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[KeithHernandez]

No one outside of two families (my dads and his brothers) has my last name.  Seriously.  My only male cousin is gay and I am the only male in my family so, well, I hate kids and my name is going down with me, barring an accident.


(I don't hate kids, but I can't have that responsibility).

[AugustWest]

No one outside of two families (my dads and his brothers) has my last name.  Seriously.  My only male cousin is gay and I am the only male in my family so, well, I hate kids and my name is going down with me, barring an accident.

Um dude, I'm pretty sure that there are hell of Hernandezes in Mexico.

[V-Adore]

I'm also the end of the line for my family, more or less; there are plenty of us in the entire rest of the world, but it never quite hit America in the way it did most of the rest of the places the Dutch colonized. Also, we are remotely descended from an Important Historical Person, and we get asked about it (accurately) more often than you'd think.

Going to college where I did was also fun, because a lot of people just assumed that "Dutch last name" + "going to college in western Massachusetts" = "has to be from Albany or upstate New York." This was especially amusing the year I was actually living with an upstater with an Anglo last name.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I wish Gold Gloves really meant something, but they are too often bullshit.  I think a given player's first GG is usually meaningful, but after that they tend to just give it to the same guy every year unless he gets hurt or has an absolute meltdown.  It helps to be good offensively, too; they gave one to Bobby Abreu a couple years ago, and frankly he's a shitty outfielder.

BTW, here's the view from our seats at Citizen's Bank Park yesterday.  Great atmosphere, lousy result.

[melack]

Um dude, I'm pretty sure that there are hell of Hernandezes in Mexico.

But do they all do coke and field first base as well as ours?

[jaydub]

I see my surname on basketball and football players.  Its unlikely we share any ancestors however, as my branch of the family came over in the mid 1800s and was confined to Northern states until my uncle moved to Virginia in the '70s (where they call him a damn Yankee and mutter darkly when he wears his blue forage kepi).

[melack]

Every time I feel proud of having a fairly unique last name (McInnis), I remember that my grandpa was adopted and his real family's last name was Moore. That one's quite a bit more common, and to add insult to injury, it's a named shared by a pretty historic douchebag.

[Turbo Ninja]

YES YES YES. As a fellow M's fan, YES. I think Edgar deserves to be in the Hall, but I'm hard-pressed to think of another DH that does.

Let's define what makes a player a DH.  Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray and Dave Winfield all used the DH rule to collect 3,000 hits.  It's likely that none of them could've been worth a spot in the starting nine if they still had to play defense for nine innings, 150 times a year so I'd say they earned their tickets to Cooperstown as Designated Hitters.

Jim Thome might be a DH now, but he's only played 20-some percent of his career games as a DH.  He was almost always a fielder with the Indians and he didn't have a choice as a Phillie.  A guy like Travis Hafner, on the other hand, will probably play 90%+ as a DH over his career with just enough 1B starts in Interleague Play to stay eligible in fantasy leagues.  If Hafner finishes with career number similar to, or better than, Thome's, doesn't he deserve the same consideration from HOF voters?

(This post brought to you by a guy who really likes Travis Hafner)

[melack]

I'm pretty lenient on the Designated Hitters in the Hall of Fame debate. It helps that I was born well after the rule went into effect and grew up a fan of not only an AL team, but a team that contained the greatest DH of all time.

[littlefallsmets]

I guess that I just am the type that deals in "should" and "shouldn't" instead of "is" and "is not".

The designated hitter shouldn't exist and if you're so incomplete a player that you had to spend a significant portion of your career, you're not a Hall of Famer. And, indeed, even you had a position for the majority of your career, time as a DH should be one of the factors going against you. Not an automatic out but one of your negatives.

We're talking about The Hall of Fame, here. The best players ever.

If you couldn't play a defensive position for most of your career, how could you possibly belong with the best players ever?

[melack]

I understand your point. But at the same time, having a DH means we get the double satisfaction of seeing guys like David Ortiz be able to hit while also avoiding the terror of half the league's pitchers going up to the plate.

[littlefallsmets]

I... I LOVE watching a pitcher hit.

Love it.

There's nothing more awesome than a pitcher lacing a single outta nowhere and rattling the opposing team.

There's nothing more awesome than an "automatic out" turning into a well-placed sac bunt.

Or the humiliation of walking the opposing pitcher! That is an awesome humiliation!

And the game-changing ability of the handful of pitchers who can hit .240 or better, man, I love that shit.

It make the game all the more like chess to me.

The DH sucks so much of the strategy out of the game.

[AlohaDawg]

I... I LOVE watching a pitcher hit.

Love it.

There's nothing more awesome than a pitcher lacing a single outta nowhere and rattling the opposing team.

There's nothing more awesome than an "automatic out" turning into a well-placed sac bunt.

Or the humiliation of walking the opposing pitcher! That is an awesome humiliation!

And the game-changing ability of the handful of pitchers who can hit .240 or better, man, I love that shit.

It make the game all the more like chess to me.

The DH sucks so much of the strategy out of the game.

I'm an AL team fan but I agree totally with this post.

[Carlos del Vaca]

Agreed.  The ability to hit well for a pitcher is half of what makes Livan Hernandez so awesome.  And how about that Micah Owings dude?

[melack]

Agreed.  The ability to hit well for a pitcher is half of what makes Livan Hernandez so awesome.  And how about that Micah Owings dude?

I wonder what the other half is, because I certainly know it isn't his pitching ability.