Barry Larkin was voted into the Hall of Fame yesterday. Seven years ago I wasn’t sure this day would come. I remember scouring ESPN.com when Larkin retired, trying to figure out if the experts agreed with the entire city of Cincinnati on their shortstop’s Hall of Fame credentials. I likely turned to Rob Neyer first, though if I remember correctly his take wasn’t much different than most: Larkin deserved to get in, and it wasn’t all that close. Whether the writers would vote him in is a different story. As has been chronicled more times than I can count over the last several days/months/years, for some reason Larkin didn’t stand out. Most commonly, it’s blamed on the fact that he was good at everything, and not transcendently great at any one thing. My personal bias is that Ozzie Smith’s legend, which I maintain helped him win a couple extra Gold Gloves in his twilight years that probably should have gone to Barry, kept the Reds shortstop under the radar. Whatever the reason, whenever Larkin’s Hall of Fame case came up, I started sweating.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Cooperstown. More accurately, millions of tiny little things having been happening and continue to happen, which are slowing beginning to shape the way many people look at baseball. The internet continues to find new ways to gather and deliver information. Very smart people who would otherwise have no outlet, now have a voice. And I think these smart people started talking about Barry Larkin’s Hall of Fame credentials, and then other smart people started noticing. And soon, even the not smart ones started to think: “Hey, this Larkin guy was pretty good.” Or maybe they thought: “Wow, everyone seems to like him. Seems like a good enough reason for a ‘yes’ vote.” We can’t really be sure.
Point is, in the weeks leading up to the vote, I was much less worried about the results than I had been in the past. It seemed that support had swelled, and before it actually happened, everyone knew that Larkin would be inducted in 2012 before a wave of great players entered the pool in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
So when it happened, I was happy. But I was also really busy at work, and when I finally found the time to look out on the interwebs and see what I could see, I got kinda bored. All these people talking about Larkin as if I didn’t know who he was and what he had done. Jim Bowden and his lame home video, telling generic stories and recalling his connection to our team when it was convenient for him to do so. These things did not interest me.
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Barry won his MVP when I was 12 years old. Not long after that season I remember going with my parents to the Bigg’s in Eastgate to get a limited edition poster, a full-body illustration of Larkin following through on a toss to a teammate. I came home and put it up on the ceiling above my bed, not because I wanted to look up at our star every night before falling asleep, but because all my other wall space was filled. Honestly, though, had it been any other poster I don’t think I would have given it such a front-and-center location. I ended up staring that that thing an awful lot. It had his 1995 MVP-winning stats listed along the bottom, which still stand out to me today. 13 homeruns. 66 RBI. A few years later, when players were routinely hitting 60 and 70 homeruns, it seemed both remarkable and perplexing that Larkin was able to win. I always though it was funny, too, that the next year he became baseball’s first ever 30/30 shortstop, posted a career best OPS+ of 154 with a .298/.410/.567 slash line, won the Gold Glove, and finished 12th in MVP voting.
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For some reason I never had a baseball jersey growing up. I had several football ones, but they were mostly afterthoughts (including a Marino jersey that was probably on sale at All About Sports). In all honesty, basketball was my favorite sport growing up, and my jersey collection was evidence of that. Aside from the three Nick Van Exel Laker jerseys, my favorite was probably a Grant Hill from Detroit’s short lived teal era.
I do have one baseball jersey now. Several years ago when I had a birthday coming up, it had become clear to me that I had no Reds jerseys, and that was weird. I thought of the players on the team, and though my fandom was as intense as ever, no one really jumped out at me as the guy I wanted to wear around GABP. No, I wanted a jersey that was inspired by greatness, that represented this team’s proud history. And now, I know exactly what I’ll be wearing in Cooperstown on July 22nd.
