Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Influential Coaches #12: Marv Dunphy

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)
September: Lynn Seitz (swimming)
October: Micah Hartman (volleyball)
November: Steve Chronister (basketball/baseball)

One could make a case, by looking at my dozen years in coaching, that I have been at my best when coaching volleyball. What's funny about that is that if you count my baseball experience towards softball (and apart from the action between the mound and the plate, they are practically the same), I have significantly less experience with volleyball than with any other sport that I have coached save for football (and I was never a head football coach). My playing experience can be boiled down to a camp or two in southern California when I was in middle school and PE in ninth grade, but I didn't really learn the game until my freshman year at Pepperdine, for which I can thank my friend Alex Moore.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Influential Coaches #11: Steve Chronister

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)
September: Lynn Seitz (swimming)
October: Micah Hartman (volleyball)

I will begin with a statement that hopefully this piece will provide all of the necessary supporting evidence for; outside of my immediate family, Steve Chronister has been the single most influential person in my life to date. Not only was Steve my basketball coach for four of the first five years of my career, but he was also a neighbor (our houses were roughly one hundred yards apart), and his sons were two of my more constant companions growing up. He was a more or less constant presence in my life for the entirety of our seven and a half years in Anchorage.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Influential Coaches #10: Micah Hartman

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)
September: Lynn Seitz (swimming)

October is smack in the middle of volleyball season, and so in honor of that we are going to take a look at Micah, who was a co-assistant coach with me for two years and an assistant under Tessa and I for one, all with NCS volleyball. During those three years, Micah's coaching provided a significant piece of the foundation for the 2010 Cathedral volleyball team, which remains the best season-long experience that I have ever had as a coach.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Influential Coaches #9: Lynn Seitz

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)
August: Tessa Paganini (volleyball)

I only swam for Lynn one year of my life, but it was a very important and tumultuous year in my development, both as a swimmer and as a person. My experience with Alaska Pacific Swim Club helped keep open the door to competitive swimming for me at a time when I would have been just as happy to drop it and spend those ten to fifteen hours a week on another sport (like, say, basketball). And it helped prepare me, eventually, for my own coaching style.

Back in April, I wrote about how many terrific swimmers developed under Rickey Perkins' tutelage at Northern Lights, and how several of them went on to compete at the Division I level. With that many ultra-competitive teenagers (particularly young teenagers) in one pool together, I suppose it was kind of inevitable that there would be some friction between teammates (especially in swimming, which is effectively an individual sport and doesn't require any of the mutual trust or cooperation of a team sport). So it was at Northern Lights, and I know that I personally had several relationships with teammates that could be categorized anywhere on the scale from "ice cold" to "extremely disruptive and antagonistic." I can even shamefully admit to my attitude being at least part of the reason another swimmer left Northern Lights for Alaska Pacific, and about a year or so later, with most of my contemporaries having advanced from NLSC's Silver team to its Gold team and me showing pretty much zero interest in joining them, I also switched teams.

Alaska Pacific was a relatively new club at the time in Anchorage (I joined at the end of the summer prior to my freshman year of high school), and if I recall correctly it had risen somewhat like the proverbial phoenix out of the ashes of another club based on the east side of Anchorage whose name I cannot remember. Lynn was the head coach and also provided much of the early depth for the squad with her five daughters, who ranged in age from about nine to eighteen. At the time that I joined, I was part of a mini-exodus from Northern Lights to Alaska Pacific that included at least eight swimmers I can think of off the top of my head, who all left NLSC for different reasons, and who all (I think) found a more comfortable home at APSC.

Being a mother as well as a coach to several of her swimmers, Lynn made the pool deck, in essence, an extension of the living room, with a very warm, family-style atmosphere that would have been unfamiliar (to say the least) at Northern Lights or Aurora, the two biggest clubs in town. As I had more than a few behavioral issues in my past, it was made clear to me early on that that kind of tomfoolery simply wouldn't fly with Lynn as the coach. She expected everyone on the team to treat everyone else with an appropriate degree of respect, not just in the water during practices and meets but on the decks and in the locker room and wherever else we interacted. This was especially important because a significant percentage of the team was in the twelve-to-fifteen range. I don't know how many of you know the saying "There's nothing dumber than a middle school boy, and nothing meaner than a middle school girl," but it contains a lot of truth, and had often been my experience at NLSC. Those tendencies were cut off short by Lynn's expectations, and it made for a pretty harmonious environment. In fact, while at APSC, the kid who had left NLSC at least in part thanks to my actions and I became friends and even hung out occasionally outside of swimming.

