The Bizarro Hall of Fame: Introducing the Class of 2005

In the coming weeks, 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 2005
Mark Langston – Voters in 2005 obviously forgot the pitcher that Langston was early in his career, when he struck out 200+ batters in five out of his first six seasons for the Seattle Mariners before being traded to Montreal for Randy Johnson. He also won 179 games in sixteen major league seasons (including seven seasons with fifteen or more wins), was an All-Star four times and took home seven Gold Gloves.

Otis Nixon – the player my mother still affectionately refers to as “The Druggie” probably deserves his Bizarro fate after the way he ended the 1992 World Series: with the tying run on third in the bottom of the eleventh inning of Game Six, he threw up the baseball equivalent of a white flag, rolling a casual little bunt that pitcher Mike Timlin fielded easily for the final out. Sure, Nixon was one of the fastest humans alive, and it might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn’t.