Room in the Hall for Rolen

Intangibles shouldn't matter. Until they do.

There are certain things I miss about working at the paper. The travel, for one. The year I retire, the Men play in New Orleans, Tampa and Nashville. Good trips, all. I miss seeing people in press boxes, here and elsewhere. One thing I do not miss, not for a second, is filling out my MLB HOF ballot and being told how stupid I am by Cheet-O-eating basement-dwellers still calling mom’s house home.

I don’t mind analytics, though I don’t believe the game should revolve around them. It’s the analytics absolutists. I mind them. A lot. Insufferably narrow-minded, always willing to take anonymous shots on asocial media, weird enough to take it personally that I didn’t ever vote for Bonds or Clemens. None worth sharing an adult soda with, unless you’re pouring it over their heads.

I guess I could have voted this year, given I retired last July and my Baseball Writers dues were paid. I just didn’t feel like fielding the garbage anymore.

A few rules I stuck by in my two-plus decades casting Hall votes:

1. No juicers. Are we serious about the steroid thing? We are? Good. Then do the one thing a media member can do to voice his displeasure with the havoc juicing produced. Punish the guys who juiced. Sorry, Manny. Nothing personal, A-Rod.

2. Very few relief pitchers. They suffer because the Save is a flimsy statistic invented by agents to get their closer-clients more money. The only closer I felt great about voting for was Rivera. Billy Wagner, no, and if I don’t vote for him, how do I vote for Francisco Rodriguez?

3. Only slight consideration for postseason heroics, because that punishes worthy players who played for lesser teams. That hurt Schilling with me. Not his politics.

4. No voting for the maximum 10 candidates. More than a third of my peers did that last year. I have no idea why. This is the Hall of Fame. No participation trophies allowed. Which gets me to the toughest rule, one I’ve broken more than once.

5. Be curmudgeonly with your vote. This is not the Hall of Very Good. Borderline guys rarely get my vote, because the HOF should be the best of the best. Period. Anything less diminishes the honor. Helton, no. Vizquel, no. Andruw Jones, no.

This year, Scott Rolen is on that line. His support has ballooned, especially last year. he’s at about 63 percent, with 75 needed for admission. Rolen is the epitome of Very Good.

He was an exceptional defensive player (8 Gold Gloves) but “only’’ very good in every other respect. One Silver Slugger, 2,077 hits (800 fewer than Omar Vizquel, who won’t get in). Not a lot of speed. I’d vote for him, anyway. Why? That’s where the whole process gets a little shifty.

I saw Rolen play here every day. I had a good relationship with him. I knew the dramatic impact he had on a clubhouse full of young talent, wanting to be led. Jay Bruce, Joey Votto, to name just two.

“Need ya on third, Brucie,’’ Rolen would yell to Jay Bruce, after Bruce had reached base. That meant be alert, play with max effort and get yourself in prime scoring position to help the team. It was something of a battle cry for the young and improving 2010 Reds. Intangibles shouldn’t matter in HOF voting, until they do. Rolen’s in, IMO.

If I still had a vote, I’d check Carlos Beltran’s box. Homers, 435, stolen bases, 312, Gold Gloves 3, All-Star Games, 9. Done.

And of course, Pete. He belongs, warts and asterisks and all. Put his plaque in the men’s room, if it makes you feel better. This will never happen, of course, which after 33 years of exile, reflects more on those making the decisions in Cooperstown than it does on Rose himself.

Now, then. . .

AND THEY WANT WRITERS OUT OF THE VOTING GAME. . . The quickest of perusals of the comments in response to a HOF story on Yahoo! yielded these gems:

At least with steroids you have to actually work out for them to be effective. Pop some amphetamines and you're instantly better.

And this one:

Babe Ruth ate lots of red meat because, at the time, protein was just beginning to emerge as a strength building part of athletics. Was that cheating?

Yes, it was. Now please give Popeye back his spinach.

BECAUSE I’M NOT JUST A PRETTY FACE. . . I’m reading The Bourbon King, The Life and Crimes of Prohibition’s Evil Genius. It’s a biography of George Remus, who set up shop in Cincinnati in the 1920s and ran an outfit that kept the whole eastern half of the country wet.

It’s impossible to fathom now how crooked this guy was, and how crooked the cops were who enabled him. What Remus couldn’t finagle, he simply bought, downtown and across the river. What’s really cool is, he did it all while living here. Remus had a distribution network that rivaled FedEx and a supply chain that never lacked for product. TML sez ckitout while sipping on an EH Taylor, one cube of ice.

AS FOR ANDREW WHITWORTH. No.

It’s a very Cincinnati thing, the idea that the Bengals should bring him back 11 months after he retired, to play right tackle, a position he never played, on a moment’s notice in the middle of a playoff push. Is Big Whit gonna fly in, or simply change clothes in a phone booth, if we still had phone booths?

La’el Collins is done, and this is a problem. Adeniji is a bit leaky in pass protection. But the answer is not a guy who’s been working for Amazon on its NFL broadcasts.

Is there a town in America better at embracing jocks we see as One of Us? It’s not an easy designation to earn, especially if you didn’t grow up here, but some have managed it. Brennaman, Munoz, Huggins, now Whit. But remove the romanticism and see it for what it is: A nice, little daydream.

AS FOR TUA. . . The man has been knocked groggy three times this year, yet the Miami Dolphins are still hoping he can play Sunday.

Please tell me they’re joking. Tell me coach Mike McDaniel hasn’t said in one breath that his players’ well-being is most important, then in the next suggest that Tagovailoa could be his QB in five days.

Does McDaniel recall the moment here on a Thursday night in October? It was, choose your descriptive, frightening, sickening, horrible.

Sometimes, a coach’s job is to save a player from himself. Tua didn’t become Tua by playing it safe. Even this week, he explained away his condition, saying, “I just want to go out there and do good -- do good for our team, do right for this organization, do right for the guys inside the building.’’

Bless him, but it’s time for the Dolphins to do good for Tua. The link to concussions and CTE — and the chilling ramifications of that — ought to have scared straight anyone affected, directly and otherwise.

I wonder what Junior Seau would be saying about this. Or Dave Duerson or Mike Webster or Andre Waters. Or, or, or.

Do the decent thing. Take away Tua’s football this week and in the near term, so he might keep his life.

RUFUS ALERT. . . Watched a wonderful little movie the other day. The Banshees of Inisherin was about two men and what happens when their friendship changes. Filmed in Ireland, written with great joy and heartbreak by an Irishman (we all know what great writers the Irish are) Banshees warmed my heart on a savagely cold day. TML sez ckitout.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . I haven’t posted this one lately, but I’m thinking it’s practically in the rotation I’ve posted it so much. My favorite tune from one of my favorite groups.