Bill Conlin & Jim Rice
Posted by Chris J. on December 27, 2007
In his column on his HoF picks, Bill Conlin says he's voting for Jim Rice because: "Rice is the only player ever to collect 30-plus homers and 200-plus hits three times."
Nope.
Easy to check with PI. It's been done 83 times. The following guys have done it at least 3 times: Billy Williams, Al Simmons, Babe Ruth, Alex Rodriquez, Jim Rice, Stan Musial (4 times), Chuck Klein (4 times), Rogers Hornsby, Vlad Guerrero (4 times), and Lou Gehrig (SEVEN times!).
To be fair, Jim Rice is the only eligible player not inducted to have done this. (Though I still think he's a lousy pick).
December 27th, 2007 at 10:54 am
I had an email chat with Bill Conlin a few years back where he explained to me why he was NOT voting for Nolan Ryan for the HOF. It was the first example I ever experienced of a journalist looking past the no-hitters and strikeouts at more of the numbers. He cited, for example, that Ryan was barely over .500 for his career and had a tremendous number of losses. (Neutralizing Ryan's stats doesn't make too big of a difference in his career W-L record.)
Anyway, that exchange gave me a lot of respect for Conlin. I have to believe what he wrote was some sort of typo.