The Bizarro Hall of Fame: Introducing the Class of 1992

As part of an ongoing project, One More Dying Quail will be profiling the 182 current members of the Bizarro Hall of Fame, an organization that currently exists only in my mind. It was created in the wake of Major League Baseball’s infamous Steroid Era as a way of honoring those players whose careers were perfectly mediocre: the only requirement is that a candidate be listed on the official Baseball Hall of Fame ballot and receive zero votes.
Class of 1992
John Denny – Take the 1983 season out of John Denny’s career and you have a pitcher with a career record of 104-102 in twelve major league seasons. That 1983 campaign was a memorable one, however, as the 30-year-old veteran posted a 19-6 record and 2.37 ERA to win the National League Cy Young award and lead the Phillies to the World Series. He earned the team’s only victory in the Fall Classic, outdueling Scott McGregor in the first game.

Ken Forsch – Forsch spent the first nine years of his career working primarily out of the bullpen for the Houston Astros, appearing in 70 games in 1974 and earning a trip to the All-Star Game as a reliever in 1976. His younger brother Bob was also a successful major leaguer pitcher, with twenty wins in 1977 and a no-hitter in 1978; when Ken tossed a no-no of his own in 1979, they became the first two brothers to accomplish the feat.

Garry Maddox – One of the greatest defensive players ever to patrol centerfield in the major leagues (Mets broadcaster Ralph Kiner once stated of the eight-time Gold Glove winner, “Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the rest is covered by Garry Maddox.”), Maddox was a key member of the great Phillies teams in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His uncharacteristic error late in the seventh game of the 1978 NLCS cost Philadelphia a trip to the World Series, but he made up for it two years later, driving in the NLCS-winning run with a tenth inning double.

Ben Oglivie – After spending most of the 1970s riding the pine for the Red Sox and Tigers, Oglivie was dealt to the Brewers and emerged as an offensive threat. He hit twenty or more homeruns in three of his first five seasons in Milwaukee, including a league-leading 41 in 1980. He played in his only World Series in 1982 for the “Harvey’s Wallbangers” team that included four real Hall of Famers (Rollie Fingers, Robin Yount, Don Sutton and Paul Molitor) and four Bizarro Hall of Famers (Oglivie, Gorman Thomas, Pete Vuckovich and Cecil Cooper).

Gorman Thomas – A free swinger who finished in the top five in strikeouts six times, Thomas was also a huge homerun threat, leading the league with 45 in 1979 and 39 three years later. Originally drafted by the Seattle Pilots in 1969 (the Pilots moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers in 1970), he finally ended up out west with the Mariners in the mid-1980s, hitting 32 homeruns in the next-to-last season of his career.

Pete Vuckovich – Vuckovich was employed by three teams in six seasons before landing with a talented Milwaukee team in 1981. He spent the final five years of his career with the Brewers, finishing fourth in the Cy Young award voting with 14 wins in 1981 and taking home the honor the following season.

(Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 1991.)

(All Hall of Fame voting results were obtained from the official web site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Statistical information included in postings for the Bizarro Hall of Fame was, unless otherwise noted, originally compiled by Baseball-Reference.com.)