Thome, Belle Among 4 New Indians Hall of Famers
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Thome, Belle among 4 new Indians Hall of Famers Robinson, Jamieson also to be inducted on July 30 By Jordan Bastian / MLB.com | @MLBastian | 7:02 AM ET CLEVELAND -- Four new plaques will soon be on display in Heritage Park, honoring the newest members of the Indians Hall of Fame. There is no shortage of accomplishments among the inductees, a quartet well-deserving of enshrinement by a ballclub with more than a century's worth of history. Jim Thome: The Indians' all-time home run king. Albert Belle: The only player in baseball history to achieve a season consisting of 50 home runs and 50 doubles. Frank Robinson: The first African-American manager in baseball history. Charlie Jamieson: A member of the 1920 World Series champions. Welcome to the Indians Hall of Fame. Cleveland announced on Friday that Thome, Belle, Robinson and Jamieson will be honored as the 2016 Hall of Fame class in a ceremony on July 30 prior to the Tribe's game against the A's at Progressive Field. The Indians will then have 44 in their team Hall and this marks the first time since 2007 that the club inducts at least four players in the same season. "These are four of the all-time great players in our franchise's storied history," said Bob DiBiasio, the Indians' senior vice president of public affairs. "We're excited to officially recognize their contributions to our franchise and the game of baseball by inducting them into the Indians Hall of Fame." The Indians will give away a Thome Hall of Fame bobblehead as part of the July 30 festivities. For Thome, this could be a precursor to enshrinement in the Nationall Baseball Hall of Fame. The former slugger, who belted 612 home runs over the course of a 22-year career in the big leagues, will be eligible on the Baseball Writers' Association of America's Hall of Fame ballot in 2018. Thome's path to stardom had an unlikely beginning. Scouted out of rural Illinois, Thome was selected by the Indians in the 13th round of the 1989 Draft as a skinny third baseman with a big swing. Over time, Thome developed into one of the fiercest left-handed power hitters in baseball, launching a club-record 337 home runs during his time with the Indians. Thome suited up for the Indians from 1991-2002 and rejoined the team briefly in the second half of the 2011 season. In parts of 13 seasons with Cleveland, Thome hit .287/.414/.566 with a franchise-record 1,008 walks, three All-Star appearances and one Silver Slugger Award. Thome belted a career-high 52 homers in 2002, and then had stints with the Phillies, White Sox, Dodgers, Twins and Orioles. Thome is one of only six players to have at least 1,500 runs, 1,600 RBIs and 1,700 walks in a career, joining Carl Yastrzemski, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Mel Ott and Barry Bonds. Thome, Ruth and Bonds are the only players in that class to have at least 600 home runs. Selected in the second round of the 1987 Draft by Cleveland, Belle tormented opposing pitchers for parts of eight seasons with the Indians. He slugged 242 home runs (second to Thome in club history) and was a four-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger recipient with the Tribe. Belle had 50 homers and 52 doubles in 1995, making him the lone player in baseball history to enjoy a 50/50 season. Belle finished in the top three in the American League in Most Valuable Player Award voting three times with Cleveland, ending as the runner- up to Mo Vaughn for the annual award in 1995. The right-handed hitter played 12 years total in the Majors with stints with the White Sox and Orioles after his time with Cleveland. Robinson spent the final three seasons of 21-year Major League playing career with the Indians, belting 586 home runs in a Hall of Fame career. Robinson was best known in Cleveland for breaking baseball's managerial color barrier. He managed Cleveland from 1974-76, becoming the first African-American manager in history and embarking on a 17-year managing career that saw him guide teams to 1,065 victories. Before Robinson, Cleveland also signed the first African-American player in American League history when the team brought Larry Doby into the fold in 1947. Doby and Thome are currently honored with statues, along with Hall of Famer Bob Feller, outside Gate C at Progressive Field. Jamieson suited up for Cleveland from 1919-32 and set the franchise's single-season record for singles with 172 in 1923. He ranks fourth in team history with 942 runs and fifth with 1,753 hits, while posting a .316 average with the Indians as part of his 18-year career. Jamieson also hit .333 in Cleveland's six-game triumph over the Brooklyn Robins in the 1920 World Series. Come and enjoy the moment, Albert Cheers await Belle at Indians Hall of Fame induction By Anthony Castrovince / MLB.com | @castrovince | 9:34 AM ET CLEVELAND -- On an otherwise nondescript day at Indians camp last spring, a gray-haired, scruffy-faced, big-bodied man wearing a golf shirt and shorts stood in the center of the clubhouse near the snacks, either unnoticed or simply ignored by the players filtering in and out of the room. Time was, a person could genuinely feel Albert Belle's presence in a Major League clubhouse. This is the man who once smashed a thermostat with his bat to permanently set it at a cool temperature (earning the nickname Mr. Freeze). A man who was once so upset about making an out that he retreated to the clubhouse and smashed the china plates that were set up for the postgame spread. A man who once chased a team intern out of the room with his bat when the kid had the gall to approach him about an autograph for charity shortly before game time. That man is gone now. In his place, on this day, stood a retired stay-at-home father to four girls, a guy who spends his time not swinging bats but swinging golf clubs and not chasing down Halloween pranksters in his SUV but driving his own kids to and fro. Mr. Freeze is now Mr. Mom. As announced Friday, the Indians are inducting Mr. Mom ... err ... Belle into their team Hall of Fame. It is an honor that is long, long overdue. Jim Thome will join him, an obvious decision in a world that needs more obvious decisions. Frank Robinson is in, too, a tip of the cap not just to the man but to the moment when he announced his presence as the game's first African-American manager and his viability as a player- manager with a triumphant home run on Opening Day 1975. And Charlie Jamieson is in, a salute to an underrated contributor to the 1920 World Series squad. But Belle is the real source of intrigue. The only reason why the 49-year-old Belle has not yet seen his plaque hang in Heritage Park is that the Indians have never felt confident he'd actually attend the induction ceremony. And despite Friday's public proclamation of Belle as one of its all-time greats, the club is currently unsure whether Belle will be there for the July 30 pregame ceremony. Though Belle has popped up at Spring Training and the club's charity golf outings a couple times, attempts to engage him in past public observances of his and their glory days -- including the 2013 release of a bobblehead depicting his famous point to the biceps and last summer's 20-year anniversary celebration of the 1995 American League champions -- have been met with indifference or outright resistance. Friday's announcement, then, can be construed as either an olive branch or a last resort. The fact of the matter is that a team Hall of Fame without the guy who ranks second all-time (behind only Thome) on the Tribe's home run list and who remains the only player in Major League history to have a 50-homer, 50-double season is laughably incomplete and had long since ceased to make sense. So Belle is going in whether he wants to be there or not. Consider this a public plea for Belle to be there. Belle's standing with the team should not be reduced to a quiet and largely unnoticed arrival at the Goodyear, Ariz., camp, where I'm not entirely certain any player under the age of 30 had any idea they were in the presence of one of the most feared sluggers of the 1990s. Belle needs to come out of the woodwork -- or, rather, step out of the minivan -- and hear the roar of a Progressive nee Jacobs Field crowd that has long since forgiven his free-agent exodus and the many public blowups that made him one of that era's most controversial figures. Baseball and Belle have been largely divorced from each other since he made his last plate appearance with the Orioles in 2000. Were it not for a degenerative hip condition, maybe we'd be talking about Belle in the context of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and not just the Indians Hall, but little of his post-Cleveland career lived up to the severe standards set by his 1993-96 output (1.040 OPS, 172 homers, 161 doubles and 504 RBIs in 566 games).