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Posted By: sean

The deal with Chase though is that he wasn't corrup form the get go. It may have been brought on due to low salary or his fights with Kid Elberfield to be yankees manager, who knows? No, he doesn't deserve to be in the hall due to his throwing games. However, there is no doubt in my mind he'd be in the hall otherwise. some examples why: The people whom went after him (charles comiskey and John Mcgraw for starters) just to have him on their team. The few seasons where he showed his most potential (1906 and 07) and the later years (1916. stastically, we'll never be able to tell how good he was at first because we'll never know if it was due to him throwing games or due to someone trying harder than most and being credited with an error for trying to make an impossible play. In Hal's case this is probably 50/50. Such is the argument with a lot of hofers as to whether they deserve to be in the hall, no one today can make that call. These players were elected by people whom actually saw them play. The hofers with the low averages (maranville, tinker, bresnahan, etc.) had more to them than just whats written in a statistics book. Whether is was leadership skills, clutch hitting, circus catches, etc, they were elected to the hall by people who SAW them play. It says a lot for Hal that even after his reputation he STILL got votes for the hall.

The big thing about Kling is that when he left the cubs, the cubs didnt make it to the pennant. When he returned, they did. Nuff said. regarding his hitting, he was no Cobb but few were. In comparison to other deadball era catchers (and even most non deadball catchers) he was a very good hitter. I honestly think the only reason he isn't in the hall is due to his holdouts (which were mostly Murphy's fault), which made him look bad in the press and made him the the cubs 1909 patsy. i'm still keeping up hope