Earth, wind & notes …
What would a week be without more baseball Hall of Fame follies?
Having been raised in Wrigley Field, I hardly qualify as an objective voice on Ron Santo’s Cooperstown candidacy. So I’ll tell you what. We’ll skip the opinions and go straight to the facts.
Brooks Robinson had one 25-home run season, two 95-RBI seasons and hit .267. He was a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Santo had eight 25-homer seasons, seven 95-RBI seasons and hit .277. He was largely ignored by the writers and can’t get enough support from the Veterans Committee to gain entrance.
Granted, Robinson was the standard of the industry at third base, with 16 Gold Gloves to prove it. But Santo wasn’t exactly an E-5 waiting to happen, witness his five Gold Gloves.
Add it all up and, well, it doesn’t all add up. …
And now for the most overblown story in recent toy department history: Dan Hawkins’ “Go play intramurals, brother!” rant. Which, if you know Hawk, wasn’t a rant at all. “I had a smile on my face when I said it,” Hawkins said. “I don’t know what philosopher said ‘One of the greatest crimes in life is to be misunderstood.’ If you had a video of it, you’d see it was all cool. It was funny.” …
There’s no denying the audio of what Hawkins thought was a breeze-shooting session with local writers has raised his national profile, what with the tape having made the rounds on the Internet. Question is, will it help or hurt recruiting? “Maybe to some degree it helps you. I don’t know,” Hawkins said. “It’s not a big deal. Getting the right guys, the right guys who want to win, who want to invest. That’s a big deal.” …
Not that the Nuggets’ issues – OK, problems – can be reduced to two words, but if they could, the two words would be easy baskets. They don’t get enough of them, and they allow way too many. …
So the Chinook winds are apparently blowing Jake Plummer into premature retirement. Just wondering: Is he going to buy the Unabomber’s house? …
You can wake up now, Jim Bates, it’s not a dream. You really are inheriting the best cornerback tandem in the business. …
Craziest NFL free-agent deal to date: Former Buffs safety Michael Lewis, benched last season by the Eagles, getting $10 million guaranteed from the Niners. …
Trivia time. With Texas’ Kevin Durant a lock for the honor, who was the last freshman to be named first-team All-America? Answer several dots below. …
From the where-are-they-now dept.: Ricky Williams, a name that once intrigued the Broncos’ coaching staff, is living on the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in Northern California, a place San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler describes as “80 acres of ommm.” …
For the record, Ricky weighs 220 and hopes to play next season in the Not For Long. …
Local boys (might) make good: nbadraft.net projects Nevada’s Nick Fazekas, an Arvada native, to be selected by the Pistons with the 26th pick, and CSU’s Jason Smith to go three picks later to the Suns. …
Hibachi? Gilbert Arenas, bothered by a sore right shoulder, has been living on cold cuts lately. He was 14-for-65 in a three-game span heading into the weekend. …
There are good trades, there are bad trades, and then there’s the trade the Mavericks made on draft day 1998. Dallas shipped the sixth pick, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, to the Bucks for the ninth and 19th picks. After turning the No. 9 pick into Dirk Nowitzki, the Mavs shipped Pat Garrity, the 19th pick, to Phoenix in a package that sent Steve Nash to Big D. …
Trivia answer: LSU’s Chris Jackson, a.k.a. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. How one-dimensional was Mahmoud? He scored 8,553 points in the NBA, but his man scored twice that many. …
It’s starting to get crowded on the list of Rockies prospects. The best in the bunch? Ask Dan O’Dowd and he’ll tell you it’s 21-year-old lefty Franklin Morales, coming off a 154-inning, 179-strikeout season in the Single-A Cal League. …
And finally, a random thought after seeing that heart-touching story out of Dallas: Is it too late to put Everson Walls in the Hall of Fame?
Jim Armstrong can be reached at 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com.
