Who he is: Harold Baines was surprised when a representative of the White Sox contacted him recently to tell him he’d made this year’s veterans' ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Before David Ortiz, Edgar Martinez or Frank Thomas came along, Baines might have been considered the best designated hitter in baseball history, finishing with 2,866 hits and a .289 lifetime batting average. He was less impressive by sabermetrics, which might have doomed his Hall of Fame bid with the writers, who never gave him more than 6.1 percent of the vote in his five years on the ballot.