Welcome to the official 2023 baseball Hall of Infamy inductions! I've got a couple of interactive pieces in the A/V section and a historically (for us) infamous game, so let's get started.
- Tom Emanski - Baseball skills guru. Infamous for: An endearing kitschy '80s commercial featuring a future Hall-of-Famer.
Tom Emanski hit the motherlode for youth baseball coaches. He had success winning youth tournaments, as touted in his ubiquitous commercials, and parlayed that into instructional videos where he taught defensive drills. A couple of deals pushed these videos into infamy: The deal Emanski struck to have the commercials for these videos in constant rotation on ESPN in the 1990s and 2000s, which reportedly kicked back one-third of the sales of the tapes to ESPN, and the deal to have poofy-hat Crime Dog McGriff point at the camera and endorse the videos. This may have, no kidding, contributed to McGriff keeping his name top-of-mind for HOF voters, who eventually gave him the call this year. The irony: McGriff admitted he never watched the instructional videos. But as we know, any publicity is good publicity, and McGriff and Emanski both benefited from the endless airplay of those commercials. It's estimated that 50,000 spots for his videos aired on ESPN in a ten-year span. That will get you recognized as the worldwide leader in baseball instruction, whether you were any good at it or not. - Steve Howe - Relief Pitcher - Yankees, mostly. Infamous for: Losing his way over and over and over again. Howe is the poster child for athletes getting second chances because he got SEVEN, count 'em, seven chances to redeem himself in the eyes of Major League Baseball. He kept choosing to find comfort in his substances, forcing the league to ban him for good. Howe was a successful pitcher, saving 17 games in his Dodgers NL Rookie of the Year campaign in 1980 and helping them beat, ironically, the Yankees in the '81 World Series. By '83 he was checking himself into rehab for alcohol and cocaine, and was suspended for the entire season in 1984. Howe kept making comebacks and getting suspended again, and by the time he got busted for the seventh time in 1992, MLB had enough and banned him for life. An arbiter overturned the ban, however, and Howe was back pitching again for the New York Yankees from '94 through '96. The story of someone so determined to turn back to drugs after so many opportunities was destined to end badly, and thus Howe flipped his truck in 2006 and died at age 48 with meth in his system, naturally. Howe became the face of athlete privilege because in no other occupation could someone get caught abusing drugs and alcohol on seven different occasions and still be considered employable. It's not a stretch to link the harsher punishment and lesser chances for guys today to the multiple wasted chances on infamous basket cases like Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, and Howe.
- Lee Elia Wing of Quotes: Rick Sutcliffe's Drunken In-Game Interview. Infamous for: Crowning Sut as an honorary King of Non-Sequitur.There is no better example of someone needing to have his live mike cut off than Rick Sutcliffe deciding to transition from talking about his daughter to some celebrity gossip. Sutcliffe, the former Rookie of the Year and Cy Young winner, was winding down what sounded like a really fun day golfing with Bill Murray on May 10, 2006, when some jackass decided to mike him up during the Brewers-Padres game in San Diego. Above is the infamous three-minute result. Sutcliffe had a good post-playing-days broadcasting career going for himself before burning it all down on this evening. Similar to Fred McGriff getting possible positive momentum towards the real Hall of Fame thanks to his videos, I can't help but wonder if Sutcliffe has suffered negative momentum because of his video. I think he's got more of a HOFer case than Scott Rolen and maybe as much of one as McGriff, but it's not conceivable that he's getting that call before he passes on because so many people think of this incident when they think of Sutcliffe at all. That's too bad, because his 15-1 record in 1984 for the Cubs is one of the most dominant stretches of pitching I've ever seen still, and he deserves to be remembered for more than "Matty!" and "George Clooney!" But he's one of many to learn that one too many can destroy anything that came before.
- Jose Canseco - Outfielder - Athletics, mostly. Infamous for: Using and abusing steroids for all he could and telling the world about it later. Talk about a guy who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jose Canseco hasn't met a bridge he wouldn't burn. He's one of the most famous baseball players and was one of the best of his time, but Canseco won't ever be immortalized in Cooperstown, not just because he juiced, but because he decided to come clean in his book and call out other juicers in the process. Canseco burst into the sport as the 1986 AL Rookie of the Year in Oakland with 33 HRs and 15 SBs, then won the AL MVP in 1988 unanimously after going 40-40 in HRs and SBs. He and Mark McGwire comprised the "Bash Brothers", and their prodigious home runs propelled the As to two AL pennants and a World title in '89. He was eventually traded to Texas as the As wearied of his perpetual absences due to injuries. A long list of stops followed as a number of teams tried to recapture the MVP magic with little or no luck. In 2005, Canseco decided to release a scandalous autobiography entitled Juiced. In it, he claimed that as much as 85% of the sport was using steroids, he named McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and many others as users, and even said that he personally stuck the needles in some of their asses. The book was quoted by some of the lawmakers during the infamous Mitchell Report. His new identity as an honest gatekeeper led him to write a second book, titled Vindicated, and more players like Albert Belle and Alex Rodriguez were named in that one. Canseco is the epitome of infamous because he used his souped-up baseball skills to aggrandize himself into a Madonna-fucking, reality-show starring, celebrity-boxing uber-celeb, all while being able to claim a level of redemption and purity because he happened to be the first of the roided-up freaks to sing about it in order to sell a book. But there will always be a shadow over him because, as he has consistently proven, he'll say anything to keep people talking about him.
- 2003 NLCS Game 1. Infamous for: Making Jay the angriest I've ever seen him. There was once an excruciatingly painful playoff series for Chicago Cubs fans before they witnessed a World championship in 2016. The way they managed to lose to the then-Florida Marlins feels like something Jay should address when he's ready to immortalize that chain of events. But we were there Oct. 7 live at Wrigley Field for the manner in which they lost the first game of the NLCS, and it was unforgettable. It starts with the lineup decision by Marlins manager "Trader" Jack McKeon to bench power-hitting 3B Mike Lowell for this 20-year-old kid you may have heard of named Miguel Cabrera. Curious, but the offense didn't suffer because the wild game was tied 6-6 in the 9th. The Fish got to Cubs closer Joe Borowski for a couple runs, but in the bottom 9th Marlins closer Ugueth Urbina served up a two-run dong to Sammy Sosa that would still be travelling upward if the center field scoreboard didn't get in the way. They played a scoreless 10th, then the big head-scratcher happens. Cubs manager Dusty Baker sends out lefty reliever Mark Guthrie to face the 9-1-2 hitters. The 9 would be the pitchers spot in this ancient time when the DH wasn't in the NL. We all knew Lowell was still sitting there on the bench. We all knew Lowell crushed left-handed pitching. We all knew the Marlins would use Lowell to pinch-hit for the pitcher. What do you think happened?? Yep, home run. Jay was absolutely livid. He saw all this coming as soon as Guthrie came in to the game, and said so loudly. And when Lowell blasted what would become the game-winning jack, Jay's face was beet red and the string of expletives was as long and prolific as the homer itself. In the forty years I've known him, I've never seen him that mad. But he had a right to be. Basic baseball knowledge would dictate not to use a lefty in that spot, but Dusty gonna Dusty. So remember folks, any discussion of the legendary collapse of the Cubs in 2003 needs to include the mismanagement of In Dusty We Trusty, particularly in the very first game of the NLCS, or else it's not a complete discussion.
