Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

1-8-91 Three baseball players were inducted into the [National Baseball] Hall of Fame: Rod Carew, a seven-time American League batting champion; Gaylord Perry, who won Cy Young awards in both leagues; and Ferguson Jenkins, who won twenty or more games several times with the Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers, neither of which was a winning team. I have vivid memories of all three players, having been a baseball fan since 1967. I especially remember Carew, the Minnesota Twin and California Angel who could spray the ball to all fields. He crouched low and held the bat so softly that it appeared it would fall out of his hands, but when the pitch arrived—swish!—he would flick his wrists and line the ball, seemingly, wherever he wanted. Carew was also a deft baserunner, as evidenced by his many steals of home. Not many players even attempt to steal home any more. As for Perry, he spent a long career denying charges that he scuffed and “juiced” the ball. The consensus is that he threw a spitball for much of his career, but as far as I know nobody ever proved it. He and his brother Jim, who played briefly for the Detroit Tigers, were two of the winningest pitchers of the 1960s and 1970s. Jenkins probably would have been inducted before now had he not had a run-in with the law a few years ago. He was arrested for possession of marijuana while crossing the border from Canada to the United States. All three players, in my view, deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.