Tom Haudricourt, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Piazza didn’t approach [Sammy] Sosa’s power numbers but did consistently hit 30 to 40 per season while driving in 100 runs, which as a catcher made him an elite player. Some have questioned his candidacy merely on numbers alone (427 HRs, 1,335 RBI, 2,127 hits) and that’s all well and good but he was a 12-time all-star, won 10 Silver Sluggers, was 1993 rookie of the year, placed in the top 10 in NL MVP voting seven times and finished with a major-league record of 396 homers as a catcher (396).

Abraham on Piazza:

He is one of the best-hitting catchers ever, if not the best. He also played the bulk of his career in Dodger Stadium and Shea Stadium, two tough parks for hitters. Piazza hit .320/.389/.575 from 1993-2003 while catching. That’s insane. Piazza also was a better defensive player than he is generally given credit for. He had a flair for calling games and he blocked balls in the dirt very effectively.

Reggie Sanders: No

Curt Schilling: Yes

Bill, Platoon Advantage:

Look, I don’t like him any more than you do (or maybe you like him, in which case I like him a lot less). But he clears the bar pretty easily. He had a long career with a lot of good years. He had a stretch of absolute dominance, totaling 30 wins above replacement from 2001-2004 (not his fault that the only guy who may have [been] better in that span — though with a very nearly identical 30 wins — was his teammate for three of those years). He was a fantastic postseason pitcher. The only way to justify keeping him out is a slavish devotion to the pitching “wins” stat, which is to say, punishing him for pitching for a lot of pretty poor Phillies teams.

Aaron Sele: No

Sammy Sosa: No
Posnanski:

Sosa’s Hall of Fame case is mostly built around home runs . . . he hit only .273 for his career, and did not get on base. He did flash some speed and defensive talent as a younger player, but really it’s about the homers. It’s an interesting case that should be discussed for a while, I think. But this year, there are at least 10 more worthy players in my mind.

Mike Stanton: No

Todd Walker:  No

David Wells:  No

Rondell White: No

Woody Williams: No

As you may have noticed, I am not particularly interested in giving much weight to the question of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly for those players who may have used steroids before MLB instituted league-wide testing in 2003. (I didn’t always hold this view: When Bonds and the Giants made their first-ever regular-season trip to Washington in 2005, I and thousands of other fans at RFK derided the greatest slugger in the past half-century every time he strolled up to the plate.)

SB Nation’s Rob Neyer tackles the question head-on:

I do believe drugs did change the game. It’s the “how much” part that’s difficult to measure. It’s easy to say that steroids are like nothing else (true, literally) and that nothing else changes the body like steroids (I don’t have any idea, but will allow it anyway). But did steroids have a larger impact on professional baseball than spitballs? Larger than amphetamines? Anecdotes are not evidence. . . .

Again, the notion that baseball before steroids was a pure game, a fair game, is (to use one of [Tom] Verducci’s words) a canard. . . .

The character clause has never been used until now, with the arguable exception of Shoeless Joe Jackson. Nobody cared about Gaylord Perry throwing greaseballs between the lines, and nobody cared about hundreds and hundreds of players taking the field, between the lines, all hopped up on greenies. Competitive integrity, as defined right there by Verducci, has never been a factor in Hall of Fame voting. Until now.

Anyway, it remains to be seen if the writers give any of the candidates the three-quarters threshold required for induction. As of last night, Baseball Think Factory’s “Hall of Fame Ballot Collecting Gizmo” had accessed over 27 percent of the votes and projected that the BBWAA will vote in no one this time. (Biggio was in the lead with 68.6 percent.)

We’ll know for certain in a few hours.

If you caught last night’s National Championship game, you were treated to Brent Musburger acting very, very creepy toward the girlfriend of A. J. McCarron. ESPN has since apologized:

ESPN has apologized for comments by veteran broadcaster Brent Musburger, who seemed to lose the thread of the BCS championship game when confronted with the loveliness of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend Monday .

With ‘Bama quickly asserting itself against Notre Dame, Musburger noted Katherine Webb, a former Miss Alabama, in the stands.

“You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women,” Musburger, 73, said. “What a beautiful woman.”

“Wow!” his partner, Kirk Herbstreit, said.

“Whoa!” Musburger added.

“A.J’.s doing some things right down in Tuscaloosa,” Herbstreit said.

But this isn’t the first time Mussberger has acted this way. Let’s go to the archives when Mussberger launched the career of Jenn Sterger, then a Florida State student who ended up parlaying Mussberger’s creepiness into a gig with the NY Jets. (And later a sex scandal with Bret Favre):

Brent Musberger tries to inject some life into an otherwise snoozer of a BCS national title game by fawning over University of Alabama QB A. J. McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb, who also happens to be Miss Alabama USA 2012.  

If Notre Dame had listened to me in 2011 and fired Coach Kelly, last night might have been different. Roll tide. . .

This CBS Sports analysis from before last year’s draft called Griffin “tough,” with a “contagious” attitude, “a team-first guy” and possessing “off-the-chart intangibles.”

But: 

He has only adequate height and overall frame so durability is a concern because of his propensity to take a lot of hits.

Griffin — for those who’ve forgotten — sat out the 2008 season with a knee injury. Griffin entertained thoughts of playing through the injury but opted for surgery when he “couldn’t get [his knee] to feel right” during the warmup before the Oklahoma game.