Author: danlevy

The Chicago White Sox came out publicly on Monday and, as the report puts it, "backed away from their manager" with regard to his comments that Latinos aren’t given the same luxuries that Asian players (and white and black players, for that matter) are given.

The ChiSox felt Ozzie’s thoughts on the support system for Latino players are "incorrect." But that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong.

It also doesn’t make MLB or the White Sox wrong either. Let’s separate this into two parts.

Ozzie Guillen’s comments created a PR opening for MLB.

First, Guillen’s claim that the Latino players aren’t given the same help in acclimating to the game as Asian players is entirely true, but it has nothing to do with racism. It’s simple economics. The Asian players who come to play Major League Baseball have almost all been transplants from other professional leagues and have come into MLB with top-dollar price tags. In fact, because of the system in place between MLB and some Asian leagues, several players have been shipped over to America with gigantic price tags and fees, procured by secret bid, tethered to negotiation rights. This is a far cry from finding a 16-year old kid in the Dominican Republic and paying him a few thousand (or even hundred thousand) bucks to come play in the States.

The Asian players have extra help, including interpreters, because teams already have more invested in them and need them to acclimate to make the investment pay off. The minor league system, for better or worse, is constructed to weed out the players who aren’t able to make it at the highest level. In that regard, Guillen is totally right in that Latino players aren’t given the same playing field as those in the minor leagues who can speak English. It’s harder for Latin kid on his own to succeed, and near impossible for him to navigate the landscape through the minors and avoid every speed bump, including performance-enhancing drugs. So, in a way, Ozzie is right, even if the motivation behind it — or at least the juxtaposition of his point with that of Asian players — isn’t entirely fair.

Now, the second part is less about what he said and more about the process through which this situation was handled. A say-anything-he-wants coach had his annual soapbox that spread across the entire country through both tradition media outlets and social media. Everyone was, is and will be talking about Ozzie’s comments. That’s a win for him, because whether or not you agree with his assertion, he planted the seed and the debate and discourse – including the paragraphs above — are suddenly omnipresent in the industry.

The ChiSox then came out and told their own manager — and fellow member of Major League Baseball — that he’s wrong:

"Ozzie may not have been fully aware of all of the industry-wide efforts made by Major League Baseball and its clubs to help our players succeed in the transition to professional baseball, no matter the level of play or their country of origin."

It’s brilliant PR, even if the team or the league will never admit it. A very hot-button topic was brought up in a genuine setting by someone who has a close, personal investment in the situation. That person put out specific challenges to both his direct employer and the league in which they participate. That, in a way, gave the team — and league — ample opportunity to defend their own progress using this exact situation as their counterpoint example.

In other words, Guillen’s claim actually opened the door for both the White Sox and Major League Baseball to laud their own programs in a completely organic way. This isn’t a press release to pat themselves on the back. This explanation from MLB …

"Major League Baseball and the White Sox provide a number of programs to help our foreign players with acculturation, including English language classes and Spanish language presentations related to the risks of and testing for performance-enhancing drugs. The team also has Spanish-speaking staff assigned to serve as liaisons for our Latin American players."

… helps to naturally spread the word of their involvement with the Latin community in both this country and overseas. It may not have been Guillen’s intent to set them up for this PR spike. It may not have been the team’s goal to use Guillen’s comments as a catalyst for discussion, either. But it worked.

It’s the beginning of August and baseball is, for the next few weeks until football really starts going, the biggest game in town. This is the perfect time of year to discuss topics like this, and not just about the growth of the game in other countries and how that ties into the game here, but more about the programs – like the new drug testing – that are in place in the minors. It would look so disingenuous for MLB, or any league, to publicly pat themselves on the back about their advancements in cultural equality, unless they were challenged on it. And who better to make that challenge, from a PR standpoint, than one of your own out-spoken members?

We are talking about this now, which is important. But in most cases it hasn’t devolved into soapboxing that so many racial issues in sports have a tendency to become. Guillen can be unpredictable at times, but this situation – so far – is actually a PR win for everyone. Even if it may not have been intended that way.