In addition to creating a wholesome and comfortable environment for her swimmers, Lynn also knew how to coach; her oldest daughter, Erika, was swimming in college that year, and her middle daughter, Greta, was the best swimmer on our team (she also went on to swim at Wheaton, as did Anna, the youngest; Amanda and Laura merely attended Wheaton - I feel like there should be a Seitz Hall at the school). We had other talented swimmers as well, and although I continued to make no secret of my greater love for basketball (to the point of zipping over to the Alaska Pacific University gym the second I was changed in order to get some shots in), I also definitely applied myself much more to my swimming technique than I had been doing in my last year or so at NLSC. For example, it was under her watch that I mastered my open turns to the point where I was teaching my high school teammates how to best perform them just two years later.

That work paid off later on, after I had left and gone to boarding school, when I was a role player on a pair of state champion teams in Virginia. But I think what left a more indelible impression on me was Lynn's handling of that often volatile species, the young teenager. During my third summer in Valdez (2003), I was not quite twenty years old and coaching a knockoff of the Bad News Bears (guys - and Crystal - if any of you are reading this, you know it's true). When the two other coaches, both dads, simply stopped showing up, I was left to fend for myself with a dozen boys (and one girl) who were not always well-behaved, whether on the field or off. I may have made some missteps here and there, but I certainly know that I tried to incorporate Lynn's approach into my coaching, and it worked well enough for the team to get better as the season went on (even if certain, shall we say, extra-curricular activities occasionally affected their ability on the field).

When I moved to Washington, DC in 2006, I soon found a job coaching middle school girls. Now, I had coached one or two girls before (in baseball and swimming), but I had never had a full team of them, and the prospect was a little unsettling. Once again, I thought of how Lynn might handle girls, and tried to incorporate that. As many readers know, that led to seven years of successfully coaching girls at two schools and one club in the Washington metro area.

I haven't kept in great touch with the Seitz family, but being a swimmer for APSC was an extension of Lynn's family, and it provided me with both a boost to my interest in swimming and many lessons for my life as a coach. I don't know if Lynn is still coaching in Anchorage, but I hope that she has inspired a new generation of capable, family-oriented coaches who promote and maintain a comfortable environment in which kids can succeed.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Influential Coaches #8: Tessa Paganini

Previous entries: Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)
July: Steve Radotich (football)

Of all the people in this twelve-part series, I spent the least time working with or playing for Tessa; we were co-head coaches of the National Cathedral School varsity volleyball team for one season, which lasted all of three months in the fall of 2009. But those three months turned out to be very influential in my development as a coach, and helped greatly the following season, when I had my favorite season working with any team that I've ever coached.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Influential Coaches #7: Steve Radotich

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)
June: Michael Minthorne (strength & conditioning)

This story might take a little while to get to its main character, but bear with me. Valdez was, for many years, something of an athletic powerhouse at the 3A (of four) level in the state of Alaska. The volleyball team was typically good and sometimes great (seven state titles, with four in a row from 2001-04), the wrestling program was strong (twenty individual state champions), and the cross-country (four titles) and ski teams could hold their own. But basketball (three boys' titles, five girls', with an additional eight combined runner-up finishes) was unquestionably the biggest sport in Valdez, as it is throughout most of Alaska. When my parents first moved to Valdez in late 2000, you could count on five to ten percent of the town showing up in the gym for basketball games, more if the opponent was Cordova (plus their visitors). Heck, I coached a JV tournament that drew over one hundred people per game in the winter of 2001-02.*

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

World Cup Musings

Disclaimer: I'm about to embark on an analysis of a sport which I am pretty severely under-qualified to write about. I have never in my life played competitive soccer, not even as a little kid (I played tee-ball and swam instead). But the "gripping drama" (copyright Ian Darke) of the last few weeks has certainly gotten me in its hold; hell, I don't think I've seen more than a few innings of baseball since the World Cup started. Don't worry, footy fans; I'm no Ann Coulter who's going to blather about how soccer is a sign of moral decay. I thoroughly enjoy the sport, but I just don't know it as well as many other people. Experts (paging Richie and Michael), feel free to chime in on the comment board if I make a mistake. Otherwise, onwards and upwards (copyright John Reimers, for those of you who get that joke).

