A day before she was to be inducted with her daughter, Wynonna, to the Country Music Hall of Fame, Naomi Judd passed away.  While details remain vague, the official statement was that she died from mental illness, which she has been dealing with for a long time.  The Judds were going to do their “Final Tour” on September 30 on a ten-city tour.

First performing as a pair in the early 80s, they broke out quickly, charting their first number one Country Album in 1984, and putting out six albums overall, the first three going number one.  They would have 14 number ones, all in the 1980s, and they also won five Grammys.

They disbanded in 1991, following Naomi’s diagnosis with Hepatitis C, and Wynonna went on to have a very successful solo career.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the fans, family and friends of Naomi Judd.

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists out and we always consistently look to update them when we can and based on necessity.  As such, we are very happy to present our post-2021 revision of our top 50 Baltimore Orioles.

As for all of our top 50 players in baseball we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the American League. 

3.  Playoff accomplishments.

4.  Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

Last year, the Orioles had another abysmal season, and with no active players who are close to making the all-time Top 50, there were no changes, but we can now state that 2021 has been factored in.

As always, we present our top five.

1. Cal Ripken Jr.

2. Jim Palmer

3. Brooks Robinson

4. George Sisler

5. Eddie Murray

You can find the entire list here.

We welcome your input and comments and as always, we thank you for your support.

We can’t say that we are surprised.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will soon be announcing the newest members to their Cleveland-based institution, and Dolly Parton, who was nominated, late in the process respectively asked herself to be removed from consideration.  Realistically, when she made that request to the voters, many of the ballot were already in, or on its way, so whether that had any impact on the tally is suspect, but it did create a quandary of what the Rock Hall would do if she was chosen.  In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, she was asked by the host, Rachel Martin, what she would do if she was inducted:

“Well, I’ll accept gracefully. I will just say thanks and I will accept it because the fans vote, but when I said that, it was always my belief that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was for the people in rock music.”

While the vote is not decided by fans, but by past inductees, and industry professionals, we expected that she would find a way to gracefully accept if she was chosen, which we would not be surprised if she was.

Sometimes, shame works.

Less than a month ago, Dave Stewart was asked on Twitter by a fan when the Oakland Athletics planned to follow through on his retirement.  His response shocked A’s fans and Baseball alike:

I have no idea what the A’s are doing. At this point they can just retire the number with no celebration as far as I’m concerned. Come to the park and it will be on display with the other retired numbers. If you find out something before I do, please let me know?”

Oakland had announced in 2019 that the team would retire Stewart’s number in 2020, but COVID-19 but a squash to that.  No announcement took place over 2020 and 2021, and it appeared that the Athletics marketing team forgot all about Stewart.

Obviously, they mended fences, and on September 11, during Oakland’s game against the White Sox, Stewart’s #34 (which he shared with Rollie Fingers and was already retired) will be officially honored by the team.  Stewart becomes the sixth man to have his number retired, joining Fingers, Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson.

We are looking forward to seeing this ceremony, and we are happy to see Dave Stewart obtain this accolade.