You can read/listen to more from Dan Levy at OntheDLpodcast.com and follow him on Twitter @onthedlpodcast

Phillies fans are never happy unless they are miserable. Trust me, I am one, so I have firsthand knowledge. We love … live … to complain about our sports teams, and that goes double for a franchise that, until the last few years, was an absolute laughingstock in its sport. We wear 10,000 losses (and counting) like a badge of honor. Winning? It’s almost like we still haven’t properly figured out what that’s supposed to feel like.

He’s not in Philly anymore — get over it.

So with that, Phillies fans — and media, please we’ll get to the media in a second — must find something to complain about in order to feel properly balanced while rooting for our favorite team. But what’s to complain about when your team has won three straight division titles and has gone to two consecutive World Series, winning one?

Honestly, Phillies fans … what is there to complain about? Oh, right, Cliff Lee. When all else fails, complain about the one that got away.

The Phillies traded some of their top prospects – yet held on to the very top guys in the system – to acquire Cliff Lee in the middle of the 2009 season. He immediately became a hero in Philly, carrying the hopes and dreams of millions of Phillies fans on his left arm (it’s a wonder he could even throw). In the offseason, Ruben Amaro felt the negotiations to extend Lee’s contract were going nowhere and saw a chance to get Roy Halladay, the pitcher Amaro really wanted all along when he had traded for Lee during the season.

Feeling that the Phillies couldn’t afford both Cy Young pitchers, Amaro traded Lee for moderate prospects and gave up some of his top farm hands – though not the heavily-coveted Domonic Brown – to get Halladay. Could the Phillies have kept Lee and gotten Halladay? Probably. No, not probably. Certainly. They certainly could have done that, but they felt it was too much money to spend and had erroneously locked up way too much money in Jamie Moyer and, to a lesser extent Joe Blanton, to make keeping both aces financially viable.

It’s been seven months and Amaro officially realized that he was wrong. While he couldn’t get Lee back from the Mariners and he wasn’t able to get Dan Haren away from the Diamondbacks, Amaro did the absolute next-best thing. He fleeced the Astros for the service of Roy Oswalt – this deal is an absolute robbery – without giving up any of his top prospects in the minors and getting back $11 million dollars to help defray the cost of Oswalt over the next two years.

Amaro is, in essence, getting a year and a half of Oswalt at half price and gave up his fourth starter in J.A. Happ – a solid pitcher who is already in his late 20s and likely won’t be anything more than a good third or fourth option in any rotation – as well as a speedy center field prospect who can’t really hit and a Class-A project at shortstop who has over 100 strikeouts and 42 errors in less than 100 games this season.

An absolute robbery. Yet still, if you read the message boards and comments on local news websites (note: I strongly suggest you do not do either of those things), all you hear about is "Cliff Lee Cliff Lee Cliff Lee." The Phillies just traded for, nay stole, one of the best pitchers in the National League over the last half decade – admittedly a pitcher with a bad back, but one that hasn’t really kept him out of the lineup and, while in his 30s, is still younger than Halladay – and still people can’t let this Cliff Lee thing go.

Paul Hagen of the Philadelphia Daily News has a column titled: Phils should have just kept Cliff Lee. Here’s his lede:

IT’S ALL RIGHT to be unhappy with the trade that sent Cliff Lee packing last December. There were good, sound arguments for pairing him with Roy Halladay at the top of the Phillies rotation and going all in to try to win a second world championship in 3 years.

Why not just submit a column that starts: I couldn’t think of anything else to write, so I’m going to look back in my archives and whine about something I already whined about six times in the last seven months.

Let it go, Paul. Let it go, Sal Paolantonio, who was on Philadelphia radio hosting a show when the deal went down and said that the Oswalt trade finally "washes away the stain" of trading Cliff Lee. Let it go, Jayson Stark – probably the most respected and beloved Phillies reporter in recent memory – who went on ESPN and joked about what it would be like if the Phillies had Halladay, Oswalt, Cole Hamels and Lee. He knows that would be impossible, but he said it because he knew some crazy fan in Philly would hear it and call into talk radio to complain about why that didn’t happen.