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

NBA Draft Science

Well, the NBA draft is finally here this week to kick off an off-season full of questions. Will the Heatles break up, with LeBron moving back to Cleveland? Where will all the big-name free agents (Carmelo, Luol Deng, Pau Gasol, Lance Stephenson, Kyle Lowry) go? Will Minnesota trade Kevin Love, and if so, where? And most importantly, how long is this ugly Clippers saga going to drag on, and what will be the end result? In the meantime, let's all enjoy the deepest draft in many years, and potentially one of the deepest ever, with lots of good building blocks and a few potential big-time stars available. It should be a complete reversal of last year's uninspiring event, which featured a crop of players that might produce two or three All-Stars IF everything breaks right.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Influential Coaches #6: Michael Minthorne

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)
May: Bob Smith & Mike Craig (baseball)

This sixth entry in the yearlong series is the first of three in which the profiled coach is actually someone who is a contemporary, and not only that, but younger than me. Michael also happens to be a rising star in coaching, someone who has made the most out of the opportunities he has gotten and who should receive more (and better) opportunities in the future. And because of the work he does, he has the ability to affect the performances of many more athletes than most coaches.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Sacramento's Crowd-Sourcing Strategy

As all of you NBA fans are aware, the league held its annual lottery last Tuesday night, and for the third time in four years, Cleveland won the prize and their choice of Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, or Joel Embiid (or alternatively, for a team desperate to make the playoffs next year, trading the pick for an established veteran star who fills a need - say, Kevin Love?). This is shaping up to be one of the deepest drafts in years, with anywhere from four to eight future All-Star talents, and potential solid rotation pieces all the way into the first round. Because of that wealth of talent, several teams engaged in rather shameless tanking this year in order to get the best chance at hitting the mother lode. Thankfully, Cleveland was a team that was actually trying to win basketball games, and cashed in a 1.7% chance. They've been lottery regulars since LeBron left town in 2010, and they've had company along the way.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Influential Coaches #5: Bob Smith & Mike Craig

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal (basketball)
February: Tara Gallagher (basketball/softball)
March: Robert Joseph Ahola (rugby)
April: Rickey Perkins (swimming)

Mike and Bob are emblematic of the thousands of youth and high school coaches across the country who volunteer their time and money in order to provide a fun environment for kids. There certainly never would have been a Valdez High School baseball team without their efforts (and indeed, with the Craig family now living in Anchorage and both Smith children long since graduated, a team does not currently exist). And from a personal standpoint, I can say that without their team and their invitation to include me as a part of that team in one capacity or another for all six of my summers in Valdez, I would likely not have enjoyed those summers nearly as much as I did, nor would I have developed as many friendships, in particular with a few guys whom I consider to be among my very closest friends.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Influential Coaches #4: Rickey Perkins

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal
February: Tara Gallagher
March: Robert Joseph Ahola

Patience. That is the trait that leaps to mind first when I think about Rickey Perkins as my coach for the Northern Lights Swim Club in Anchorage, Alaska. Rickey was incredibly patient with me, and I was under his tutelage for something like five years across a couple of different levels. Beyond that, Rickey was an excellent technical coach who had a major role in producing a rather astonishing amount of quality swimmers for NLSC, a role that was actually a side gig to his job as the head coach at the University of Alaska-Anchorage. And that patience has served him well in a long career that has seem him go through some fairly out-of-the-way places.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

2014 MLB Preview: NL East

And so here we come to the last entry in our preview series, the NL East. This looks like a battle between two very good and very deep teams, with the other three cleaning up the scraps. The Marlins are on the seventeenth rebuilding project in franchise history before they once again dump their young stars the moment they start to threaten eight figures in the salary department. The Phillies will attempt to fight the undefeated Father Time with the oldest group of regulars in the National League. Mets GM Sandy Alderson may talk about 90 wins, but it's hard to see that coming this year with Matt Harvey on the shelf thanks to Tommy John surgery. The Braves and Nationals are both loaded and looking for bounce-back performances from a couple of key players (Dan Uggla and B.J. Upton for the Braves, Adam LaRoche and Ross Detwiler for the Nationals), although the Braves are also dealing with a rash of pitching injuries.

2014 MLB Preview: AL East

Every team in the AL East thinks that they can win the division. Only one of them, of course, will actually do so, and three of these teams have significant enough holes that they're realistically not going to be fighting for anything apart from the second wild card spot. Toronto hopes that their one-percentile outcome of last year leads to some positive regression to the mean or better, like it did for Boston between 2012 and 2013. The Yankees want to fend off the undefeated Father Time in Derek Jeter's last summer in the sun. Baltimore is looking for continued development from its young players and might get a shot in the arm from a pair of top pitching prospects this season. The Red Sox are seeking a repeat trip to the World Series with a couple of new faces playing key roles. And Tampa Bay has put together perhaps their best roster yet.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

2014 MLB Preview: NL Central

Apart from the Cardinals, each of the NL Central teams has some serious flaws, but all of them except Chicago are hoping to compete for a wild card spot. The Cubs are content to take their lumps for one more year (although hopefully with some more positive developments from their best players, Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo) before attempting to be more competitive in 2015. The Reds will have some adjustments to make after upheaval at the top of their lineup. Pittsburgh aims for a repeat of last year's exciting playoff run, although they are a prime regression candidate. Milwaukee gets its best player back from a Biogenesis suspension and hopes to ride him and the other stars in its lineup back to October baseball. And the Cardinals continue to solidify their strong case as baseball's best top-to-bottom organization, making astute trades and filling gaps on the major league roster with hidden gems from their farm system.

