Time has come to put Raines in Hall of Fame

OK, it’s time to make Tim Raines more than just a tease every December regarding Cooperstown. The only person who gets overlooked as much by my fellow Baseball Hall of Fame voters as Rock is Crime Dog. Since Fred McGriff has two more years of eligibility, I’ll save that rant for later.

As for Raines, Rock or whatever you wish to call him, I’m hoping we all can refer to the former pride of the Montreal Expos as “Hall of Famer” on Wednesday, Jan. 18, when the official word comes. There are at least 808 reasons (you know, his number of career stolen bases) for Raines to join the Hall of Fame with Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock and Ty Cobb, the only players with more career steals than Raines. Simply put, Raines is the only player in baseball history not in Cooperstown with that many stolen bases.

Are you listening, fellow Hall of Fame voters? We have no time to waste, because this is Raines’ final season on the writers’ ballot. I’ve done the same thing for the last nine years, including earlier this month: I’ve opened my envelope from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, I’ve placed a check mark on the box next to Raines’ name, and I’ve sighed over the thought that Rock hasn’t been bronzed after all of these years.

• Complete Hall of Fame coverage

Raines is trending in the right direction, though. You need 75 percent of the ballots cast for entry into the Hall of Fame, and he went from 55 percent two years ago to 69.89 last year. That was 23 votes shy of Coopertown’s village limits, so we can do this. We HAVE to do this for so many reasons.

Let’s start with fairness, which means Hall of Fame voters should stop their habit of comparing and contrasting Raines with Henderson — just because they both were …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com