For full disclosure, it wasn’t just the Philly media who were on this angle. FOX’s Ken Rosenthal gave us his "shoulda been you, Cliff" take on the trade. MLB Network dedicated an entire segment to the Lee angle just minutes after the Oswalt trade was official. Already sick of hearing about it, I changed the channel. Even Stan McNeal falls back on the "what if" argument. Rumor has it they actually dragged out an equine carcass, draped Lee’s old Phils jersey on top of it and passed around a Louisville Slugger, taking whacks until everyone on the set felt properly satiated. It’s just a rumor.

Complaining about the Phillies losing Lee the day they gained Oswalt is like complaining the franchise traded Ryne Sandberg the day they drafted Chase Utley. Let it go. Lee is a great pitcher, and it would be great to still have him. Clearly Amaro knows that. So what do those who perpetually bring up Lee want him to do? Would it help to have him go on the public address at Citizens Bank Park and apologize? How about a press conference in front of the Liberty Bell where he can publicly admit he was wrong? Maybe he can wear a Phanatic costume and we can all throw baseballs at him with Lee’s face stamped between the seams.

How about this? How about Amaro rectifies the Lee situation by getting one of the top arms available this year – another bona fide ace go to with Halladay – without leveraging the future very much at all. How about with all the injuries the Phillies have had this season – more than 130 games missed from their starting infield alone – Amaro has produced a team that’s just 2 1/2 games out of first place in the division, 1 1/2 in the wild card. And that’s before Oswalt has even stepped on the mound in a Phillies uniform, which will happen tonight in Washington.

"Oh, but it should have been Cliff Lee pitching tonight …" Shut up and go away. You can come back if there’s another parade. That way, we won’t be able to hear you complaining over the high fives and confetti.

You can read/listen to more from Dan Levy at OntheDLpodcast.com and follow him on Twitter @onthedlpodcast

We’ve spent so much time trying to determine if 2010 is the Year of the Pitcher or the Year of the Walk-off that we may have missed the real story line of this season in Major League Baseball altogether: It’s the Year of the Prospect.

Heck, if it sounds better, we can even call it the Year of the Future. Personally, that a puts the year into an esoteric construct that, frankly, seems a bit scary. How can the here-and-now be the year of the future? Has baseball developed some sort of space-time continuum that we didn’t know about?

The Year of the Prospect seems a lot safer. But I digress.

Domonic Brown is the latest super prospect to be called up to the big club.

Of the top 20 pre-season prospects in Baseball America’s Top 100, 14 of them have been called up to the majors already this season. The latest? Phillies outfielder Domonic Brown, who had his MLB debut Wednesday night and promptly went 2-for-3 with two RBI and two runs scored. He also got a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd before his first at-bat. Brown was recently tabbed as Baseball America’s top prospect at the mid-way point of the season. Part of the reason was because of his outstanding .327 with 20 home runs and 68 RBI in 93 games in the minors this season. Brown also had an OPS of .980, and his batting average actually improved to .346 in his 28 games in Class AAA.

The real reason, however, that Brown was listed as the top prospect in baseball at the mid-way point? Eight of the 14 guys ahead of him have already been called up. Make no mistake, Brown’s call-up is a huge deal for Phillies fans, who now have the benefit of watching the future in the midst of a pennant race. Hey, maybe the present can be the future after all.

It seems that way for the Braves, too. Jason Heyward earned his way into the Atlanta outfield in spring training and earned a spot on the All-Star team after a fantastic first half. The 20-year old is batting .273 with an OPS of .845 (and an OPS+ of 128). He has 48 RBI and 30 extra-base hits on the season, including 11 home runs, and that includes a stint on the DL this season. Since Heyward’s first game back from the DL earlier this month, he has raised his batting average 26 points, albeit despite a drop in his power numbers. Still, with his team in first place by 3.5 games, the future is, and has been, now for Heyward.

It seems ridiculous to have a "Year of the Prospect" discussion and be five graphs in without mentioning Stephen Strasburg. Strasburg, despite recent injury concerns that had him miss a start and get stuck on the bench for 10 days, has exceeded the Nationals’ expectations. Most importantly, the buzz around Strasburg has done something nobody else has been able to do in Washington: fill seats.

