Committee Chairman

Baseball HOF 2015 Class Announced

Jan 06, 2015

It had long been speculated that Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz would enter the Baseball Hall of Fame on their first try. Not only did that happen, but they will be joined by Craig Biggio making this the largest Hall of Fame class in sixty years.

Let’s take a look at who got in and who didn’t make the cut.

Inductees:

Randy Johnson, 1st Year, 97.3 percent. 15 voters did not choose Johnson. I would love to hear explanations from each of them as to why “The Big Unit” was not Hall of Fame worthy.

Pedro Martinez, 1st Year, 91.1 percent. No shock here, as Pedro was expected to get in right away.

John Smoltz, 1st Year, 82.9 percent. It was speculated by some that Smoltz might have to wait a year due to such a crowded ballot, but he was able to follow his closest contemporary, Dennis Eckersley as a first ballot inductee.

Craig Biggio, 4th Year, 82.7 percent. Biggio narrowly missed the cut last year, and it was a travesty that he had to wait this long.

Not Inducted:

Mike Piazza, 3rd Year, 69.9 percent. Piazza’s percentage rises seven percent from last year and is headed in the right direction. This bodes well for his future chances.

Jeff Bagwell, 5th Year, 55.7 percent. This is a marginal increase from last year, but still down from the 59 percent he received in 2013.

Tim Raines, 8th Year, 55.0 percent. Raines is poised to be the first victim of the new ten year rule, and he only has two more years to gain twenty more percentage points of the vote. The good news is that this is Raines’ highest vote total since he has been on the ballot.

Curt Schilling, 3rd Year, 39.2 percent. Schilling made a large gain from his sub 30 percent percentage from last year, but he had 38.8 percent that he had on his first year.

Roger Clemens, 3rd Year, 37.5 percent. A slight increase from last year, but basically we know the percentage that he and Barry will receive from the voters. There is little reason to think he will crack 40 percent.

Barry Bonds, 3rd Year, 36.8 percent. See Clemens, Roger.

Lee Smith, 13th Year, 30.2 percent. Smith gained 0.3 percent from last year but has been as high as 50.6 in the past. Any chance that he will have will likely have to reside on the Veterans Committee.

Edgar Martinez, 6th Year, 27.0 percent. This is Edgar’s second straight year under 30 percent after exceeding that threshold in his first four years on the ballot. This is more due to the logjam ballot, but this is still not very promising.

Alan Trammell, 14th Year, 25.1 percent. Up five percent from last year, but it won’t matter as a fifty percent jump is unheard of.

Mike Mussina, 2nd Year, 24.6 percent. A nice four percent elevation in this crowded ballot is promising for Mussina.

Jeff Kent, 2nd Year, 14.2 percent. Kent suffered a slight decrease from his 15 percent last year.

Fred McGriff, 6th Year, 12.9 percent. This is a slight increase from last year but since he had been over 20 percent in the past, this is not looking very good for his Hall of Fame chances.

Larry Walker, 5th Year, 11.8 percent. The exact same story as McGriff as he is up a bit but well under the 20 percentage points he had in previous years.

Gary Sheffield, 1st Year, 11.7 percent. Considering how the other PED guys have fared this is a minor victory for Sheffield.

Mark McGwire, 9th Year, 10.0 percent. This is the sixth year in a row that McGwire has seen his voting percentage drop. Enough said.

Don Mattingly, 15th Year, 9.1 Percent. In Mattingly’s first year on the ballot he had 28.2 percent. He would never come close again.

Sammy Sosa, 3rd Year, 6.6 percent. Sosa sees his lowest voting percentage thus far, down from the 12.2 percent he had in his first year.

Nomar Garciaparra, 1st Year, 5.5 percent. Garciaparra survives the ballot, but barely. Can he hang on again next year?

The only significant one and done name was Carlos Delgado who only received 3.8 percent of the vote.

We will be looking to revise the Baseball list to reflect the next batch of eligible players.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate this year’s class, and we look forward to watching their inductions in the summer.

Christian Retires

Dec 31, 2014

Published in Not in Hall of Fame News

Last night on Monday Night Raw, on commentary, Jerry “The King” Lawler inferred that WWE Superstar, Christian was retired. It was known that the former World Heavyweight Champion had issues with concussions and had not wrestled in six months, but there had never been any conversation about retiring from in ring competition. As it turns out, it would be reported that this was not a slip from Lawler and that the WWE does consider Christian to be retired.

Now you know that with a site such as ours, the first thing we look at is the WWE Hall of Fame. His long time tag team partner, Edge, has already been inducted, which took place in 2012 after he announced his retirement due to injury. Edge had the Hall of Fame resume, but does Christian?

