Goosed again

Steve Goldman looks at the esteemed members of the BBWA (the guys who make the Hall of Fame selections) and is, shall we say, unimpressed.

With respect to Fred Lieb, Peter Gammons and all the other writers who started as team beat writers and went on to do bigger, better things, the job of the modern beat writer is not one with rigorous intellectual requirements. You have to lack the imagination to know you could be doing something better with your time while waiting for Mike Mussina to finish his postgame brew so he can tell you that he lacked a good fastball tonight. You have to have the confidence to not feel embarrassed when Joe Torre gives you the evil eye for asking a very reasonable question about why in hell he left a mediocre LOOGY to pitch to Vlad Guerrero with the bases loaded when Mariano Rivera was rested in the bullpen. You have to have just enough intelligence not to (a) ask the players for autographs, (b) eat from the players' postgame spread, and (c) not show up in your underwear — and yes, these things have happened. Most importantly, you have to be credulous, very credulous, or risk losing your access.

Note that nowhere among this list of qualities is an appreciation of baseball history or an ability to judge ballplayers in and out of the context of their times. You get to come to your uninformed opinions without any sort of education whatsoever, except for the five Ws. And remember — sportswriting is just a ghettoized form of news reporting, where the reporters were so educated, so objective, that with only a few exceptions, they spent a year reporting fairy tales about WMDs in Iraq.

He's even less impressed with their choice of Bruce Sutter, and not Rich Gossage, as a rare reliever to enter the Hall.

Equally inimpressed is Goose himself.

Gossage's disappointment after being bypassed in his seventh year on the ballot was obvious. In a 22-year career in which he saved 310 games and had a 124-107 record, he is most remembered for being a feared closer with a blazing fastball for the Yankees. But Gossage says he thinks he has been unfairly compared to modern closers, who typically pitch one inning per outing.

When Gossage was relieving, he often came in as early as the seventh inning. Now, closers are reserved for the ninth and, sometimes, parts of the eighth. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Gossage averaged 1.64 outs in games he finished, while Sutter averaged 1.52. The Yankees' Mariano Rivera averages 1.08.

"I was a pioneer in how the bullpen is used today," Gossage said. "I did the work it takes three guys to do today. Don't compare what Mariano does today to what I did. It's two different positions."

Not taking anything away from Sutter, but watching those two pitch, I'd be a lot more afraid to get into the batter's box to face Gossage, than Sutter. And as for Mariano, the most dominant closer of his era is surely a lock for the Hall, but Gossage was a fireman -- he entered the game when it was on the line, not just to get the last three or four outs.