[ceast]

Dale Murphy was my childhood idol. I got to see him play in ATL several times in the late 70s-80s. Even though I am a lefty and my forte was pitching rather than hitting, I perfected the little bat waggle he did at the plate. He didn’t smoke, cuss, drink or chew tobacco. An absolutely awesome role model for kids.

As an adult, I got to meet and interact with him twice in the last 20 years at functions. And he absolutely validated my childhood adoration of him. He signed autos for everyone, took pics with everyone, and regaled us with stories and answered all of our questions (except he never would say which pitchers he liked to face because he didn’t want to come across as badmouthing them).

As a player he was one of the top players in the decade of the 80s. But when his career statistics are compared to the current HOFers and to those who are currently on the outside looking in, his peak was short, and his falloff at the end was steep and fast (he certainly would have benefitted from even light PEDs to help injury recovery to prolong his career by a couple of years).

He is absolutely a HOFer in my eyes, but I can understand why he is unlikely to get in based on the numbers. Based solely on the numbers he should rank somewhere between 4th and 7th on this ballot. But if the voters are going to discount the on field performances of the PED folks on the ballot because of PEDs, then they should in theory credit Murph for his off-field contributions to the image of the league, and he was definitely on the of the faces of the league for much of the 80s.

Again, based on the numbers, I don’t see him getting in. But if he does, this 1970s-1980s kid will be at Cooperatown wearing a #3 Braves jersey watching his induction speech and reliving my childhood all over again. If he doesn’t get the votes, he will always be a Hall of Famer to me. Now I’m off to go grab my autographed Dale Murphy bat and hope I don’t wake up my wife as I take some practice swings.