Phillies and the Hall: Not This Year, Not Even for a While... PART II

Around this time last year, I noted in this post about how the Phils were lacking in the Hall of Fame department as a result of the dreary teams of the late 80s and 90s.

Guess what.

The drought continues.

Last year the only player on the ballot who even wore Phillies pinstripes at some point in time was the GIDP-master Dale Murphy. An incredible hitter in his heyday, by the time he played in Philly, he was a shell of the player he once was. But he's still a borderline Cooperstown candidate simply because of his solid body of work from earlier in his career.

Besides Murphy, two more players wore Phils pinstripes at the tail end of their careers and now are on the HOF ballot: outfielder Ron Gant (like Murphy, another longtime Brave) and pitcher Dan Plesac.

To give you an idea of how long these three former stars donned Phils laundry versus how long they played in the MLB, the three of these players combined to play a total of 497 games as Phillies out of a total of 5076 games during their collective careers. That's about 9.7% of their careers played here. At the tail end, no less.

So the moral of the story, I reckon, is if you want to have a good career but not quite good enough to make the Hall of Fame, finish up your career in Philly. Or something like that.

Now, in order to give us Phils fans something to root for during the off-season, we must find a way to convince the baseball writers to get Desi Relaford on the ballot...