Stephen Strasburg has lived up the hype.

The pitching phenom is 5-2 with a 2.32 ERA in nine games this season. He has 75 strikeouts to just 15 walks in 54.1 innings. That’s a 12.4 strikeout per nine-inning ratio compared to just 2.5 BB/9, which is just … awesome, especially for a rookie.

The best thing about some of these prospects is that they don’t seem to be your run-of-the-mill first-round call-ups (does that sentence break some sort of hyphen record?). Heyward is the future. So is Brown. Strasburg is the franchise in Washington (and, by the way, his teammate Drew Storen – ranked 92nd on BA’s list – is no slouch himself). Mike Stanton is the "next great" superstar in Florida. Buster Posey supplanted a Molina in San Francisco, and he’s not even the best catching prospect to come up this year. Carlos Santana already has begun his own era in Cleveland.

The list is way deeper than just those names, too. Starlin Castro, Ike Davis, Pedro Alvarez, Wade Davis, Mike Leake, Austin Jackson and Mat Gamel are just some of the players on the top 100 list to not only be productive in the majors already, but also be on their way to becoming outright stars and, in some cases, franchise saviors. There’s a real, legit case to be made that 2010 is all about the prospects … or the future … or the prospects of a successful future.

You can read/listen to more from Dan Levy at OntheDLpodcast.com and follow him on Twitter @onthedlpodcast

The American sports fan — or at least the American sports writer — has developed a perpetual need to define things. "This was the greatest game ever!" "Greatest comeback in sports history!" "This is the year of the pitcher!"

That’s the working definition of this year’s baseball season: the Year of the Pitcher. After all, there have been five no-hitters this season, including two perfect games. Remember, that’s not including the should-have-been perfect game by Armando Galarraga. While that surely seems like a lot (more on that in a minute) the number of no-hitters to games played in 2010 is ridiculously low when compared to, say, the number of walk-off wins.

There have been 1,502 games this season in Major League Baseball heading into play on Wednesday. The five no-hitters account for .3 percent of those games, which means we’ve qualified this as the Year of the Pitcher based on less than half of one percent of all the games played this year. Meanwhile, there have been 136 walk-off wins so far, which means that more than nine percent of all games have been decided in the most dramatic fashion. That sure seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

Have a few great pitching performances stolen "the year of" away from the walk-off? To figure that out, we’re going to need a bit of perspective on these numbers.

It’s obviously impossible to compare something as rare as a no-hitter (or perfect game) to something like a walk-off win. The fact is, once a player gets a hit in the game, there is no longer a chance for that event to occur (you can’t un-ring a bell, or un-hit a game, as it were). Unlike the no-hitter, a typical baseball game could have up to 17 lead changes before getting to the ninth inning with the home team needing a rally to win. So, despite the minuscule number of no-hitters this season when compared to the total number of walk-off wins, or total number of games played, the no-hitters can really only be judged against their own historical context. Shall we.

There have been 268 no-hitters (not including shortened games) in history, dating back to 1875. Coming into the season there were just 14 no-hitters since 1999, making the five no-hitters this season stand out even more (note: for the purposes of this historical comparison, it’s difficult to count Galarraga’s perfect game that wasn’t because we do not know how many games in the course of baseball’s long history were also actual no-hitters that the umpire botched a call to ruin. Galarraga clearly threw a perfect game, but it’s hard to use that in year-to-year comparisons).

There have been five or more no-hitters in a season eleven times in the history of the majors, including this season. We have seen more than six no-hitters in a season three times before this year, and while the first (eight) was way back in 1884, the other two came within this generation. There were seven no-hitters in 1990, including two on the same day when Dave Stewart and Fernando Valenzuela each tossed a no-no on June 29th. There was, however, no perfect game that season. The following season there were another seven no-hitters, including one that featured three pitchers and another that featured four pitchers. There was one perfect game (by Dennis Martinez) as well as Nolan Ryan’s seventh and final no-hitter. 1991 makes a pretty good case for the Year of the Pitcher.