2014 MLB Preview: AL Central

It has puzzled me for the last few years as to why Detroit hasn't won this division by 20 games every year. They have far and away the most talent in the AL Central, with two of the three best pitchers, the best hitter on the planet, and a solid supporting cast. I guess it just goes to show how difficult it is to truly stand out in baseball over a 162-game season. The Twins are rebuilding and waiting for a pair of phenoms (Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano) to arrive, hopefully next year. The White Sox should bounce back from a dismal 2013. Cleveland has some talent and one of the best managers in the business, but also sustained a couple of key losses. The Royals are all in for a playoff push this year. As for those Tigers? They had better watch out, because a couple of their rivals have made major strides over the past couple winters, and even the bottom-feeders are starting to build strong foundations.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

2014 MLB Preview: NL West

Welcome to our first divisional preview of the senior circuit, the quietly compelling NL West. The Dodgers have the most star power and the most polarizing player in the game (Yasiel Puig), but each of the other four teams has a guy who has been a serious MVP candidate within the past two to three years (Buster Posey, Chase Headley, Paul Goldschmidt, and Carlos Gonzalez) and other talented players. The Giants could use a bounce-back from their non-Madison Bumgarner pitchers and a big year from Pablo Sandoval. One of these years all the young talent in San Diego is going to jell. Arizona backs up Goldschmidt with the grittiest bunch of scrappy ballplayers in the league, and Colorado hopes for full seasons from Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki along with a rotation that can at least survive in Denver's thin air.

2014 MLB Preview: AL West

Opening Day is creeping up on us fast, which is why I want to give all you baseball fans out there a giant six-part preview, with one column for each division, starting with the American League West. Thanks to Seattle's bold play for Robinson Cano over the winter, this division looks like it should be the most entertaining in baseball in 2014, with four very different teams all gunning for a division title and only the Astros looking primed to develop some young players and lose one hundred games again (speaking of which, my good friend Keith Hankins has developed some excellent proposals to limit the appeal of tanking for MLB and NBA teams). Without further ado...

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Wild First Weekend

Wow. That was one hell of a first weekend, and I'm going to assume that not only are you out of the running for Warren Buffett's billion dollars, you're also out of the running for your office/online pool unless you are a) incredibly lucky or b) Nostradamus. Double-digit seeds won ten games (discounting the four they won in the opening round on Tuesday and Wednesday), and three of them (Stanford, Dayton, and Tennessee) will play in the Sweet 16. Six games required overtime to complete, and a whopping twenty-two of the fifty-two games played so far have been decided by single digits, nine of them by a single possession. Six of the twelve highest-seeded teams will be watching the rest of the tournament from their couches. Let's recap some stories.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Influential Coaches #3: Robert Joseph Ahola

Previous entries:
Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal
February: Tara Gallagher

"Your mothers left you a long time ago. I'm your mother now!"

I suppose that IF there is one quote with which to sum up Robert, the longtime pro bono rugby coach at Pepperdine (he's the old man kneeling in the center of the blog's background photo), that would be it. He was tough, demanding, hilarious, and occasionally nonsensical. But I don't think that there is any coach I have ever been around who has as clearly demonstrated his sheer love for the game as Robert, and that infectious enthusiasm sustained the Pepperdine program through some lean years until a mini-breakthrough, which happily coincided with my senior season, turned it into something of a southern California powerhouse.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

March Madness Preview

It is once again time for the best three weeks on the sports calendar, and as such, time to spill some pixels about this year's tournament, which has a lot of promise. There are maybe as many as fourteen or fifteen teams that have the ability to go the distance, although each of them has a fatal flaw or two that could just as likely crop up somewhere and doom them to an early exit. Let's get to the regions and see what there is to see.

