Womack: Lou Whitaker on his Hall of Fame chances: ‘I didn’t even get daylight’
From SABR member Graham Womack at The Sporting News on February 14, 2017:
Hall of Fame committees seemingly exist for candidates like Lou Whitaker.
Whitaker, who played from 1977 to 1995 with the Detroit Tigers, ranks among the best second basemen in baseball history by various sabermetrics — sixth by Wins Above Replacement, seventh by Wins Above Average, and 12th by JAWS according to Baseball-Reference.com. But Whitaker drew just 2.9 percent of the vote for Cooperstown in 2001, his only year on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s ballot, disqualifying him from future consideration by the writers.
Sixteen years since his snubbing, Whitaker expounded about it in a recent phone interview from his North Carolina home.
“I had the opportunity to play in the major leagues,” Whitaker said. “I did it, I played there. I gave it my best. When my career was over, well, that’s all I could have done. What good is it for me to go to people and be whining or crying or saying, ‘I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Y’all wrong.’”
He added, “If you deserve something, they always say if you deserve it, you’ll get it.”
Read the full article here: http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/lou-whitaker-hall-of-fame-chances-case-stats-detroit-tigers-alan-trammell/1gk4yiyybitb91ey3sm1m10tsk
Originally published: February 14, 2017. Last Updated: February 14, 2017.