Andre Dawson Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame – MLB

Alex Ness is a writer, a poet, and a reader. You can find links to all his work at http://alexnesspoetandwriter.blogspot.com. His first post for DeepIntoSports.com recalls his fond memories of Andre Dawson’s playing days in commemoration of The Hawk’s election to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Memories and the Hawk

1969: Twins versus Tigers in Metropolitan Stadium, Bloomington, Minnesota. 4-1, Tigers win.

The Stonewall riots occur. The Woodstock music festival happens. Men land upon the Moon with Apollo 11. The Brady Bunch premieres.

As a boy growing up in small town Wisconsin, I was force-fed a diet of NFL football as the only acceptable sport by my father. I loved my father, mind you, but he didn’t much care about anything that wasn’t Minnesota Vikings football. It wasn’t that he didn’t try, but ultimately all he seemed to care about was football (without going into gory details, that might be true of his life, too…). The first baseball game that I attended was a Minnesota Twins game in 1969. I was 6 years old and we had driven to Minnesota specifically for the game. I was too young to understand much, but, after that game, baseball had a magical quality for me. Tony Oliva, right fielder for the Minnesota Twins, was my hero, and while I grew up with very little opportunity to watch baseball, I still considered it my favorite sport.

In 1977 Montreal Expos center fielder Andre Dawson won the Rookie of the Year award. His career was just beginning, and what a career it would be. He could throw with accuracy and velocity, he could field gracefully, he was fast and stole bases, he could hit for average and power, and he was a very good representative of the sport of baseball.

In 1978 my family moved from one small town to another in Wisconsin where my father took a similar position of work at a different company. The town was isolated, very rural and stood at the top of hill. I was fortunate enough to have my own room, finally at the age of 14, and, when I turned on the radio, I found out that 90% of the time I could hear the Minnesota Twins play. I was immediately hooked. I ordered Sporting News, bought all sorts of baseball cards, and rooted for the team I loved. But, there were also times during which I could not pick up the Twins game, and I was left with no choice but to scan the radio for other games. Strangely, perhaps, the best non-Twins and non-Milwaukee Brewers broadcasts was the French language coverage of the Montreal Expos from the beautiful province of Quebec, Canada. I didn’t altogether know what was going on, mind you, but I loved the play calling, the raw emotions, and every damn time Andre Dawson came up to bat or had an opportunity to field a ball was a moment on fire. The announcers would gush, scream even, and you could, for a moment or two, see what was going on, even without knowing, exactly, what was going on.

I collected all of Andre Dawson’s sports cards, and I thought about if only the Twins had such a player, instead of Willie Norwood, Mike Edwards, or various other forgotten outfielders. I read about Dawson’s games and followed his career. The rare times his team was on broadcast television I watched intently, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to petition my father to travel to a National League city to catch an Expos game. My father, remember, wasn’t a fan of baseball in general, and, frankly, didn’t like Canada at all. He thought I was insane. And perhaps I was or am, but it has nothing to do with why I wanted to go to Chicago or Saint Louis to catch an Expos game.

1987: I get engaged to my spouse Beth Wallace; we are still married today. Jim Bakker bangs Jessica Hahn. The Stock Market crashes on Black Monday. Twins win the World Series, Andre Dawson destroys the opposition as the MVP for the Chicago Cubs.

But my dad had hidden a secret from me that I didn’t find out about until Andre Dawson moved to the Chicago Cubs as a player. It turned out that as a young man he had lived in Chicago and had a love for the Chicago Cubs. We never had cable, and being stuck between the Brewers and Twins, he just couldn’t find the interest to follow games he had no fan stake in the outcome. In 1987 when I came home from university, I learned that he now had cable and made it a point to watch the Cubs, every chance he could. So we came to find out some things that summer. First, he was a Cubs fan, but not so much a baseball fan without the Cubs. Second, Andre Dawson gave him the best reason to watch baseball ever. After great seasons with Gold Gloves, RBIs, home runs and high batting averages, his days in Montreal had left his knees chewed up from playing as hard as he had upon an artificial surface. Some looked upon his arrival at Wrigley Field in Chicago as his being sent to pasture, a warrior having seen his best days finishing his career out. The grass would in fact help lengthen his career. His move to right field from his typical center field position additionally conserved his body. A single look at his first campaign in Chicago will tell you he was a man upon a mission. He hit the most home runs he had ever hit, drove in his most runs ever, and, as a force upon the field, was recognized with the Most Valuable Player award for the 1987 season.

After that pinnacle year he had a number of other good seasons for the Cubs. He was a great leader, and while his career ended in Florida and Boston, his fans will think of him first as that Rookie of the Year for Montreal and then the MVP for the Cubs.

In the steroid age of baseball numbers and achievements became distorted. For whatever reason, the statistical aspect of the sport has long dominated the perception of achievement and quality of play, and for 8 years voters of the Baseball Hall of Fame ignored Andre Dawson’s career. But upon the bright light of seeing how much the game had been juiced by steroids, the absolute excellence of Dawson’s career became clear. A true five tool athlete, Dawson rightly deserved election to the Hall, and I remain a fan of his.

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