Friday, March 7, 2014

A Pioneer Passes

Baseball lost one of its most significant non-playing contributors yesterday when Dr. Frank Jobe, longtime medical adviser for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the original developer of what we know as Tommy John surgery, passed away at the age of 88. Dr. Jobe retired from his everyday practice in 2008, but remained on the Dodgers' payroll as an adviser through three ownership changes and several front office overhauls. He was honored by the Hall of Fame last summer for his work, although not given the plaque he deserves for saving countless careers and changing the game more than any other non-player except for Marvin Miller. His story, of course, is intertwined heavily with that of John himself, the pitcher who gambled on what at the time was a shoestring chance of saving his pitching career.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Influential Coaches #2: Tara Gallagher

Previous entries:

Series Overview
January: Paul Westphal

I spent more hours under Tara's tutelage than under anyone else during my professional career, and it's not particularly close. I was her assistant for four and a half years with both the middle school basketball and softball teams, the junior varsity and later varsity basketball teams, and the varsity softball team. She was an extremely dedicated and creative coach who worked extremely hard to get the most out of what were, under any objective analysis, some fairly limited basketball rosters (in our five years together on the bench, we only had three players for whom basketball was their primary year-round sport).

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Influential Coaches #1: Paul Westphal

I'm starting out with undoubtedly the most recognizable name on my list. Coach Westphal was the head coach of the men's basketball team at Pepperdine from 2001 to 2006, a span which included all four years that I attended Pepperdine as well as the year before. In the last of these seasons I was a student manager for the team, although I did not sit on the bench for games because I was deemed more valuable as a rabble-rouser in the bleachers. In any case, I know that many of my classmates will express some displeasure at my inclusion of Coach Westphal, principally because our four years saw three incredibly talented teams underachieve in the standings before everything cratered with a 7-20 season in 2005-06. Sure, we were never as good as expected during my four years as a student, but that wasn't because Paul Westphal was a poor coach. He is, in fact, probably the smartest and most detail-oriented basketball mind that I have ever had a chance to be around.

Monday, January 27, 2014

The Influential Coaches Series

Given that the name of this blog is "Coach of All Trades," I figured that it might be good to take a break from castigating the Baseball Hall of Fame (and the BBWAA), NBA conversations with friends, and general amateur sports writing to actually focus on coaching. To that end, I will shortly be unveiling the first installment in a monthly series about coaches who have personally influenced my career. By "personally influenced" I mean that I either played for or coached with them or studied under them in some capacity, so you're not going to get yet another missive on how awesome a coach John Wooden was. If you're reading this (and especially if you're one of my ten or so regular readers), there's a good chance you know that already.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Kentucky's Youthful Struggles

Last night's last-second, overtime loss at the hands of Arkansas' Michael Qualls was a microcosm of both how good and how bad this young and talented Wildcat bunch can be. I turned on the game with just under twelve minutes left; at that point, Kentucky was shooting 63% from the floor, out-rebounding the Razorbacks by 8 boards, had only turned the ball over a manageable 11 times...and yet, they were down four points. By both talent and statistical measure, that should not have been the case. Kentucky has somewhere between five and eight players on its roster who will receive an NBA paycheck at some point in their playing careers.* Arkansas has Qualls (maybe). But despite that surfeit of talent, this year's version of Calipari's all-world freshmen-driven teams looks more like a slightly improved rendition of the 2012-13 group than either of the previous two.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

College Basketball in the New Year; What We Know

Back in my season preview, I highlighted a number of things to watch in the world of college basketball this season. As predicted, this season has been exciting, thanks mostly to the huge influx of new talent from one of the most promising freshman classes in years. On the flip side, some teams are clearly still adjusting to the new enforcement of defensive rules, leading to plenty of ugly foul-fests that have resulted in endless trips to the free throw line. Now that everybody has started conference play, let's see how those observations have stacked up so far, as well as check on some other interesting stories to watch.

Monday, January 6, 2014

2014 Hall of Fame Musings

In their excessively moralistic quest to punish everyone who played in what will forever be known as the "Steroid Era," the Baseball Writers Association of America voters created a major traffic jam on the Hall of Fame ballot by not electing a single person last year. Never mind that candidates included one of the two or three best hitters of all time (Barry Bonds), one of the five or so best pitchers of all time (Roger Clemens), the greatest-hitting catcher ever (Mike Piazza), a pitcher with 3000 strikeouts, the best K/BB ratio since 1900, and one of the top October pitching records ever (Curt Schilling), a 3000-hit second baseman with an outstanding glove (Craig Biggio), three other 500-home run hitters (Rafael Palmeiro, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa - who hit 600), perhaps the best all-around first baseman in baseball history (Jeff Bagwell), and one of the two or three best leadoff hitters ever (Tim Raines). It didn't matter; none of them got in, and only Biggio (and Jack Morris, which is a whole 'nother discussion, one which I'm sure Joe Posnanski can express better than I) got within fifteen percentage points of the 75% needed for election.