Billy Wagner is deserving of Neyer's Wing of Amazing

I'm an avid reader of Rob Neyer's SweetSpot (and his writings in general), if you have not guessed it, and he recently came up with something pretty awesome, if not brilliant. Go figure. He only introduced the notion just over two weeks ago when he pondered that his fellow baseball writers might want to include Omar Vizquel in the Hall of Fame, when neither his statistics support his candidacy nor does he pass the "eyeball test:" the gut feeling factor. Not content to end the discussion at him simply not belonging, he supposed something else might do him justice. And this was all predicated on... well let me allow Rob to explain:

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"The dirty little secret is that there's no such thing as "the writers' wing" or "the broadcasters' wing" of the  Hall of Fame. Those places don't exist. If you've been to Cooperstown and weren't paying attention, you would have seen absolutely no proof that the winners of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award (writers) or the Ford C. Frick Award (broadcasters) ever existed, because their names simply don't appear in the Hall of Fame, which is a big room covered with the plaques depicting all the men (and one woman) who are actually, you know, in the Hall of Fame.

There's no wing. There are a couple of plaques, one for each award, hanging on a wall just outside the Hall's research library. The Spink and Frick Award winners are not "enshinees" (i.e. Hall of Famers) but rather "honorees," which is a completely different thing.

The confusion is partly the Hall of Fame's fault, because for some years the Hall of Fame has allowed the honorees to give an acceptance speech the same afternoon as the enshrinees give theirs.

But the confusion is mostly our fault, and by "our" I mean my colleagues in the business and our employers. Obviously, it makes everyone happy to add "Hall of Fame" in front of "writer" or "broadcaster." It's gratifying to the ego, and it's gratifying to whoever's signing the checks.

It's just not true.

The "wings" are largely imaginary places, invented for everyone's convenience.

So why not imagine one more wing, for our convenience?

What I am proposing is a Wing of the Amazing, for players who really don't belong in the Hall of Fame because they weren't good enough, but did some things that do deserve to be celebrated. A few criteria:

• No one-game wonders. This leaves out Don Larsen.
• No freak shows. This leaves out Eddie Gaedel and Minnie Minoso (though one can make a pretty decent case for Minoso as an actual Hall of Famer.
• We're not talking about really good (or great) players who belong in the Hall of Fame, but have been overlooked. Lou Whitaker and Bobby Grich were both fantastic players and they belong in the Hall, but when you look at their careers do you think, Amazing? Probably not.
• These standards are inviolable until someone convinces me they're not.

Now, it seems to me that while Omar Vizquel might not be the best candidate for the Wing of the Amazing, he is a fine candidate."
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Already off and running with his submittals, his second nominee was age-defying Jamie Moyer. And most recently, he argued Jim Abbott was the ideal candidate for the Wing of Amazing, of which I wholeheartedly agree.