Still, of the 20 perfect games in history, two have come this season. And yes, you can add that Galarraga game back in now, making it a theoretical three of 21 perfect games in the same year. Maybe this really is the year of the pitcher.

Here are a few notes to add back that up: Josh Johnson, despite giving up three runs in his latest start, boasts an ERA that currently rivals the all-time greats. Johnson’s 1.72 ERA would be the fourth-lowest since 1968. Having said that, the number did raise more than a tenth of a run last night and it was just a few weeks ago that Ubaldo Jimenez was boasting better numbers than Johnson, before he faltered a bit by giving up four or more runs in five of his last six starts.

Jimenez, for what it’s worth, still boasts a 2.75 ERA and is one of 18 pitchers who currently have an ERA under 3.00. To add another bit of context to this year’s numbers, Chris Carpenter led the NL with a 2.24 ERA last season and there are currently three players under that mark this year, including two on his own team.

As a league, the pitching has been better than in recent years. In fact, the overall ERA heading into games on Wednesday (4.15) is the lowest since 1992 (worth noting the overall ERA was below 4.00 in every year but one from 1980-1992 and not one time since) and the overall WHIP is the best since 1992 as well. Even if it’s not the Year of the Pitcher when you look at the entire history of the game (I’d take 1968, with seven 20-game winners including Denny McLain’s 31 wins and 49 pitchers with an ERA under 3.00 including 21 with a 2.50 or better) but 2010 has been, without much doubt, the Year of the Pitcher of the Last Two Decades or So.

So.can it be both the Year of the Pitcher and the Year of the Walk-off? Sure, it can. But based on the recent history, it’s probably not. While nine-percent of all games seems like a really high number to be decided by the last swing of the bat (or, in some cases, the last ball, hit-batsman or balk) the ratio of games to games won in walk-off fashion is not significantly higher than any of the last five years.

According to baseball-reference.com, there were 211 walk-off wins in 2,430 games in 2009 (8.68 percent). In 2008, there were 228 walk-off wins in 2,428 games (9.39 percent), which is more than the current pace (9.05 percent) through the 1,502 games this season. The numbers in 2007 and 2006 were slightly lower than this year – 215 of 2,431 games (8.84 percent) in 2007 and 214 of 2,429 games (8.81 percent) in 2006 – though not so much that it would make this campaign stand out with "Year of" status. If anything, recent history would have given that moniker to the 2008 season.

Why, then, does it seem like there are so many walk-off wins this year? Perhaps it’s the ridiculous nature of some, from grand slams where the batter thought it was an out to, as mentioned above, a walk-off balk to players getting hurt on their home-plate celebration to, recently, a pie-in-the-face celebration gone horribly wrong.

How about this for an answer to the "Year of" debate: it’s the Year of Really Compelling Baseball. There have been great pitching performances and a ton of thrilling late-inning wins. Add in the fact that five of the six division races are within 3.5 games and this is shaping up to be one heckuva season.if you’re looking for that kind of definition, of course.

Have you ever walked down a city street and seen a guy wearing pants with one leg up around the knee? Drive a few blocks away and you see another guy with almost the exact same look, only this time it’s the other pant leg that’s up. I found out — thanks to a wife in criminal justice — that’s more than just a fashion statement. The pant leg in the air is code: one short pant leg means you’re buying; the other short pant leg means you’re selling.

Will Roy Oswalt end up in a Phillies uniform?

Don’t be surprised if you see Phillies GM Ruben Amaro walking around in a pair of clam-diggers this week. The Phillies are one of a few teams who are buying and selling.

Go ahead, let the visual of Amaro patrolling the streets with pants rolled up to both knees marinate for a few minutes. "Who’s got pitchers? Anybody got pitchers? You got pitchers? You need outfield? I got great deals on outfield."

With the MLB trade deadline looming, the Phillies are in a rather unusual position of being buyers and sellers at the same time. Of the six divisions in baseball, there are four in which the lead — heading into Monday’s games — is less than five games. But it’s the other two divisions that seem to be making most of the trade headlines.

