Bye! It was nice having you for that 1/2 season back when Bagwell and Biggio were young and we still played in the Astrodome!
Great pitcher. Equal pain in the ass. Surefire HOF. He'll probably shove the guy who hands him his plaque. :lol:
I always thought of him as the modern day Bob Gibson. A tall drink of attitude. It served him well on the mound. His confrontation with the NY cameraman was an unfortunate blip, but no one who follows the game would ever hold that against him, especially given where it happened. :wink:
He was most abrasive in the Yankee dugout.... to his team mates. Believe me, when he left NY, no one in that clubhouse shed a tear.
Wang won 38 in the same span and everybody loved him. Johnson used to love to blame his team mates when he lost. Never a good thing.
Whatever. In all the rest of his stops before and after New York, he is much respected and appreciated for what he did for his teams. His two years in New York are an aberration. I guess it's a safe bet that he won't be wearing a Yankee hat at his induction ceremony. :lol:
He was a good solider in his 1/2 season stay in Houston. We would have liked to have had him stay but he was determined to move on to Az and I don't think any amount of Astro money would have kept him here.
I see Andre Dawson in now a HOFer. I saw Dawson play several times. My favorite memory of him was when Anne and I saw the Cuns play Atlanta. The weather was unseasonably cold and a 20-30 MPH wind was blowing in from center field. He got a base hit driving in a run in the bottom of the 9th to send the game into extra innings and then, in the bottom of the 14th ( with Harry singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame twice), with the Cubs down by 1, he golfed a 2 run homer off a right handed sinkerballer who, until that point in time, was unhittable and under weather conditions that made it seem impossible that anyone would hit a home run The other major memory was when they were playing, I believe, the Giants down by 1 in the 9th with Cubbies on 2nd and 3rd. The Giants inentionally walked Mark Grace to pitch to Dawson who hit a two run single to win the game. The next day, Grace was quoted in the papers saying that when he got to first base, the firstbaseman told him," No offense, but this is a mistake."
I'm glad to see Dawson get elected to the HOF. I'm not sure I would have voted him in, but now that he's in, I realize that he fully deserves it, and I'm happy to see him there. Talk about a "good soldier," he was the epitome of a good teammate. Bobda, thanks for the reminiscing. You reminded me that any time he came to the plate in a crucial game situation, he was capable of winning it with one swing of the bat. As they say, he was money.
AJ, Do you have a grudge aginst the Expos? Sid, My the time he came to Chacago, his knes were shot but still played great ball for the Cubs. Just a great all around player-power,speed, one of the best arms in baseball, clutch hitter. I started watching the Cubs in 83 after I moved to Grand Rapids, and he was my favorite Cubbie...