The Bizarro Hall of Fame: Introducing the Class of 2003

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 2003
Danny Jackson – Living proof that one season of excellence does not guarantee that a player will receive a Hall of Fame vote, Jackson was the first overall pick of the Kansas City Royals in the secondary phase of the 1982 amateur draft He was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 1987 and finished second to Orel Hershiser in the 1988 Cy Young award voting after posting a breakout 23-8 record and 2.73 ERA. While the numbers are impressive, some feel that manager Pete Rose damaged Jackson’s future health by calling on him to pitch a career-high 260.7 innings, including fifteen complete games (tied with Hershiser for the league lead). Jackson’s left arm agreed with the criticism; he didn’t win more than eight games in any season again until 1993.

Mickey Tettleton – The lasting memory most people will have of Tettleton is not his four seasons with thirty or more homeruns or the fact that he drew an impressive number of walks for a power hitter, but his batting stance. Watching him at the plate, his hands bunched up and twisted in close to his body, one wondered how he ever managed to unravel everything fast enough to get the bat on the ball. Another notable quirk about his career: for three straight seasons, from 1985-87, Tettleton totaled exactly 211 at-bats.

Mitch Williams – Joe Carter might not have kept Mitch Williams from reaching the Hall of Fame, but he definitely prevented him from receiving a couple of courtesy votes. A workhorse reliever who had come up with the Rangers before emerging as a top flight closer with the Cubs in 1989, Williams put together five solid seasons in that role, culminating with a 43 save campaign in 1993. In Game Six of the World Series that year, however, he surrendered a Series-winning homerun to Carter, and was never the same pitcher again. Traded to Houston in the off-season, Williams ended up appearing in just 52 games (saving six) over the next four seasons before quitting for good in 1997.

Todd Worrell – The National League Rookie of the Year in 1986 (9-10, 2.08, 36 saves), Worrell had six seasons with more than thirty saves, including 44 during a late career renaissance with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the mid-1990s. One of just two major leaguers who attended California’s Biola University – his younger brother Tim is the other – Worrell likely missed out on Hall of Fame votes because of the era in which he was up for consideration. At the time he appeared on the ballot, voters were still largely unclear on how they wanted to judge closers (to a large extent, this is still the case). Were he to appear on the ballot in 2008, Worrell might pick up a handful of votes; in 2003, the writers weren’t quite ready to do that.

Coming soon: the Bizarro Hall of Fame Class of 2002.