Breaking News: Andre Dawson A Bit Of A Dick

As you may have heard, Andre Dawson was recently elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. More than any other sport, baseball's Hall of Fame carries with it real significance, which is why many who actually still care about this kind of crap were disappointed to hear of Dawson's election. Despite the hilarious pee-in-your-trousers title of this post, its not that Dawson is a bad guy, or even that he was a bad baseball player. He may or may not be the first, but he definitely wasn't the second. But while he didn't suck, he wasn't worthy of being elected into the Hall of Fame.

This is my opinion, but also that of some people much smarter than I, like Baseball Prospectus' Jay Jaffe. This is from Jaffe's column after the Hawk was elected. By the way, "JAWS" is a system to assess the worthiness of a player to enter the Hall of Fame not a reference to the Monday Night Football commentator.

Though Dawson falls fairly short on the JAWS scale, his election is not a travesty, or at least not a garment-rending travesty on the order of Jim Rice's election last year. He was far from a one-dimensional player in his prime, he piled up hardware and other honors, and despite his injuries, he played into his early forties. Still, his hackstastic ways—camouflaged a bit by a higher intentional walk total than I gave him credit for in my writeup—leave him with the lowest career OBP (.323) of any enshrined outfielder, 20 points lower than the previous low man, Lou Brock.

So Dawson is, at best, a very low level Hall of Famer, and really not even at that level. But he's in, and that ain't changing, so even if we, the statistical community, aren't happy about it, he should be. Right?

Well, no.

Dawson is upset that the Hall has deemed he should enter with an Expos hat on. Unlike other Halls of Fame, Baseball's gives enshrined players a plaque with a sculpted headshot of sorts, like this. By tradition, the player's sculpted image is wearing a baseball cap. Because some players (now most) play their careers for multiple teams, the Hall makes the final decision as to which hat the player should be immortalized with.

The Hall recently announced Dawson will be depicted with an Expos hat. When the news broke, Dawson had this to say:

I'm disappointed. I can proudly say that because Chicago was my preference.

Dawson played his career primarily with two teams, the Montreal Expos (who have since moved to Washington to become the Nationals) and Chicago Cubs. Dawson spent parts of 11 seasons in Montreal and six with the Cubs, and because of that simple math, there really shouldn't be any surprise that the Hall picked Montreal over Chicago as the team with which Dawson should forever be associated.

Its tempting to really go off on Dawson for expressing himself in this way, but I'll spare you the obligatory goat and overly standard poop references. Still, shouldn't Dawson just be happy he's in the Hall at all, rather than complaining which hat he'll be wearing?

.