Thome to L.A.

Our old friend Jim Thome has been traded again. The White Sox sent him to the Dodgers to rejoin his former teammate Manny Ramirez. We all remember how devastating those guys were when hitting back-to-back in their 20s. Now they're both in their late 30s, and both can still hit the ball hard, if maybe not quite as often as they used to. It will be bittersweet to see them together again, wearing something other than Tribe unis.

But consider this: Unless Thome is ever hit with steroid allegations, he's a sure-fire Hall of Famer. He spent 12 years in Cleveland, three years in Philadelphia, and now 3 1/2 in Chicago. I don't know how long he'll be in L.A., but it won't be 12 years. He'll have Chief Wahoo on his Hall plaque.

I know, that doesn't change the fact that he left for more money after the 2002 season because the Phillies offered him more money, after saying he wanted to do whatever he could to stay in Cleveland. But as I said at the time (to friends; I didn't have a blog then), you and I would most likely have done the exact same thing.

Thome is currently 12th on the all-time home run list, with 564. Home run totals in this era don't mean as much as they used to, but if he's been clean his whole career, that's a very impressive total. Among those ahead of him are Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro, all of whom are known to have taken performance-enhancing drugs. Manny is behind Thome on the career list, but his numbers carry that taint as well. The only other recent player ahead of Thome is Ken Griffey Jr. If both those guys are clean (which we don't know and may never), we probably have seriously undervalued their careers because of the era in which they played.

Regardless, I wish Thome well, and will always remember his time in Cleveland fondly. May he have success in Los Angeles.

Today in sports history -- Emmett Kelly

On this date 50 years ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced that former Brooklyn Dodgers mascot Emmett Kelly, the legendary clown, would not be moving with the team to the West Coast. Kelly had been a major attraction with the Barnum & Bailey Circus for a decade and a half, but left in a labor dispute and became an employee of the Dodgers for two years. He had been working full-time as a clown since 1931. You can find out more about Emmett Kelly at the Emmett Kelly Museum in his hometown of Sedan, Kansas.

Sedan is the largest city and county seat of Chautauqua County, with 1,342 people in the 2000 census. Of such places are great clowns made. As far as I know, no rival cities are named Hatchback, Station Wagon or Sport Utility Vehicle.

Today in sports history -- Steve Howe

Had he lived, today would have been Steve Howe's 50th birthday. Howe is sadly remembered as an extremely talented pitcher who couldn't stick in the major leagues because he couldn't get his drug habit under control.

Howe, the 1980 National League Rookie of the Year at age 22, helped the Dodgers win the World Series that year, saving 17 games that year. But it was all downhill from there. He first checked himself into a substance abuse clinic in 1983 -- which probably means he'd been struggling with it for at least a couple of years before then.

Howe's failure to stay off the drugs led to a major league record he'd surely rather not have had. He was suspended seven times in his career for drug abuse. Still, he had a pretty good career. He might have been one of the all-time greats, had he not had such a taste for cocaine. In 12 years with the Dodgers, Twins, Rangers and Yankees, Howe went 47-41 with a 3.03 ERA.

Howe was killed in a one-car crash in 2006. He had methamphetamine in his system. He was 48.

Today in sports history

Fifty years ago today, a car crash tragically paralyzed Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella, ending his baseball career at age 36. With intense physical therapy, he eventually regained the use of his arms and hands, but he never walked again. However, there's a silver lining to this story, as you will learn in a few moments, if you'll be kind enough to bear with me.

Campanella's career was cut short on both ends. He didn't get his first shot until age 26, in 1948, because of the color of his skin. But he was comparatively lucky in that regard; if he'd been 10 years older (as fellow black catcher Josh Gibson was), he might never have gotten his shot (as Gibson didn't). But he became the Brooklyn Dodgers' second black player, after Jackie Robinson. Given that he was playing in the Negro Leagues at age 15, it seems likely that Campy would have reached the majors several years earlier, had it not been for the poisonous and euphemistically named "gentleman's agreement" that barred black players from the majors.

On a side note, 2008 will mark the 62nd major-league season since Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Before that, the last black players to play major-league games were Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday Walker, who played catcher and outfield, respectively, for the now-defunct Toledo Blue Stockings of the now-defunct American Association in 1884 before racist pressure from the other teams' owners forced Toledo to drop them from the team. So the majors still haven't been integrated as long as they were segregated. What a dirty shame. I've often been bothered by the extent to which race is still an issue in American politics, but when you consider where we came from, it's hardly surprising.

So anyway, Campanella played 10 years for the Dodgers. They were moving to Los Angeles in 1958, so he'd have had to pack up and move out there. He was running a liquor store in Harlem, and was on his way home to Long Island from said store on January 28, 1958, when his car hit an icy patch, skidded into a telephone pole and overturned.

The Dodgers retained Campanella as a spring training instructor for the young catchers in the organization, and in 1959, he wrote (with a ghost writer) the inspirational "It's Good to Be Alive." The book chronicles his recovery from the crash that nearly took his life, and expresses his refusal to succumb to self-pity. I admit I've never read it, but I'd like to. Michael Landon, of "Little House" and "Highway to Heaven" fame, made his directorial debut in a TV-movie version of the book, in which Paul Winfield played Campy.

Roy Campanella died of a heart attack in 1993. He'd been named to the Hall of Fame in 1969 (he was first eligible in 1963; why it took the voters so long is beyond me), and the Dodgers retired his number 39 in 1972. He was posthumously named the 50th best player of all time by the Sporting News in 1999, and in 2006, the Dodgers created the Roy Campanella Award, given to the Dodger who best exemplifies his spirit and leadership. That same year, he was featured on a U.S. postage stamp, along with Mickey Mantle, Hank Greenberg and Mel Ott.

On this date

On January 23, 1962, Rapid Robert Feller — arguably the greatest Indian of them all — was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, along with another great player you might have heard of, a fellow known as Jackie Robinson. Feller got 150 out of 160 votes for the Hall, which means that somehow, 10 writers felt he wasn't worthy. The man won 266 major league games, and would undoubtedly have topped 300 if not for Hitler. Then again, Robinson only got 124 votes, which is just four more than the 75% needed to get in. That's an absolute embarrassment, and probably shows how much racism we still had in this country in 1962.

Fortunately, racism has been eradicated since then. Ahem.