"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Chapter One: Leading Off
It's time to give discredit where discredit is due.
For over a century, baseball has immortalized the home run slugger, the clean-cut All-American, the golden glover, the big-hearted lug, the unstoppable dynasty. But the truth is winners and nice guys and heroes are boring.
Who really makes the grand old game so entertaining, rousing, and exciting? The losers, the cheaters, the flakes, the buffoons, the boneheads, the inept, the outrageous, the obnoxious. They have given real demeaning to the word baseball. They have brought color to the game -- a black eye. They are the true foul balls whose contributions have withstood the detest of time.
Yet where is their niche in the Hall of Fame? Nowhere. To correct this travesty of sports injustice, we founded The Baseball Hall of SHAME. Cooperstown can have baseball's shining stars. The Hall of SHAME wants baseball's shiners.
The history of our national pastime boasts a rich heritage of shameful moments both on and off the field by teams, players, managers, coaches, owners, general managers, umpires, groundskeepers, and even the fans themselves.
To help us choose the most deserving candidates for Baseball Hall of SHAME dishonors, we made a nationwide appeal in the spring of 1984 to fans, sportswriters, broadcasters, and players for nominations. We spread the word on radio from coast to coast and throughout Canada. We went on TV and were interviewed in scores of newspapers and magazines. We visited spring training camps where we received nominations in the bleachers, clubhouses, dugouts, and press boxes. Then we spent weeks sifting through record books, archival material, and faded newspaper accounts. We considered all shameful moments and tossed out those which involved drugs or murder since there's nothing funny about either. However, most everything else shameful had a chance of being selected for dishonors.
Not everyone who blundered on or off the field belongs in The Baseball Hall of SHAME. In our judgment, only a small select number of the thousands of boners and disgraces that have tainted the game met our unique standards for inclusion in the Hall's first induction.
However, we don't intend to stop here. Periodically, we will be considering prospective Hall of Shamers from the past and present for enshrinement. If you feel some baseball personality or moment is deserving of such dishonors, we want to know about it. Please send us your nominations of hilarious happenings and ignoble incidents. To learn how to submit your picks, turn to page 187.
We want The Baseball Hall of SHAME to be the fans' shrine. We're not out to make fun of baseball. Instead, we want to have fun with the game we all love. This book is more than just the official record of charter membership in The Baseball Hall of SHAME. It's also a way for fans across the country to pay a light-hearted tribute to the national pastime. We have found that superstars and bozos have one thing in common -- they all screw up. (It's just that some screw up more than others.)
As you read through this book, we hope you come to the same conclusion we did. We can all identify with -- and laugh about -- each inductee's shameful moment because each one of us has at one time or another pulled a "rock."
Copyright © 1985 by Nash and Zullo Productions, Inc.
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