Hurt no more

The last Major League baseball player I rooted for recently announced his retirement. Frank Thomas, aptly nicknamed the Big Hurt, will not suit up any more. With him dies one of the last of the big men without the shroud of steroid-abuse tainting their legacy. If anything, for years, Thomas has been very, well, frank about the need for steroid testing in baseball.

A physical specimen of gigangtic proportions - 6'5" tall, weighing in the region of 250 pounds - he was the most feared batter in MLB in the 1990's. Sharing space in Chicago with Michael Jordan was an onerous task but he held his own, winning two league MVP titles in the process, finishing with a career batting average of .301 with an on-base percentage of .419 and an OPS of .974, The Big Hurt was more than just a slugger: he was a balanced, disciplined, natural hitter. He will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer when he comes up for selection 2014, the same year (thankfully!) as Greg Maddux, my all-time favorite player. Thomas' 521 home runs are about 250 less than the all-time leader but it does not come with an asterisk.

Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated has this to say about one of the best players of all-time.

Well, oddly enough, some do have questions about Thomas, even though he ranks 18th alltime in home runs (521), 15th in OPS (.974) and ninth in walks (1,667) and owns raw numbers that run nearly in lockstep with those of Mickey Mantle. Thomas is a no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer, the kind of player who requires none of the usual finely detailed research to figure out whether or not he belongs in Cooperstown. He should be enshrined with a record-setting 2014 class that also includes Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent and Mike Mussina.