Silver Lining Major Theme of Barry Larkin's HOF Election

In what was his 3rd time on the ballot, Barry Larkin received baseball's greatest honor on Monday by being elected the the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the lone selection of the BBWAA for 2012, a precedent that will not set the tone for the next couple of years as some of the greatest players from the 1990s show up on the ballot starting next year. As the era of the 1980s has began to wrap up and take its final shape in terms of what players from that time were elected, we now move towards finding out how the most controversial era in baseball history will be viewed. Many baseball fans of my generation will wonder how many of the players that were solidified stars when we started watching baseball will end up representing our era when it is all set and done. However, the conversation about players who used performance enhancing drugs and those who should be in or who should not be in can wait for another day. For now, let's look at how it is shaping up so far.

Personally, I started watching baseball around 1992 and 1993, and one of my earliest memories was the strike shortened season of 1994. At that time, there were well-known established great players: Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr, and Greg Maddux to name a few. There was also no question at the time that the best SS in the NL was Barry Larkin. As MLB Network so nicely pointed out yesterday, Larkin was way above any other SS of his time. During his career, he posted a stat line of .295/.371/.444, while the league average for SS in the same period was .256/.317/.361. Larkin not only stood out in his era, but he is also had the 10th best career of any SS of all-time. He was NL MVP in 1995, and one year later, became the first SS ever to have a 30 HR / 30 SB season. I can go on and on about Larkin's greatness on the field, but it is his class on and off the field that I would like to draw attention to. He a class act, a great leader, a captain of his hometown team, and something that is not typical these days: a guy who plays his entire career for the same organization. I am proud to say that Barry Larkin was one of the solidified great players of the game when I started watching baseball, and I am even happier that he is the beginning of great players from the era my friends and I grew up with to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

So for now, I am not going to focus on whether certain players should be included or not for whatever reasons, but instead look at what we have at the present moment: a great SS that we had the honor of growing up with to represent the 1990s in the Hall of Fame. Barry Larkin reminds us that even if everyone from our generation is not included, we will still be able to say that we grew up watching some of the best to ever play the game, and there will still be enough of them to represent what we remember from our youth: Greg Maddux, Ken Griffey Jr, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell.

Soon enough, guys who we were fortunate enough to see the entirety of their careers play out will be getting their call, starting with Pedro Martinez is 2015, and when it is all set and done, we will be able to take those that we looked up to growing up, and know that they represent the game just as well as any other era before them.

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