On Hall of Fame Day, congratulations to Jim Thome, my favorite non-Royal of all time. We’ve been intertwined in strange ways for over a quarter-century now. He debuted in the majors literally the week I began college, when my baseball fandom went supernova. 1/
I drafted him on my first keeper fantasy team the following spring, and rooted for him ever after.
A decade before Sabermetrics took over and made the Three True Outcomes cool, Thome was its prophet. He holds the all-time career record for most combined HR, BB, & K (4907). 2/
A decade before Sabermetrics took over and made the Three True Outcomes cool, Thome was its prophet. He holds the all-time career record for most combined HR, BB, & K (4907). 2/
But he wasn’t just a Sabermetric pioneer; he also pioneered baseball’s new economic practices as informed by analytics. In the early-90s, John Hart’s Indians were the first team to aggressively sign young players to long-term deals in an attempt to save money in the long term. 3/
And it was Thome’s contract which reverberated the most throughout baseball. He signed it after the 1993 season, with just 114 games of major-league experience. Most people in the industry thought the Indians were nuts. They weren’t. They were brilliant. They saw the future. 4/
And in 1995, the Indians ended a 41-year playoff drought with what remains my favorite non-champion non-Royal team of all time, a monument to brilliant team-building. They went 100-44 and won the division by 30 games in a strike-shortened season. 5/
Thome is the third player on that team to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with Eddie Murray and Dave Winfield (who wasn’t on the playoff roster and retired after the season). But another half-dozen guys are near-HoFers, should-be HoFers, or possible future HoFers. 6/
And Thome just kept hitting. He never hit more than 52 HR in a season, but lasted long enough to hit 612, more than McGwire, Sosa and all but 7 guys in history. In 2010, aged 39, he hit .283/.412/.627; the only guys that old to post as high an OPS+ were Williams and Bonds. 7/
And he did so without even a hint of steroid rumors, while earning a reputation as one of the nicest people in baseball. I can’t think of a guy who better represents what baseball has been over the last 25 years.
And then he moved into my neighborhood. 8/
And then he moved into my neighborhood. 8/
He lives barely a mile away, which I found out when my then fifth-grade daughter told me she had a new classmate whose daddy worked for the White Sox. I didn’t expect his position to be “Special Assistant to the GM and Local Legend”. 9/
I can’t say I know him; I ran into him at a couple school events, and once tried to play it cool, saying hello and “I understand your [NAME REDACTED]’s dad.”
Because “OMIGOD YOU’RE MY FAVORITE PLAYER AND HELPED ME WIN SO MANY STRAT TITLES” didn’t have the same ring to it. 10/
Because “OMIGOD YOU’RE MY FAVORITE PLAYER AND HELPED ME WIN SO MANY STRAT TITLES” didn’t have the same ring to it. 10/
A week after the Royals lost the 2014 WS, I was at a school concert feeling sorry for myself, when I saw him sitting nearby. And I laughed at the absurdity. JIM THOME - who never won a title but lost a Game 7 after leading in the ninth - was in the room. I needed perspective. 11/
Anyway, I can't say I know him, but I know some people who do, and they both say he's as nice and normal a guy as everyone says. Maybe one day our paths will cross and we'll talk shop. But today, I just want to say: congratulations, Jim. The Hall was incomplete without you. 12/12
