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Growing up in the 1980's and following baseball in St. Louis there were really 3 megastars in the National League back then; Mike Schmidt, Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson. All three seemed to be well on there way to Cooperstown and yet only one of them (Schmidt) has gotten the call. So what about the man they called the "Hawk"? Here's the lowdown and why Dawson will be in ballot limbo for the remaining years left on his Hall of Fame ballot.

First, he played on mediocre teams. I am not saying it's fair but when your prime days are played for the Expos and Cubs you are not going to get a lot of attention on the national stage. Big market teams, unfairly or not, get the most attention, period. The Expos were near the bottom for most of Dawson's tenure as were the Cubs when Dawson arrived. Even the year Dawson won his MVP (1987) the Cubs were in dead last. Dawson never played in a World Series and the teams he played for only made it to the post season twice in 1981 and 1989 in which Dawson batted .186. The same mediocrity that has plagued Dawson is sure to haunt Tim Raines who also played in Montreal the majority of his career as shown when Raines only received 24.3% of the vote in 2008, his first year on the ballot.

Second, if you vote for Dawson you almost have to vote for all the other border candidates such as Jim Rice, Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris, Tommy John, etc and many Hall voters simply do not feel comfortable doing that. Dawson, for how good he was, never reached a milestone number that assured him a place in the Hall like 3,000 hits or 500 homeruns. He came close in both categories in collecting 2,774 hits and 438 homeruns but that is precisely why he has only come close to reaching the Hall of Fame.

Finally, some voters tally his stats over his career. If you take your calculator and plug in a couple of numbers you will find the following: An average of 132 hits, 76 RBIs and just under 21 home runs per year. This in the mind of many make Dawson a really, really, really good player but not a Hall of Famer. This is the same thing that they do to Blyleven which hurts his candidacy.

In ending, I don't think you can discount the other stats that Dawson put up: 1977 Rookie of the Year, 8 Gold Gloves, etc but I can see how voters don't check his box year after year. If I had a vote I am not sure what I would do either. The argument of letting Dawson in opens the flood gate to the other border players in a convincing one and shouldn't be discounted lightly. But upon saying that Dawson was as good as they came in his prime and the "Hawk" may have some traction in his favor as in the latest balloting Dawson received 65.9% of the vote up from his highest total ever which was 60.9% in 2006. Will the "Hawk" soar from great to elite? Only time will tell.

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