January 6 should be a big day for Paul Molitor, Dennis Eckersley, and Ryne Sandberg. Last year's selections surprised a lot of people, myself included, who thought Sandberg should have been elected then. He's got tons of All-Star selections, tons of Gold Gloves, and an MVP award. Eckersley is considered a borderline prospect this year, which is also ridiculous to me. He was the dominant player at his position for an extended period, and he enjoyed success at another position as well. He also boasts a Cy Young award and a World Series ring.

The 1980's is considered a lesser decade, baseball-wise, for a couple of dubious reasons. Power numbers among the league leaders were down compared to previous decades (no player posted a 50-homer season), and today's emphasis on on-base percentage had yet to be established. For fans of my generation, however, the stars of the eighties were our childhood sports heroes. Players like Sandberg and Eckersley were able to grab our attention away from the NBA with Jordan, Magic, and Bird. These men need to be enshrined for their roles in getting baseball through a lull in popularity that it wasn't necessarily destined to overcome.

Incidentally, Molitor and his former teammate, Robin Yount, are the two Hall Of Fame-caliber players from that era that I was least excited about seeing play at the time.