By After this year’s voting for the MLB Hall-Of-Fame, there were no players inducted to the class and that includes Dale Murphy once again. The Braves legend spent 18 years in the majors. He was a two-time NL MVP, seven-time All-Star and a five-time Gold Glove winner. However, he also had a lifetime batting average of.265, was not a member of the 500 home run club and made just one postseason appearance. Those last three facts could be the reason why Murphy was denied entry once again in his last eligible year on the ballot. Dale Murphy joined WCNN in Atlanta with Buck and Kincade to talk about not being selected to the Hall-Of-Fame once again, what he has heard from voters about why he is not in the Hall-Of-Fame, whether he has any regrets about his career and what he thinks about the way the voting went when it came to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
On not being selected to the Hall-Of-Fame once again:
“I don’t have any complaints. I didn’t expect to go to 75 percent from where I was. I knew that it would have been totally unprecedented to get to there. I just felt really thankful first of all for being on the ballot for 15 years and I would have liked to have gotten more support, there’s no question about that but I had a big jump in my percentage and someone said possibly the highest percentage of any of the other guys. Some guys went down. Someone said Jack Morris actually got less so I’m thankful for the great fan support and Braves fans like crazy were on Twitter yesterday and I just can’t say thank you enough to them. My kids had a big campaign for me and it’s been a great experience.”
What he has heard from voters about why he is not in the Hall-Of-Fame:
“I talk to guys all the time and to be honest with you I do a lot of interviews with guys who have votes and usually they say ‘hey I voted for you’, but for the guys who don’t vote for me, one of the challenges I have is my lifetime batting average is .265 and then the peak performance years they don’t like the last three or four years of my career and either do I as well. They just like very consistent production which is understandable but it’s pretty tough for me to look back on my career and say if I would have thought about it I would have been better off retiring in ’88 and then my peak performance years of my career would have looked better to Hall-Of-Fame voters. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t worry about it but that is one thing that bothers them.”
Whether he has any regrets when he looks back on his career:
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have any regrets. Yeah, I do. I felt good about the timing and moving on to Philadelphia, but personally I think I just think I do regret those last few years. The last couple of years in Atlanta weren’t that good. The couple of years I went to Philly weren’t that productive. I battled through some things and not to get too detailed about this but one of the challenges, and even Chipper talked about this and this is why he is such a remarkable player, when you get older you start to question yourself and I think some doubt started to creep into my head a little bit. I started to pull the ball a little too much which is not the way you want to hit and started thinking maybe you’re a little slower so I had a little trouble battling through that. If I had it to do over again I think I could have been a lot tougher mentally to get through those last few years. A number of players were productive throughout their career, even the last few years.”
What he thinks about the way the voting went down with guys like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens:
“My first reaction is it is going to be a long time for those gusy to get in, if they get in. Even though they got in the mid-30′s of the vote, I think it also says a lot of the voters are pretty well entrenched and it might have been kind of a protest year for them not to vote. I think once you don’t vote for them for the reasons of PED’s and things like that it is going to be a little hard to justify in your mind ‘well okay this year I am going to vote for them.’ I think it’s going to be 10 years. If they get in I think it’s going to be at least 10 years.”
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