"Love This Game and the Game will Love you Back": Andre Dawson's Powerful Hall of Fame Induction Speech

Last weekend, Andre Dawson--the great five tool player known as the "Hawk"--received his long overdue induction into Baseball's Hall of Fame and he delivered a heartfelt, passionate and eloquent speech that not only detailed his path to baseball immortality but also offered a succinct yet powerful indictment of the performance-enhancing drug (PED) users whose disgraceful conduct has made a mockery of baseball's record book: "Individuals have chosen the wrong road," Dawson declared. "They've chosen (cheating) as their legacy. For those who still have a chance to choose theirs, don't be lured to the dark side. It's a stain on the game, a stain that is gradually being removed."

I wish that Dawson were right that the "stain is gradually being removed" but I fear that the "stain" is in many ways permanent and that the "stain" may someday become even bigger if some of the PED cheaters are inducted in the Hall of Fame.

The recurring theme in Dawson's speech was "Love this game and it will love you back." Much like his former teammate Ryne Sandburg, who was inducted in the Hall of Fame five years ago, Dawson was not very talkative as a player but they both proved that they had a lot to say once they ascended to the Hall of Fame podium.

Dawson is a man of character who never took the easy way and it is criminal that his path to the Hall of Fame was blocked for many years because the numbers that he shed blood, sweat and tears to post were blasted to smithereens by the totals stacked up by PED cheaters. During his speech, Dawson thanked his mother--who passed away four years ago but never lost faith that Dawson would be recognized as a Hall of Famer--and other family members who molded his character and work ethic. Listening to Dawson speak should be more than enough to convince anyone beyond the shadow of any doubt that the Hall's doors simply cannot be opened up to any of the players who tainted themselves and the sport by using PEDs. Who would Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire or Alex Rodriguez or Roger Clemens--and the list goes on, as you can see for yourself--thank if the dark day ever comes that they are selected as Hall of Famers? Their drug dealers?

I don't want to hear any analysis about how good some of those guys were before they started cheating and I don't want to see any projections about how many home runs they might have hit or strikeouts they might have thrown without using PEDs. They cheated, point blank. They turned baseball's record book into something that belongs in the fiction section. They cost other players money, awards and championships. They forced good men like Andre Dawson and Jim Rice to wait years to be inducted in the Hall of Fame (and other good men, like Dale Murphy, are still waiting).

Real baseball lovers know that Henry Aaron is still the all-time career home run king and that Roger Maris--a two-time MVP, seven-time All-Star, three-time World Series champion and one-time Gold Glove winner--is the all-time single season home run king.

I sincerely hope that all of the PED cheaters never come close to being inducted in the Hall of Fame and that in the next few years the Hall of Fame reexamines the careers of some of the stars from the past few decades whose accomplishments were temporarily forgotten as cartoon-sized sluggers pounded baseballs for Herculean distances.

Hawk Finally Swoops Into Cooperstown

Andre Dawson was the ultimate five-tool player and his combination of power, speed, hitting ability, fielding prowess and a strong arm earned him the nickname "The Hawk." Dawson is the only player who received enough votes to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame this year but just a glance at his resume shows that he should have glided into Cooperstown a long time ago: 1977 NL Rookie of the Year, eight time All-Star, eight time Gold Glove winner, NL MVP runner-up in 1982 when he led the Montreal Expos to their first and only playoff appearance, 1987 NL MVP in his first season with the Chicago Cubs (the first player from a last place team to win that award), 438 career home runs (36th all-time, ahead of old school Hall of Famers Billy Williams, Duke Snider and Al Kaline) and 1591 career RBI (34th all-time, just four RBI behind Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and George Brett and seven RBI ahead of Hall of Famers Rogers Hornsby and Harmon Killebrew). Dawson's knees absorbed a terrible pounding during his early years patrolling the AstroTurf outfield for the Expos but despite injuries that robbed him of some of his mobility and caused him great pain he still totaled 314 career stolen bases, joining Willie Mays and Barry Bonds as the only players in MLB history with at least 400 career home runs plus at least 300 career stolen bases.

It is fitting to mention Bonds' name in connection with Dawson's, because it is partially Bonds' fault that Dawson had to wait so long to join the Hall of Fame; when Bonds and the other performance-enhancing drug (PED) using cheaters made a travesty of MLB's record book in the 1990s and 2000s it became easy to overlook the accomplishments of stars from the 1970s and 1980s like Dawson and Dale Murphy (a two-time NL MVP, seven time All-Star and five time Gold Glove winner who still has not been inducted in the Hall of Fame). How could players who "only" totaled 350-450 home runs be elected to the Hall of Fame when players began routinely cranking out 50-plus home run seasons en route to astronomical career totals exceeding 500 home runs? I am not interested in parsing out how many home runs Bonds, Alex Rodriguez or any other cheaters hit when they were clean--all of those guys cheated the game, cheated themselves, cheated the fans and cheated the legitimate Hall of Famers who came before them and I hope that the Hall of Fame voters reject all of them the way that Mark "I'm not here to talk about the past" McGwire has been rejected so far. The Hall should spend the next decade or so inducting every omitted player from the 1970s and 1980s and the few spotless guys from the 1990s like Ken Griffey and Frank Thomas but I hope that I never see Bonds, Rodriguez or Roger Clemens in Cooperstown. How can the Hall exclude Pete Rose as a player for conduct that he did as a manager and then induct players whose actions tainted the sport's history and records?

