Larkin’s Induction Ends an Era

 

Go ahead. We dare you. Try to find someone who has a bad thing to say about former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin. Larkin, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame this past Sunday in Cooperstown, is about as likeable a guy as you’re going to find in our national pastime.

He’s from Cincinnati, and he spent his entire 19-year major league career playing for his hometown team. In 1990, he fulfilled his childhood dream by leading the Reds to a World Series championship.

He spent the bulk of his 30-minute Hall of Fame induction speech thanking everyone from his family to his first manager in the minor leagues. Larkin even spent a few minutes speaking Spanish as a way to honor his idol—former Reds shortstop Dave Concepcion—and thank all of his Spanish-speaking friends and mentors.

And on several occasions during his speech, Larkin acknowledged the thousands of Reds fans who made the 560-mile trek from the Queen City of Ohio to Cooperstown. Following the ceremony, Larkin said he was going to host a Hall of Fame event in late August in Cincinnati so all of the fans who couldn’t make it to Cooperstown can celebrate with him in their hometown.

Perhaps bad boy actor Charlie Sheen, a Reds fan who attended the ceremony, should take a few lessons. “Barry was a great player, a great leader and a winner,” said Lou Piniella, Larkin’s manager in 1990. “He’s a great ambassador for the game of baseball, and he’s got a nice sense of history for the game. That’s a pretty good combination right there.” 

Larkin, a career .295 hitter who appeared in 12 All-Star games, said he learned early in his career that no player—not even the toast of his hometown and a future Hall of Famer—was bigger than the game or more important than the fans. He told a story about how the team was in Los Angeles and former Reds coach Buddy Bell asked Larkin, then 22, to come to the ballpark early. Bell took Larkin onto the field and said he should never take the opportunity he had received for granted, and he should “always remember where you come from and take time to smell the grass.”

Bell meant that both literally and figuratively. He told Larkin to get on all fours and smell the grass. Then he told him to roll over and look at the sky from the middle of Dodger Stadium. Bell commented that the place was “pretty big,” and Larkin said he felt as small as an ant. “{Bell} says, ‘That’s right. That’s how small we all are relative to the grand scheme of baseball. Don’t ever, ever lose that perspective.’
That was my introduction to the game of baseball,” Larkin said.

Larkin entered the Hall of Fame along with longtime Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo, who was inducted posthumously. Santo died in December 2010 after a lifelong battle with Type 1 diabetes.

Like Larkin, Santo was universally respected on and off the field. His wife, Vicki, delivered a touching speech and explained how her husband, despite having both legs amputated because of complications from diabetes, worked tirelessly to find a cure for the disease. Before his death, Santo raised about $65 million for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Vicki Santo said.

While Larkin was voted into the Hall by the Baseball Writers Association of America, Santo earned his induction through what’s called the Golden Era Committee, a group of 16 former players, managers, executives and media members, who vote on players who were not elected by the writers after 15 years on the ballot.

In the eyes of many fans, the inductions of Larkin and Santo will signal the end of the Golden Era for the Hall of Fame inductions. That’s because starting with the election for 2013, baseball’s steroid era will be front and center for a long time.

The list of players who’ll be eligible for induction for the first time in 2013 include Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens, all of whom have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Mark McGwire, who admitted taking steroids, and Rafael Palmeiro, who was suspended for taking them after famously telling Congress that he had done no such thing, have received little support so far from the baseball writers.

But McGwire admitted it, and Palmiero was suspended for it. Bonds and Clemens have denied it in court, while Sosa never admitted it nor tested positive for it. The writers, then, are in a tough spot. To add to the drama, Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was recently quoted in Sports Illustrated as saying that he and many other Hall of Famers would refuse to attend the induction ceremony if alleged steroid cheats were inducted.

So you can see where all of this is going: While many by-all-accounts “clean” players like Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey Jr. will earn their way into the Hall of Fame in the coming years, the voting and ceremony will focus as much on who didn’t get in as who did. And as long as they keep getting at least five percent of the vote each year, Bonds, Clemens and Sosa will be on the ballot until 2028, and current steroid-linked players like Alex Rodriguez will be on the ballot long after that.

Larkin and Santo did not compile the kind of statistics that made them “no-brainer” Hall of Famers. But while it’s fair to question their qualifications, there’s no doubt about their character. Starting next year, the opposite will be true with the likes of Bonds, Clemens and Sosa. So depending on how all this plays out over the next few decades, we may look back at the Larkin-Santo ceremony as the good old days.

—Matt Michael