LET'S GET DAVEY IN THE HALL

Baseball announces it's newest members of the Hall Of Fame this week. Ok, I'm a Red's fan, but Davey Concepcion deserves to be with other Big Red Machine team members in Cooperstown. Check his stats against other Hall members and decide for yourself.

Concepcion and friends have started a web-site www.concepcionforcooperstown.org to help make it happen.

Jerry Crasnic of ESPN writes
Tim Gay, once an aide to former West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, now works as a communications consultant in Washington, D.C. He has written a biography
of Tris Speaker, and helped plan a forum in Pittsburgh last summer with author David Maraniss on the legacy of Roberto Clemente. That caught the attention
of Concepcion, who gave his blessing for Gay to begin a Hall campaign.

Concepcion made nine All-Star teams and won five Gold Gloves, but was overshadowed by Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose and even the understated Tony
Perez on the Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s. Since he had a minimal grasp of English, it was easy for the writers to shortchange him.

Gay's Web site shows how Concepcion's statistics compare favorably with those of Ozzie Smith, Phil Rizzuto, Pee Wee Reese and other Hall of Fame shortstops.
He's making the case for a player whose profile never quite matched his achievements.

"Davey is kind of a modest, retiring guy, and his command of English back then wasn't great," Gay said. "In that era, unfortunately, Latinos tended to be
overlooked and underappreciated. There were games when Davey would drive in the winning run or make a couple of spectacular defensive plays, and the reporters
and cameras in the clubhouse would hang around Rose or Bench or Morgan's locker getting quotes."

Concepcion received 31 votes, or 6.8 percent, in his first year on the ballot. He peaked with 80 votes, or slightly less than 17 percent, in 1998. He's
revered in his native Venezuela, where a statue was built in his honor outside the ballpark in Maracay, and Venezuelan business interests have helped sponsor
his Hall of Fame lobbying effort. But since Concepcion decided to return home years ago, he's been out of sight and out of mind for voters.

Not this year. Concepcion shook hands and signed autographs at the Redsfest celebration in Cincinnati in early December, and Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman
wrote an editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer supporting his Hall candidacy. "Davey was the engine that made the machine go and go," wrote Brennaman.