The sad postscript to Dawson's election to the Hall of Fame is that the honor came three years after his mother passed away--but at least Dawson can be somewhat comforted by the fact that Mattie Brown, like any good mother, never doubted her son's talent or his place in history, telling him "Baby, it's gonna happen. Don't worry about it. Just be patient. You did what you did for a long time. The Hall of Fame, they can prolong your entry but they won't take it away from you."

How the Media Works--or Doesn't Work

The best tool that any consumer of media information can have is a healthy amount of skepticism. This is true whether the source is the internet, television, radio, a newspaper or any other platform. Truth, accuracy and fairness are rapidly heading toward extinction in favor of ignorance, bias and the rush to break a story first. Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy was widely ridiculed after his famous press conference rant but while most members of the media were delighted to mock him and thus not have to face the serious message that he delivered (albeit in an over the top fashion), I immediately wrote that he was right on target with his complaint.

My post titled "Why is the Media Out to get Terrell Owens?" presented a case study in how the media shapes the news instead of just reporting it. Owens' life story and the obstacles that he has overcome are every bit as inspirational as Brett Favre's. The only reason that Favre is celebrated as a hero and Owens is denigrated is because media gatekeepers have decided that this is the way each story should be framed. Favre has made mistakes--involving alcohol, painkiller addiction and meddling in a teammate's contract dispute, to name just three off the top of my head--but those incidents are either glossed over or portrayed in ways that emphasize how Favre overcame his difficulties; Owens' mistakes--you know the list, so I'm not even going to mention them again--are held up as reasons to ridicule him and question his value as a teammate and his worth as a person. Truth, accuracy and fairness demand that the media tell stories in an unbiased fashion, providing all the information so that the public can make its own judgments; ignorance, bias and the rush to break a story first demand that stories be thrown together quickly and packaged in a way to heighten passions--often in service of a biased agenda.

In "Keyshawn Johnson Versus Terrell Owens: The Real Tale of the Tape," I explained one popular technique that I strongly suspect was used to try to make Owens look bad. On ESPN's Sunday Countdown show, Johnson said some complimentary things about Owens but advised him to not publicly knock Bill Parcells, the Dallas Cowboys' previous coach. The next thing you know, Owens is on SportsCenter firing away at Johnson. How did that happen? In my post, I quoted Owens' comments, as broadcast on SportsCenter, in their entirety and then made this comment:

Those Owens quotes come straight from SportsCenter and the ellipses (...) indicate portions that any careful viewer can tell that ESPN edited out (a technique that the network learned from 60 Minutes, among other shows). That means that we don't know everything that Owens said or what questions prompted his answers (sorry for shouting, but that is a very important point). We also don't know if Owens actually even heard exactly what Johnson said. In fact, I would not be surprised if Owens did not even see firsthand what Johnson actually said and that Owens' comments are responses to questions posed to him in the locker room. This is what athletes mean sometimes when they say that they are quoted out of context even if their responses are on tape--if Owens was misled about what Johnson said and that is not shown on SportsCenter, then Owens' seemingly brash comments are indeed being taken out of context. For instance, suppose that a writer said to Owens, "Hey, did you hear how Keyshawn ripped you on Sunday?" Perhaps if Owens had a different personality then he might simply say, "No" and leave it at that--but what would you do on the spur of the moment if someone told you that a good friend of your ex-boss who you did not get along with said something bad about you on national television? This is an ESPN manufactured "controversy" in which ESPN analyst Johnson will not only get the last word but in which the questions posed to Owens and Owens' answers will be edited before you ever see them. Just keep that in mind--not just in reference to this story, but in general. This is a fine little case study about how the mainstream media works.

If you don't believe that this is how the media often operates, consider what just happened in Chicago. On Wednesday, Rick Telander--a writer who actually does endeavor to get his facts straight--devoted his Chicago Sun-Times' column to explaining why he submitted a blank Hall of Fame baseball ballot this year: "No erasing empty feeling."

That afternoon, a Chicago radio host used the technique that I described above to try to incite a problem between Telander and former Cubs' outfielder Andre Dawson. In his Thursday column titled "Clearing the airwaves," this is how Telander explains what happened:

It's a pity that such a noisy brouhaha had been made out of my simple piece by a morning-radio talk-show host, who read a trifle of it to Dawson on air around 9 a.m, called me cowardly, then screamed to Dawson, "He screwed you!"

Dawson had responded that if I'd said what it seemed I'd said, to his face--that Dawson might have used steroids--what would happen next "wouldn't be pretty."

Telander contacted Dawson and cleared the air. It turns out that Dawson never read the column but just heard the radio host's interpretation of what Telander meant. Telander read the entire column to Dawson, who then replied--referring to Telander's disgust with MLB's ongoing steroids crisis--"I understand you now. I know that regardless of what I've accomplished, it doesn't count. Because nobody is trustworthy.'' Telander's original column in fact said that Dawson should be voted into the Hall of Fame; his message bore no relationship whatsoever to what the radio host irresponsibly screeched over the airwaves. Did the host simply not understand what Telander meant or did the host intentionally distort Telander's message just to create controversy? In the end, it does not really matter, because a lot of people who heard the show will never read Telander's follow up column that straightens everything out. That radio host literally and figuratively poisoned the airwaves. The sad thing is that this happens every day.

If you ever meet Mike Gundy in person, instead of snickering, shake his hand and thank him for trying to stem the massive tide of sewage being dumped on us by various media streams--and the next time you hear a radio host bellowing vile or inflammatory comments at the top of his lungs or the next time you read a story about how bad a person Owens (or anyone else who is on the media hit list) is, pause for a moment and use the most vital tool for any listener, viewer or reader: skepticism.