501 Reasons Why Jim Thome Belongs in Baseball Hall of Fame

We live in an era where sports heroes are in the news every day. Far too often, they aren't on the sports pages however. Instead we find their names on the front page for doing something incredibly stupid or selfish or criminal. These sports figures are not in the news for making game winning hits, or scoring touchdowns or making winning baskets. They are in the news because they have been arrested for guns, violence, drunk driving, domestic battery or cheating in their sport by taking performance enhancing drugs. Every day we read of holdouts or whiners who don't think making millions of dollars for playing a game is enough and they beg us to empathize with their sorry lot in life. The whole thing has tarnished the image of sports.

     Like everything however, there are little nuggets, little cameos of great sports stories that make us hold out hope that the sports and the people who play those games we love are something close to what we want them, what we wish them to be. Jim Thome of the Chicago White Sox is one of those people, one of those stories.

     A big man at six foot three, 250 pounds Thome, far from taking designer drugs, got his bulk the old fashioned ways; genetics and a few too many brats. Jim even has to look up to a baby brother four inches and 100 pounds larger when he goes home to see the family. His 72 year old dad, Cliff,  is over six feet and when chest thumping happens at the Thome home, the neighborhood shakes till they quiet down.

     Jim, the designated hitter for the Sox hit his 500^th home run into the right center field seats last week. The twenty-third player in baseball history to reach the milestone, Thome did it in dramatic fashion; in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the game for the Sox and the Chicago fans and some twenty-five family members of the Thome clan in attendance. To date only Mark McGuire, who has a questionable history of doctoring his body, has not been inducted into the hall with 500 home runs in the books.

     Another, perhaps not as fair factor in balloting for who is enshrined is popularity and here is where Thome leads the league. An extremely popular player with the fans and sportswriters, Jim was voted the best teammate in baseball by the league's players by an almost 3 to 1 ratio over the other ballplayers. In this day and age of selfishness, I'm not sure which is more impressive; 500 home runs or being by far the most popular player in the league.

     Perhaps Thome acts of kindness to others and lack of celebrity has worn off on us; well at least it has on the fan who caught the historic ball. Rather than run off to fill out a sellers site at E-Bay, the young man with the good hands visiting from Texas, gave the ball to Thome in return for a few souvenirs and a trip back to Chicago next season with the full use of the Thome family luxury box. A nice set of prizes to be sure but probably far short of the money the ball might have garnered from a Chicago sports fan.

     Cliff Thome, now 72 years old knows that his son might have several years of playing left plus a five year wait before being eligible for voting so the ball and this moment meant the world to him. Candidly he admits he probably won't be around to see his son inducted at Cooperstown. This winter he and his son will make the trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame and present the ball to authorities for enshrinement with the other great memorabilia of our national pastime. It will be the father's moment just in case he doesn't live to see the day his son enters the Hall.

   By the way, the name of that remarkably unselfish Texan from Houston is Will Stewart. He's a Hall of Famer in my book too.