Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, Eddie Murray, Frank Robinson, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Hoyt Wilhelm, Dave Winfield AND RICKEY HENDERSON are enshrined in baseball's Hall of Fame. All spent parts of their careers in Anaheim playing for the Angels. But none of the inducted members elected to be depicted wearing an Angels cap on their Hall of Fame plaque.
Will Vladimir Guerrero be the Angels' first?
Having stroked two homers–including the 400th of his career–in the Halos' 8-7 win over Tampa Bay at the Big A Monday night, Vlady could hang up his cleats today and be a lock for Cooperstown, blogs Stan McNeil of The Sporting News.
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With two homers Monday night, Guerrero joined some special company. He became only the sixth player to reach 400 home runs with a batting average better than .320. The other five already are in Cooperstown: Babe Ruth, Jimme Foxx, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig and Stan Musial.
Vlady spent his first eight seasons with Montreal and this is only his sixth with the Angels. The physical abuse to his body has taken its toll, he's in obvious decline and there's no guarantee he'll play as long with the Halos.
But besides the 400 homers, Guerrero picked up a World Series ring in Anaheim. Unless another player voted into the Hall of Fame before him chooses to be represented as an Angel, the mad swinger seems poised to become Anaheim's first inductee.
Well, Los Angeles of Anaheim's anyway.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.