First, to clean up the goings on in the AL West, the Rangers traded for Cliff Lee a few weeks ago and have extended their division lead over the Angels since the All-Star break. The Halos answered yesterday, despite being seven games out of first place and nine out of the wild card. That didn’t stop them from trading for Dan Haren from the Diamondbacks to try and make a late-season run to get back to the playoffs.

The other division making noise without a close race is the NL East. Phillies are just 5-5 in their last ten, but that includes four-straight wins after a moribund start to the second half. All the talk around who the Phillies might trade for — especially with Haren now dealt to the Angels — is Roy Oswalt, while all the talk of who they might trade away starts and ends with Jayson Werth.

First, let’s look at the Phillies prospects as buyers. Oswalt said he wanted to go to St. Louis, but the Astros threw a giant price tag on his front window, a clear indication that they did not anticipate giving their divisional rival any sort of discount. So now that Oswalt has already said he’d be willing to restructure the $16-million he wants guaranteed in 2012 for one team, would he be willing to do it for another? And, as news broke that St. Louis is apparently pulling themselves out of the running for Oswalt’s services – coupled with the fact that the Astros have yet to lower their price despite the fact that Haren was traded for far less than the Astros are looking to deal their ace – are the Phillies suddenly the only team left dealing with Houston?

Jayson Werth has struggled with runners in scoring position.

Does that Help Amaro find an equitable price to bring a second ace with a giant price tag, less than a year after he traded Lee to Seattle for 60 cents on the dollar in a clear salary dump? Is Amaro looking to buy just to make up for his seller’s remorse?

Of course, we mustn’t forget about the other pant leg up around the knee. If Werth is dealt, it opens the door for rising star Domonic Brown, rated the top prospect in all of baseball – now that half the minor leagues has been called up this season – by more than one reputable source. The Phillies didn’t trade Brown last year and clearly won’t now, as he’s been pegged as the future of the franchise in the outfield. The Phillies would love to dump Raul Ibanez’s albatross of a contract but there’s no GM in the league dumb enough to take that on at this point.

So, even if they’re only five games out of the division that they’ve won three years in a row and they’re suddenly playing solid baseball, now may, in fact, be the best time for the Phillies to part ways with Werth. The alternative, of course, is letting him walk after the season when they’ll get nothing in return. So can Werth get enough value back for the Phillies to make trading him, ahem, worth it?

Every team in the league knows that Werth wants to test the free-agent market, so trading for him would be nothing more than a playoff rental with a theoretical chance to have first dibs on signing him after the season. No team is going to mortgage their future on a three-month rental player, let alone a guy who has been as streaky as Werth. It’s important for Amaro to shop Werth – keep that pant leg rolled as high as it goes, Rube – but that doesn’t mean he has to sell. Todd Zolecki of MLB.com thinks the Phillies can still go after Oswalt and keep Werth for the rest of this season:

There have been numerous reports the Phillies would have to trade Jayson Werth to clear salary and gain prospects for Oswalt. But I have heard recently that is not the case. While the Phillies are exploring trade partners for Werth, they could acquire Oswalt and keep Werth. And if I’m the Phillies, that’s exactly what I do, unless I get an incredible offer for Werth. I know fans would love to see Domonic Brown up here, but I think it would be unfair to expect him to do what Werth has done the past couple seasons. Plus, as I have written many, many times before, Werth is an incredibly streaky hitter. He is hitting .387 (12-for-31) with five doubles and three RBIs in his last nine games.

Werth has been dreadful this season with RISP, but can Phillies fans expect a player who started the season in Double-A to slot right into a power-production spot in the lineup and not struggle in his own right? Zolecki is right in thinking the Phillies should hold out for a great offer and if that doesn’t come, keep Werth, bring up Brown in September and let him play left field while Ibanez becomes the most expensive pinch-hitter in baseball history for a month. Then, when (if?) Chase Utley eventually comes back into the lineup, there’s another productive bat that gives you an offensive boost to justify going after Oswalt to get stronger on the mound.

