Andre Dawson Is the New Jim Rice

Next Big Thing is MLB FanHouse's look at emerging teams, trends and stars in 2009.

You don't have to look very hard for the player who will take Jim Rice's place as a lightning rod at the top of the 2010 Hall of Fame ballot. Just look one spot down in this year's voting and ready yourself for the same arguments all over again.

Andre Dawson's career numbers aren't very impressive. Dawson played before the "steroid era" and has to be judged differently because of it. Dawson has a mediocre on-base percentage. Dawson didn't play in a time when on-base percentage was valued. Dawson's numbers don't merit inclusion to Cooperstown. Numbers can't represent how feared a hitter Dawson was during his career.

Every one of those arguments raged about Rice's candidacy and they'll all be revived when discussion begins about Dawson in advance of next year's ballot. But, just like Rice, the biggest story isn't about any of those arguments.

The story is about the phenomenon that makes a player a more viable candidate the longer he's been away from the game of baseball. Dawson last swung a bat during the 1996 season, yet his vote total has risen from 214 to 361 since he came on the ballot in 2002. Rice had the same experience, going from 137 votes in 1995 to 412 and election in 2009, his final year on the ballot.

What accounts for players gaining support as their actual playing days fall further and further into the rearview mirror? It isn't the advances in statistical analysis. Neither Rice nor Dawson is helped all that much by the more sophisticated metrics that have come into vogue since their playing days. And it isn't a bunch of old writers who are remembering things through the rose colored glasses of "back in my day, players were really players." Those were the guys who found Rice and Dawson unworthy of inclusion when their careers were fresh.

If anything, it is the opposite effect. It's new voters who grew up watching Rice and Dawson and are now facilitating a sharp rise in their vote totals. It makes sense.

The golden age of baseball isn't the '50s or the '30s, it's nine. When you're nine, baseball is bigger than life and the players are heroes. It's hard to shake that belief no matter how much exposure you get to the game or how much a player's actual exploits are put into context. That's why you hear so many arguments about how fearful pitchers were of facing Rice or how Dawson's combination of speed and power were unrivaled before his knee blew up.

Numbers don't verify those statements but our memories do, and memory is a powerful, powerful thing. The arguments about how Rice or Dawson or Goose Gossage or many others cheapen the Hall of Fame should and will continue unabated, but their inclusion speaks to the nine-year-old who loves a player unconditionally, which isn't such a bad thing after all.