I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been thinking about Jack Morris lately. That probably means that the Hall of Fame elections have just happened, or else they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re coming up. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a strong opinion one way or the other about Morris going into Cooperstown; I put him in a class with Jim Rice, Alan Trammell, Bruce Sutter and Bill Mazeroski\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be out of place, but he wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the class of the joint either. Despite being a Twins fan, I probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t vote for him. The reason he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on my mind, though, is because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a prime example of a syndrome that seems to be on the rise among baseball folks.<\/p>\n
To wit: the discussions about Jack Morris and the HOF, and goodness knows there have been a handful, tend to revolve around what he was<\/em>, as opposed to what he did<\/em>. Jack Morris was a big game pitcher. Jack Morris was the dominant pitcher of the 1980s (not true<\/a>). Then, when people do <\/em>talk about what he did, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always in the context of labeling him as one thing or another. No, he wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a big game pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlook at the 1992 World Series<\/a>. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I just did, too, by linking to convenient statistics. The point, though, is that the arguments are always about labels, not players. The more labels a player can accumulate, the more appealing he becomes as a Hall of Famer. Which, of course, is the most prestigious label of all.<\/p>\n As an example, take two Hall of Fame shortstops, Cal Ripken Jr. and Robin Yount. Both were first-ballot choices, and both appear on each other\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s baseball-reference comps list, yet Yount has often been unjustly attacked as a weak member of the Hall, while Ripken came as close to unanimous selection<\/a> as anyone ever has. Why doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Yount get the same respect? Partly because he lacks Ripken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s labels. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the Ironman, not the first modern power-hitting shortstop, not recognized in the same way as an ambassador of the game or a role model for children. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not to denigrate his record\u00e2\u20ac\u201dno one would do that\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that somehow, his achievements have not translated into labels as well as Ripken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s have.<\/p>\n Now, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really true to call that a new phenomenon. Imprecise labeling has been around since YHWH<\/a>, at the least. The problem comes when the actual historic record is obscured by the words people write about them. In Morris\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 case, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the strikeouts, the innings pitched, the team wins and losses. As others have noted, debates about marginal Hall of Famers often end up as impromptu roasts. No one would seriously argue that Morris, Dale Murphy or Dick Allen were any less than outstanding players, but you could be forgiven for drawing that conclusion from reading some of the vitriol about their Hall qualifications.<\/p>\n Of course, this problem is not exclusively a Hall of Fame one, and that brings us to Zoilo Versalles, who is one of the more over-labeled, under-appreciated players around. Zorro, as the good people at Topps called him on his 1961 baseball card<\/a>, is best known as the 1965 American League MVP. As Bill James has pointed out, this concurrently makes him the league MVP with the lowest Win Share total (32) in history. A great deal has been made about the injustice of Versalles winning the award over Twins teammate Tony Oliva. Compare their lines from that season:<\/p>\n
![1961 baseball card<\/a>, is best known as the 1965 American League MVP. As Bill James has pointed out, this concurrently makes him the league MVP with the lowest Win Share total (32) in history. A great deal has been made about the injustice of Versalles winning the award over Twins teammate Tony Oliva. Compare their lines from that season:<\/p>\n](\"http:\/\/blog.squeezeplaycards.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/zorro-versalles.jpg\"){kind=link}