Peter Gammons allowed into Hall of Fame without buying a ticket.

Heck, I'm a little bit surprised they'd let him into the Hall of Fame even if he did buy a ticket.

Isn't there some kind of morals clause they could invoke to deny entry to people who write stuff like this after the local team loses the World Series?:

"We have postponed autumn long enough now. There are storm windows to put in, wood to chop for the whistling months ahead. The floorboards are getting awfully cold in the morning, the cider sweet. Where Lynn dove and El Tiante stood will be frozen soon, and while it is now 43 years for Thomas A. Yawkey and 57 for New England, the fugue that was the 1975 baseball season will play in our heads until next we meet at the Fens again."

How poetic. Meanwhile, half the people in Southie are writing letters to the Globe complaining that one of their writers used the word "fugue" in the Sunday 'paper.


Dan Shaugnessy suggests the following box-o'-laffs in his tribute to Gammons:

"Fortunately, a lot of people who read these pages are old enough to remember when Gammons was the Globe's Red Sox beat guy and master of the Sunday notes column. For those who missed it, may I suggest a trip to the Boston Public Library. Get any summer month between 1972 and 1986 (skip '76 and '77, when Gammons went to Sports Illustrated for the first time) and start reading Gammons's daily game coverage."

Don't forget the cyanide pill.


There is little doubt that Gammons was better at writing about sports than he is at analyzing sports on ESPN. How could he be any worse? Gammons is always wrong.

If Gammons predicts your team is out of the race, get optimistic. If Gammons claims a trade is pending, it isn't. If Gammons reports that Carlos Zambrano won the game, it was probably Victor Zambrano.


The only guy with a lower hit rate is Fox announcer Joe Buck.

This afternoon, while discussing the possibility of the Mets acquiring Manny Ramirez, Buck once again described the Mets as a team poised to win their division. Last year at approximately the same time in the season, Buck said the same thing about the Mets.

The Mets ain't winning their division. It's just a dumb thing to say on the air.

Seven games back is not the whole problem. The other problem is the whole "last place" thing. Because it means there are four teams ahead of the Mets in their own division.

The Mets have been a .500 team all season long and even if they put together a surprising run in the second half, the only way they'll manage to play seven games better than the Braves (eight games better with the tiebreaker?) is if Braves hit a major losing streak.

But if the Braves are losing, then somebody is winning. More specifically, the team that is winning is the team that is beating the Braves. If that somebody is from the NL East, then the Mets aren't gaining any ground.

Now, it's not impossible for the Mets, mathematically speaking, with or without Manny.

Mathematically speaking, the Yankees might still match their win total from 1998. They just need to go 59-1 in their last 60 games.