Bagwell for the HOF!

 I wrote a reply at Beyond the Boxscore, here,, but I'll go on a little further here, and say that watching Bagwell decline the way he has, because of the reason he has, ranks very high on the list of Saddest Things I've Ever Seen.  

For almost five years now, my little baseball card shrine to Bagwell over at Astroland has read, "An Unquestioned First Ballot Hall of Famer," and I have never seen any reason to change that wording.

I do however sometimes wonder if everyone sees it in the same way.  Bagwell did so many things well--he took a pitch, he played defense, he ran--but it's the home runs that people are gonna focus on.  And that's kind of a discredit, because the era in which we watch the game kind of says that players are gonna pass him in that regard.  Never mind that they won't play defense as well, or run as well, or be as consistent, or be as smart; they'll pass him in homers, and because people (and maybe voters?) are so fixated on the home run, the memory of his career, will suffer for it.  

So, yeah Bagwell SHOULD definitely be a first ballot Hall of Famer, because of how he dominated the era in which he played.  But sometimes, I wonder whether he actually WILL be.