Walker’s hall call likely a year away

Twitter campaign seems to be helping Cooperstown voters catch up on Canadian great

Baseball Canada held its annual fundraising banquet at a downtown Toronto hotel on Saturday and Larry Walker, the former Expos, Rockies and Cardinals outfielder from Maple Ridge, B.C., and the greatest Canadian position player in major-league history, was on hand to receive an award. The bottom line is that without Larry Walker, without Fergie Jenkins, without Terry Puhl, Claude Raymond, John Hiller and other pioneers who paved the way for Canadians, there would be no Baseball Canada.

But Walker has bigger awards in his future. The 17-year major-league star has suddenly, in his ninth and penultimate year on the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, vaulted into legitimacy as a contender to be voted in at Cooperstown. He never earned higher than 34.1 per cent of the vote in his first eight years on the ballot, conducted by baseball writers. A total of 75 per cent is required for election. But now, with just under half of the 2019 ballots made public, Walker sits at 66 per cent. No, he will not make it to immortality this year, but he is starting to have 2020 vision.

“I guess it’s social media,” Walker said of a campaign that has emerged on Twitter. “I don’t know much else has changed. I know that analytic part of it is something that jumped out and I’ve seen more of it. I mean there’s things I don’t even know what they are, like a bWAR. I don’t even know what these stats are. But in some guys’ eyes, it’s made sense and they’ve made a different decision.”

Walker has forever been a hall of famer for those that actually saw his

body of work first-hand. He was a classic five-tool player when speed and arm strength meant something. But here are some stats that have swayed voters who never saw Walker play in person in a career that began in 1989 with the Expos, who signed him as a failed Junior B goalie five years earlier, and ended with the Cards in 2005.

Only two players in history have hit 300 homers, stolen 200 bases and recorded an OPS (on-base-plus-slugging percentage) of .950 or better — Walker and Barry Bonds.

Walker has a higher OPS than hall of famers Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield and Ken Griffey Jr.

Walker has a higher WAR than 45 hall of famers, and ranks 56th in major-league history.

Scott Rolen, also on the hall ballot this year — and another player that I voted for — was once asked about his brief time with Walker in St. Louis. He described Walker as “the best teammate I ever played with.”

When told of his teammate’s assessment, the B.C. native became emotional, talking not about himself but what he saw as real leadership.

“Guys looked up to him,” Walker said of Rolen. “My home-run trot changed because of him because I appreciated his hustle running around the bases. I’m not a big fan of the bat flip or the pimping it out and then jogging around like you just hit the greatest home run in the history of mankind. Act like you’ve done it before, like Barry Sanders scoring a touchdown. Get around the bases, high-five your team and let’s go. That professionalism really rubbed off on everybody.”

There was a time for Walker in 1988, coming off a great Double-A season, when he doubted he would ever play in the majors, much less be on the verge of becoming a hall of famer, joining Jenkins as the only Canadians.

Playing in the Mexican Winter League, Walker’s spikes slid from under him as he scored on a rain-soaked home plate. He tore three ligaments in his knee and was sent home to Maple Ridge to rehab on his own, yes, on his own. This was an era long before high performance. So he lay on the couch trying to figure out his future — amused, he told me later, as he listened to some dumb Expos PR guy who had never met him (that was me) talk about how well Walker was doing in rehab.

“I look back on that and how weird it was, because I was on my own,” Walker recalled. “There was nothing from the Montreal Expos. They didn’t say, ‘Here, we’ve got this rehab guy lined up. You’re going to do this. You’re going to do that for physiotherapy. I got sent home and that was it. I had to find my way. How do I make this thing stronger, better? I’ll never forget that. I didn’t know what the hell to do. It was just me figuring s--- out. I broke my parents’ sofa.” Somehow, Walker managed to regain his speed and mobility in time for a late-season recall in 1989. The next year, he was seventh in rookie of the year voting. Now when he walks into a room of young Canadians, as he did on Saturday, the attention of the juniors, the minor-leaguers and the major-leaguers is focused on a legend. But he remains blissfully unaware of his special place in Canadian baseball.

“That’s what makes Canadian baseball players special,” Walker observed. “Every one of us cheers for the other person, (we) pat each other on the back, wish the best on an individual and team level. So when I walk in that room, I feel like I’m walking into my (family). I don’t feel like I’m walking in above them and they’re looking up at me. It doesn’t enter my head, so I look in there and say hi to the ones I know, then say hi to the ones I know but I can’t remember their names.”

Ever the everyman, Walker will travel as a coach to the Pan Am Games qualifier in Brazil later this month. He loves doing it, but he doesn’t feel he’s a very good coach. The jury is out on that. But not on him as a player. So many others feel he will be a legitimate hall of famer, maybe as soon as next year.