Congratulations to the Crime Dog, Fred McGriff, new inductee to baseball's Hall of Fame

Rumors that his excellent nickname pushed him over the top are probably unfounded.

I think that McGriff, like a few others who were obviously NOT juicers and whose stats therefore were somewhat depressed by comparison (Will Clark may be the most glaring example), deserved reconsideration, and his choice puts him squarely in the middle or low-to-middle range of Hall of Famers. The voters still look at the glamor statistics and not at the overall player. Keith Hernandez was a more valuable player than McGriff, over the course of his career, but he played in pitchers' parks (Busch, Shea), and he wasn't a home-run hitter. He WAS the greatest glove man at 1B that I've ever seen, doing things that I've never seen anybody else do, like daring to stand in foul territory to hold the runner close at first. Hernandez was really a sort of left-handed shortstop or third-baseman whose only infield position could be first base. The 1982 infield of Hernandez (1B), Tommie Herr (2B), Ozzie Smith (SS), and Ken Oberkfell (3B), may well have been the greatest defensive infield of all time. You had, basically, Ozzie at SS and 1B, and three-quarters Ozzie at 3B and 2B...

Other great glove-infields, off the top of my head, usually had one dropoff, one guy who was average at best, or they had very good players everywhere, but none at the Ozzie Smith level:

Orioles: 3B Brooks Robinson, SS Mark Belanger, 2B Davey Johnson / Bobby Grich, 1B Boog Powell
Dodgers: 3B Ron Cey, SS Bill Russell, 2B Davey Lopes, 1B Steve Garvey
Cardinals: 3B Kenny Boyer, SS Dick Groat, 2B Julian Javier, 1B Bill White