Apples v. orange mocha frappuchinos

Roger Maris! One big season. NOT IN THE HALL! So why does McGwire deserve it? This is just the question that a knowledgeable yet retarded baseball fan may be asking him- or herself at this point. For example, one such human is Peter Pascarelli (scroll down a bit). Says Pete:

I've not voted for McGwire and this latest chapter is unlikely to change my mind. It's not as if McGwire's admission, while admirable in its candor, comes as a surprise to anyone. My reluctance to vote for him exists on several levels. For one, the automatic admission of 500 home run hitters has been tainted by the whole PED culture. For another, even with his giant home run numbers, McGwire was an exceedingly one-dimensional player. Home runs were all he brought to the table -- he did not hit for average, he was not a great RBI producer, he had relatively few other extra-base hits besides the home run, he was average defensively, a poor runner, etc. He also had a string of very poor seasons that coincidentally ended with what have been known as his steroids seasons. Roger Maris is not in the Hall of Fame because his great seasons were too few in number. McGwire should not be in the Hall of Fame for largely the same, albeit bloated, reason.

Ok. Let me preface this all by saying that I'm a huge McGwire fan. Favorite player of all-time. Probably not even close. Among major sports, it's probably McGwire-Barry Sanders-Jaromir Jagr-Fuck Basketball. Maybe Shawn Kemp. Ha. For rilly. Regardless, McGwire is the man in the MLB for me, at least aside from Pittsburgh players (ANDY VAN SLYKE!). So take this with a 535-foot bomb of salt. Anyways, if you don't want to vote for Mac because he used steroids...that's perfectly acceptable. Hell, I myself am not quite sure how I'd go about it if I had a vote. But I'm not going to get into that, because that's all over the internet and is so largely a matter of personal beliefs and morals and all of that gay stuff that it doesn't justify mention on a blog like this, which is generally dedicated to talking about dicks rubbing together and pandas fucking fat chicks. Because I have no morals. Fuck you and the pedestal you stand upon. Which is probably made out of dicks.

But this belief that, ohhhhh, McGwire was so one-dimensional, oh my Godddd, he only hit home runs! That's all he did. All he brought to the table. He didn't hit for average! His base-running sucked! Well fuck, that's because he was usually jogging around the damn bases. Homeruns are probably the most important non-pitching positive stat for a team, and McGwire is arguably the best all-time at them. He his a homerun every 10.7 at-bats, NUMBER ONE ALL-FUCKING-TIME. That's insane. He hit more than 60 TWICE. His teams got a home-run from him every 2.5 games. That's insane! That creates an environment very conducive to winning. And his career OBP was .394. That means that he got on-base two out of every five at-bats. Who cares how he got on? Does a single count for more bases than a walk? In an average game, McGwire got on-base almost twice. That's good. Very good. Ozzie Smith was only good at defense. Nolan Ryan only struck people out. Why do they get in and McGwire doesn't? Would it have helped if he did backflips on his way to first base?

And CERTAINLY don't ever compare him to Maris while I'm around. Unless you just finished comparing apples to third-world economies and want to see if you can make an even more tortured comparison. That comparison is so tortured that I'm surprised it doesn't give up any actual info. John Yoo probably came up with it. Roger Maris had one HUGE year and then two other years above 30 homeruns. See for yo'self. 39 the year before the big record year, 33 after. That's it. Under 30 every other year. One homerun every 18.5 at-bats, or almost half the rate of McGwire. Two seasons of OPS+ over 150 (OPS+ takes the sum of a player's on-base percentage and slugging and adjusts them relative to the rest of the league in a given year...100 is considered average). And if you want to talk batting average...Maris had two years with a batting average above that of McGwire's CAREER average of .263. He never OBP-ed above McGwire's career average in any single season. That's it. One great record-setting year and two more great ones. Kind of great, at least. Maybe offense wasn't what it was now way back then, but the OPS+ tells a bit of a story.

Now, looking at McGwire. Mac led the league in homeruns four times to Maris' one. He hit over 50 homeruns four times. He had a career OPS+ of 162 and a high of 216. He may have been just a homerun hitter, but he was a fucking insanely awesome homerun hitter. Comparing his homerun-hitting career to that of Maris and saying that they are even somewhat analogous in pure lunacy. You have to be a lunatic to do so. Something has to be fucked up in your head to make that comparison. Maris did it for one year. McGwire did it for the better part of an entire career. Even when he was hurt and only getting 200 at-bats in a season, he was mashing. Mashing epically. Hitting balls harder than that chick got hit in Jersey Shore. He was a beast.

So say that McGwire shouldn't be in due to PEDs. But don't say that his numbers weren't good enough because he didn't steal enough bases or something gay like that. If it weren't for PEDs, he'd be in. Unquestionably. And don't ever ever ever ever ever say that voting McGwire into the Hall would be like voting for Roger fucking Maris, or I will find your address, befriend your family, and give you a cute little rabbit for Christmas. And then, after a few months that you've had that rabbit and love it and your kids love it and you've called it something cute like "Buttondrops", I will come to your house unannounced one afternoon around dinner time and I will invite myself in and I will choke Buttondrops to death right in front of your entire family. I will brutally end that rabbit's life while your kids cry and you look on in horror. And I was scream at you, "DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE? DO YOU STILL WANT TO COMPARE ROGER MARIS' CAREER NUMBERS TO MCGWIRE'S, IGNORING THE HUGE SHORT- AND LONG-TERM DISCREPANCIES IN FAVOR OF MCGWIRE? HUH? HUH? DON'T YOU EVER FUCK WITH RATIONAL THOUGHT AGAIN!".

Fuck Peter Pascarelli's rabbit.