Sports media BS about Andre Dawson

I flipped over to SportsCenter for about a minute this morning; just enough time to hear Tim Kurkjian talking about Andre Dawson. Dawson will enter the Hall of Fame today, and Kurkjian gave a list of his accomplishments, which sound pretty Hall-worthy.

But I have to call BS on this: he also said Tony Gwynn said Dawson was “as good as any player in our league for many years.”

What does that mean? Does it mean Gwynn thinks Dawson was the best player in the National League? If you don’t think that’s what it means, you need to read the words again. It means that Dawson was either the best player or in a tie for that status.

Yet Gwynn, at least according to Kurkjian, didn’t say “Dawson was the best player in our league.” Why not? Wasn’t he? Was he better than his contemporaries? Ryne Sandberg? Joe Morgan? Mike Schmidt? Mike Schmidt! Was Dawson really as good as Mike Schimidt? Better?

Absurd. Dawson was not as good as Mike Schmidt. So he was not “as good as any player in our league.” All you have to do is name one player to see that.

But nobody questions the soft statement. Had Gwynn said Dawson was “the best player in our league,” BS detectors would have gone off all over the ESPN-watching country. But this soft language goes undetected.

It goes to show the following: people need to pay closer attention to the words they use and the words they hear. There’s very little honesty and too much political correctness. Andre Dawson will be inducted into the Hall of Fame today. He was elected fair and square. That doesn’t make him the best player of his generation in the National League. He wasn’t.