The Phillies have been as injured as any team in the league, outside of maybe the Red Sox. But unlike the Red Sox who are eight games out and in third place in their division, the Phillies are still in striking distance to win the NL East, or the wild card. The next few days can clearly change the entire trade-deadline landscape, and for the Phillies, determine which pant leg Amaro pulls down first. Everyone in Philadelphia hopes it’s just not both.

You can read/listen to more from Dan Levy at OntheDLpodcast.com and follow him on Twitter @onthedlpodcast

Andre Dawson is the only player who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this weekend and will join 202 players who came before him with a bust in Cooperstown.

Dawson certainly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame based on the current criteria. In fact, if you compare his numbers to those already in the Hall, it’s a wonder it took the voters this long to get him in. But there’s just something about 203 players in the Hall of Fame – 292 members if you include managers, umpires, owners and other contributors – that seems a bit over-inflated. Can we compare everyone in baseball to Babe Ruth? Of course not, and I wouldn’t expect you to read something that in any way tries to make that argument. Certainly a player can be great without being the greatest.

The problem, of course, is that the run of inductees will never stop. There are 292 members now, and that number will certainly break 300 in the next two or three years. By the time our kids are bringing their kids to Cooperstown, we could be celebrating 500 people in the Hall of Fame.

Again, the point of this is not to suggest that the current 292 or the theoretical 500 won’t be worthy of honors and won’t be part of the very best in the history of the sport. But how many becomes too many to be considered historically "great"?

Baseball isn’t the only offender of the idea of opening up Hall of Fame doors for something less than the greatest of the great. The Hockey Hall of Fame boasts 244 players, 98 builders and 15 referees and linesmen. The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame has 290 members, which includes men and women’s players and all the Harlem Globetrotters. The Pro Football Hall of Fame has 260 members. That’s nearly 1,100 Hall of Famers in the four major sports, and that’s not including niche-specific halls like the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame – which introduced its 2010 class this week – the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame or any of the college halls of fame.

We sure do like to celebrate our athletes.

But maybe that’s the point of the Hall of Fame. It’s not, actually, the The Hall of Great. It’s the Hall of Fame, which means the criteria for induction could be nothing more than being the best at getting noticed. Heck, Chad Ochocinco may not have the numbers to be considered an all-time great wide receiver, but nobody can deny he’s made himself one of the most "famous" personalities of his generation. Keep in mind that Dick Vitale is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, after all. It’s semantics, perhaps, but it’s still worth noting that greatness is not necessarily a prerequisite for induction into a museum that celebrates "fame."

That sure felt like 450 words of complaining, didn’t it? How then, to turn this into something more than just writing a column to steal Andre Dawson’s thunder on a weekend when he absolutely deserves to be celebrated?

I can answer that with this: I worked in an athletic department for a major college for 10 years, and there were some years that way too many people got into the Hall of Fame. It was ridiculous, and started to marginalize the award for people who actually deserved to be in there. So, about seven or eight years ago, I suggested we create a universal roundtable for the elite Hall of Famers. If there are 292 people in the Hall of Fame, reboot the sucker and pick the 10 best and give them their own room. If someone comes along and deserves to be sitting at that table, they can be added to the room. Then, continue voting in those who deserve to be in the regular Hall of Fame under the current criteria, knowing that the absolute elite won’t get lost in the growth.

Of course, the politics at a college never allowed this idea to happen – mostly centered around the potential slight to those HOFers who may be willing to donate back to the department – but it could work for the professional sports.

Then again, when I suggested this idea to some friends in the industry it was met with "that’s a terrible idea" and "the Hall of Fame is fine how it is" and "didn’t Bill Simmons suggest this a few years ago?" Those points may all be true; it may be nothing more than a terrible idea that’s a re-tread of what’s already been written. Or, maybe you’ll remember the idea in 50 years when you take your grandkids to the Hall of Fame for the first time and have to walk past 498 other plaques to get from Hank Aaron to Ted Williams. (Note: I anticipate that in 50 years all old people will get around in some sort of space-age hover chair, but that’s a totally different column. The point is still germane.)

