Last weekend, the Baseball Hall of Fame had their annual induction ceremony and the Class of 2016 included Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza, two of baseball’s biggest stars of my childhood. Both are worthy and both inductions are significant (Griffey became the first #1 overall pick to get into Cooperstown, and Piazza, taken 1390th overall in the 62nd round of the 1988 draft, is the lowest draft pick ever to make the Hall of Fame), but with each passing year, there are more worthy players being left out of Cooperstown. My thoughts on the Baseball Hall of Fame are well documented, from David Ortiz to Jack Morris, going through the archives of this blog, but one case I haven’t really discussed at length (if at all) is that of Tim Raines.
Raines first became eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot in 2008, when he earned just 24.3% of the vote, but in 2016, his ninth year on the ballot, he was up to 69.8% (with 75% being the cutoff required for the Hall). This upcoming ballot will be his last to chance to get inducted by the esteemed Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), and it seems like a real toss up whether he gets in or not in 2017. Jonah Keri, one of my favorite baseball writers anywhere, and one of my biggest writing heroes, is an analytically inclined guy, and while he’s mostly indifferent to teams and rooting interest based on laundry, his weakness is the late great (Well, maybe not great. Critically acclaimed, though? 1994 was something special, but we’ll never know how great that team really was? I like that description better.) Montreal Expos, of which Tim Raines was one of the biggest stars along with Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, and Pedro Martinez (Sorry, Randy Johnson. You don’t make the cut. It would be a little like listing Jeff Bagwell as a Red Sox legend or Sammy Sosa as one of the all time great Texas Rangers.). Keri is not a Hall of Fame voter at this time, but he has made Tim Raines his personal crusade. I was always aware of Raines, and I knew he was a good player, especially in the Montreal years, but I never really dug deeply into his career. The more I read and listened to Jonah Keri, the more intrigued I was by this Hall of Famer who isn’t.
In theory, Tim Raines should be in Cooperstown already. He’s a seven time All-Star, the 1986 National League batting champion, led the NL in stolen bases four times, and won two World Series rings as a player with the New York Yankees (and was a coach for the 2005 World Series Champion Chicago White Sox). His 808 career stolen bases are good for fifth all time, behind Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock, Billy Hamilton, and Ty Cobb, making him the all time leader in stolen bases by someone who is not in the Hall of Fame already. Even if you think stolen bases are overrated, as I do to a degree, it’s hard to overlook that kind of production on the base path. Raines was as good a leadoff hitter as anyone in the 1980s, and when he got on, he found his way into the pitcher’s head. Even if you think the All-Star Game is a glorified popularity contest that only rewards players with great first-half performances and pre-existing reputations, but being selected for the All-Star team seven straight times, as Raines was from 1981 to 1987, it is hard to ignore that kind of name recognition. Outside of baseball, how many seven time All-Stars miss the Hall of Fame?
The best cross-sport comparison I can think of for Tim Raines is Clyde Drexler. Drexler was a great shooting guard, a ten time All-Star, the Portland Trail Blazers’ all time leading scorer, was a member of the 1992 United States Olympic “Dream Team,” and an NBA champion with the Houston Rockets in 1995. He had a great career, and is in the Basketball Hall of Fame (Seriously, being a 1992 Olympic Gold Medalist practically puts him into the Basketball Hall of Fame by default. The Dream Team has been inducted as a team and Christian Laettner is the only player who has not been inducted as an individual.), but with a career like that in baseball, he might not be a Hall of Famer, as evidenced by the plight of Tim Raines.
The biggest knock on Clyde Drexler’s career was that he wasn’t Michael Jordan. Picked 14th overall in the 1983 NBA Draft by Portland, the Blazers felt Drexler was good enough at the shooting guard to pass on Jordan when he was there for the taking at #2 the following year. Instead, Portland took the immortal Sam Bowie. If you think falling to #3 didn’t annoy and anger Jordan, you don’t know Jordan. MJ made it his mission in the 1992 NBA Finals when his Chicago Bulls played Portland, and later that summer in Dream Team practices to embarrass Drexler, to make sure that anyone who thought Drexler was on his level was made to look the fool. When Drexler retired, one thing was clear: he was great, but he was no Michael Jordan, and that’s fine. Nobody is Michael Jordan except Michael Jordan. Not Joe Dumars. Not Dwyane Wade. Not even Kobe Bryant. Certainly not Clyde Drexler. Maybe the biggest difference between the way we remember star players in basketball as opposed to baseball is that all the good players get into one Hall of Fame, and even some of the truly great players don’t make it into the other.
Tim Raines’ Michael Jordan is Rickey Henderson. Rickey made his Major League debut in June of 1979, and Raines debuted in September of 1979, but while Raines played his last game in 2002, Henderson stuck it out through the 2003 season. Raines had a very impressive 808 career stolen bases, while Henderson compiled a record-breaking 1,406 stolen bases. Raines made seven All-Star Games, but Henderson made ten. Both earned two World Series rings, but while Raines earned his as an older veteran with the Yankees in 1996 and 1998, Henderson got his rings closer to his apex in 1989 with the Oakland A’s and 1993 with the Toronto Blue Jays. Both had cool nicknames by baseball standards: Raines was “Rock,” but Henderson gets a slight edge with “Man of Steal.” Raines is remembered less than he should be because there was another player in his era who did the things he did, and did them better.
Pro-Raines people will argue that while Henderson without a doubt compiled more impressive numbers over his near quarter century in Major League Baseball, that Tim Raines did what he did more efficiently. While Raines hit (2,605) and home run (170) totals pale in comparison to Henderson’s (3,055 hits, 279 home runs), Raines’ career batting average (.294) was fifteen points higher than Henderson’s (.279). It was recently brought to my attention in a Reddit post about Raines’ superior base stealing efficiency that Raines was a much more efficient base-stealer. Raines ranks 14th in career SB% at 84.696% according to Baseball Reference, with Henderson ranked 44th at 80.758%. What’s 3.938% really in the grand scheme of things? Enough that Henderson, in 2016 at the age of 57, would need to steal 448 consecutive bases without getting caught to match Raines’ stolen base efficiency. That’s something.
The biggest reason I think Raines belongs in the Hall of Fame is because just because you had two great players who did similar things but one was significantly more prolific, would it really kill you to have them both in Cooperstown? Clyde Drexler is nobody’s Michael Jordan, but if he had been left out of the Basketball Hall of Fame or the more-exclusive-if-less-official Bill Simmons Hall of Fame Pyramid (Drexler is ranked 44th), fans in Portland and Houston would have lost their collective minds. Maybe this is what works against Raines the most: the fanbase that saw his best baseball lost their team when they Expos moved and became the Washington Nationals in 2005. This “one but not the other” issue doesn’t seem to happen in other sports. The Pro Football Hall of Fame did not let in John Elway and Dan Marino in and then decide they had hit their quarterbacks from the 1983 NFL Draft quota so they could exclude Jim Kelly. Charles Barkley and Karl Malone were both all-time great power forwards who couldn’t get past Jordan in the Finals, but the Basketball Hall of Fame had room for both of them. Not everyone is the greatest ever, but that does not make them not great. See Tim Raines and Clyde Drexler.
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