Born Jay Reso, the Canadian wrestler entered the WWE in 1998 and with the exception of a two year stint in TNA, he has competed there ever since. Christian would win the Word Heavyweight Champion twice, the Intercontinental Championship four times, the ECW Champion twice, the WWE World Tag Team Champion nine times (seven with Edge) and also held the European, Hardcore and Light Heavyweight Title once.

With Edge, his tag team matches against the Hardy Boys would be match of the year candidates and would elevate all four men. Christian, although has had a very good career, did not reach the peaks that Edge or Jeff Hardy did, and the fact that his retirement was confirmed by a passing comment by Lawler as opposed to a retirement speech (like Edge) may show where he is seen by the WWE, and to a lesser extent the fans as a whole.

Saying that, we will be moving Christian from the Future Candidates and place him in to our rankings when we do our revisions in May. We expect that his ranking will be a healthy one, though we openly wonder if he will ever get in on his own, or if his only legitimate chance is with a tag team with Edge.

It is also a good time to announce a new rule that we will be enacting a policy where once a contracted WWE performer reaches the age of 45, they will automatically be switching over from Future Candidates to Current Candidates for the WWE Hall of Fame.

Until now, we never had a set age policy and were going by when we thought a wrestler was essentially “done” and unlikely to return for a substantial WWE run. We are still going to go with that to a point if we think a wrestler under the age of 45 is unlikely to come back for a WWE run (see, X-Pac) but once a performer hits that age, they probably should be wrapping it up, or at the very least they are certainly well into the back nine of their career.

This may prevent what occurred to us a few years ago with Dustin Rhodes (Goldust) was ranked on our initial list when we erroneously thought that he would not be returning in a major role to the WWE.

Not only did he do so, he came back in the best shape of his career and won the Tag Team Championship two more times with his brother Cody, and as of this writing, he has remained on our list, and at age 45, will now stay in lieu of our new age rule.

With all of that said, we here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to thank Jay Reso (Christian) for his career and wish him the best in his future career after World Wrestling Entertainment.

Paul McCartney headlines Pop Music HOF Class

Dec 30, 2014

Published in Not in Hall of Fame News

There are chances that if you are regular visitor to this website, you know that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the constant controversy that surrounds it, is the backbone of what this site about. The Pennsylvania based “America’s Pop Music Hall of Fame” may not have nearly the same prestige or name recognition, but they have unveiled their third Class, which will be the official Class of 2015.

Named to their Hall of Fame are the following:

Paul McCartney
Linda Ronstadt
Glen Campbell
Paul Anka
Chubby Checker
The Eagles
The Everly Brothers
The Four Seasons
Tom Jones
Ricky Nelson
The Righteous Brothers
Johnny Tillotson
Andy Williams

With all due respect to this Hall, their website, which has multiple configuration errors and a press release that was full of duplication, they still have a lot of work left to do, though we applaud the type of Hall they are trying to create.

We will be watching closely to see how this Hall of Fame progresses.

Kyle Orton Retires

Dec 29, 2014

Published in Not in Hall of Fame News

It was announced that Quarterback, Kyle Orton has informed the Buffalo Bills that he plans to retire from the National Football League.

Orton took over as the Bills starter in week 5 this season, taking over for the ineffective E.J. Manuel and would go 7 and 5 this year.

Kyle played his college football at Purdue and was the only Quarterback to start in four Bowl Games; 2001 Sun Bowl Loss, 2002 Sun Bowl Win, 2003 Capital One Bowl Loss and a 2004 Sun Bowl Loss and threw for 8,918 Yards and 61 Touchdowns. He would be drafted by the Chicago Bears in the fourth round and would battle for the duration of his Bears tenure with Rex Grossman for the starting position.

He would be traded to the Denver Broncos for Jay Cutler and would have a good season winning the first six games of the 2009 season and would remain the Broncos starter until 2011, when “Tebow mania” took over the National Football League. Orton would be waived by the team and would be picked up by the Kansas City Chiefs playing three games there.

Orton would then sign on with the Dallas Cowboys to replace John Kitna as the backup for Tony Romo. Staying there for two seasons, he would play his final season with the Buffalo Bills, and as mentioned finished off his career as an NFL starter.

Overall, Kyle Orton would have a 42 and 40 record as a starter with 18,037 Passing Yards and 101 Touchdowns. He will never be considered for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but any Quarterback who lasted ten seasons with a winning record deserves a mention from us.

We wish Kyle Orton the best of luck on his post NFL career.