The greats deserved to be honored – and Dawson deserves his day – but we need to make sure it’s not eventually at the expense of the elite.

You can read/listen to more from Dan Levy at OntheDLpodcast.com and follow him on Twitter @onthedlpodcast

Sweet Lou is hanging up the spikes at the end of the season.

The writing was on the wall for anyone paying attention to the way this Cubs season has gone. Lou Piniella isn’t just managing a third-place team that’s nine games under .500, he’s managing a team that is a complete non-factor.

The most notable thing to happen to the Cubs this year was Carlos Zambrano’s insane tirade that had him sent to anger management and Piniella to tell reporters, "I’ve gotten frustrated. But I bounce back. … The losing isn’t easy for me. I’m not used to losing."

Piniella will turn 67 this summer, his last as an MLB manager.

Piniella does have a fantastic track record as a Major League manager. He won the World Series in 1990 with the Reds and was named Manager of the Year three times in his career – but his actual playoff record is 23-27, and in 23 seasons he’s been to the World Series once. Oh, and let’s not forget that before joining the Cubs in 2007, Piniella was the manager of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for three seasons. In the eight years since leaving Seattle – with a stop off in the broadcast booth in 2006 – Piniella’s overall record is 508-556 (.447) with an 0-6 postseason record.

Piniella must have been frustrated when he made those comments in late June because despite a .547 winning percentage in this three previous years in Chicago, he hasn’t really won much of anything.

Again, it could just be frustration settling in and perhaps "the losing isn’t easy for me," should be translated differently. To paraphrase the great line from Danny Glover, maybe Piniella is just too old for this … stuff.

The average age of all the current Major League managers is 55 and a half. Only eight managers in the big leagues were born before 1950. Piniella, who turns 67 in August, may just be too old for this stuff. Before this starts to sound ageist (admittedly that ship may have sailed) it’s not to say that Piniella is incapable of managing at this age. It’s just that being a baseball lifer can make for a pretty long life after a while.

Piniella first played in the big leagues in 1964 and played in the league every year from 1968-1984 when he retired and took a job with the Yankees. A year later, he was their manager and has been in the league for seemingly every minute since. That’s a long, long baseball life.

Bobby Cox is retiring this summer, too.

Piniella isn’t the only one who’s lived a long baseball life, by the way. Bobby Cox is 69 years old and has been a coach, manager or general manager in professional baseball since 1971. I’m not great at math, but that’s almost 40 years! That was certainly enough for Cox, as he announced his retirement well before the 2010 season.

And then there’s Joe Torre who turned 70 years old this week and is the oldest manager in the game. Torre had hoped for an extension with the Dodgers but cut those talks off before the season as to not "be a distraction" the rest of the year. There has been as much speculation about Torre’s future as anyone, and much of the talk has him leaning toward retirement after the season.

The other managers over 60 are: Cito Gaston, 66 (Blue Jays); Jim Leyland, 65 (Tigers); Charlie Manuel, 66 (Phillies); Tony La Russa, 65 (Cardinals); and Dusty Baker, 61 (Reds). Manuel and Baker seem to still have a few years left in them, which makes some sense considering Baker is the youngest of the lot and Manuel didn’t get his fair shake at managing until he was already in his 60s. Gaston was all but out of baseball before getting re-hired by the Blue Jays in 2008 on a two-year deal. Leyland’s contract, which was extended by the Tigers in 2009, goes through next season. And La Russa? His time in the league may very well be tethered to whatever decision Albert Pujols makes about his future.

So is 60 some magical number with regard to managerial success? That may be better asked this way: Has 60 always been the magic number for managers, and have the last 10 years actually bucked the historical trend? Manuel managed the Phillies to the World Series at the age of 64. In 2006, La Russa won the title as manager just after turning 62. Jack McKeon led the Marlins to the 2003 title at the age of 72. Torre led the Yankees to the 2000 World Series during the year in which he turned 60.

Before 2000, the last manager to win a World Series after the age of 60? Casey Stengel in 1958 at the age of 68. With six of the eight managers over 60 still in their respective pennant races, there are a few years before we have to start thinking about that kind of drought again.