Hall of Fame related news continues for us, as Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame has announced that six athletes and five builders will be entering their Hall.

The six new athletes are:

Jackie Barrett: Barrett won 13 Gold Medals at the Special Olympics World Summer Games.

Sonja Gaudet: Gaudet won three Gold Medals at the Paralympics (2006, 2010 & 2014) in Wheelchair Curling.

Diane Jones-Konihowski:  Competing as a Pentathlete, Jones-Konihowski won the Gold Medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and the 1975 and 1979 Pan American Games. 

Lorie Kane: From Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Kane won four tournaments on the LPGA Tour with seven other significant wins.  She was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2016.

Eric Lamaze and Hickstead:  Lamaze was a successful showjumper and with his horse, Hickstead won the Olympic Gold Medal in Individual Jumping in the 2008 Olympics and the Silver in Team Jumping.  Hickstead passed away in 2011, and Lamaze won a Bronze in Individual Jumping at the 2016 Olympics with his new horse, Derly Chin De Muze.

Steve Nash:  Nash played 18 seasons in the National Basketball Association playing for Phoenix, Dallas and the Los Angeles Lakers.  The Point Guard blossomed in the second half of his career, where he was a two-time MVP, three-time First Team All-NBA, eight-time All-Star and five-time Assists Leader.  Nash won the Lou Marsh Trophy in 2005, and the Lionel Conacher Award three times (2002, 2005 & 2006), and he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.

The five new builders are:

Duncan Campbell:  A teenage athlete from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Campbell broke his neck while diving at age 17, breaking his neck and paralyzing from the waist down.  Campbell co-invented “murderball”, which morphed into wheelchair rugby.  Nicknamed the “Quadfather”, Campbell was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. 

Sheldon Kennedy: Kennedy had a ten-year career in the National Hockey League.  Late in his career, he came forward with how he was sexually abused by his junior hockey coach. Following that admission, he raised awareness for sexual abuse victims, which included rollerblading across Canada. He was named to the Order of Hockey of Canada this year, and remains a leading advocate in fighting sexual abuse.

Judy Kent:  Kent was a past President of Commonwealth Games Canada.

Willie O’Ree:  O’Ree was the first black hockey player to reach the National Hockey League, participating in 41 Games with the Boston Bruins.  The trailblazer from Fredericton, New Brunswick was chosen for the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018.

Ross Powless:  Powless was a Mohawk lacrosse player of Six Nations, and he helped build the sport across the country.

Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame has been in existence since 1955, and is currently housed in Calgary, Alberta.  With this impending induction, the Hall will now house 681 Athletes and Builders.  Due to COVID-19, the induction gala that would normally happen this fall, has been postponed until 2021.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to congratulate the newest members of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

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.  We have a new one to unveil today, that of the Tampa Bay Rays. 

Entering the American League as an expansion team in 1998, the Rays were originally the “Devil Rays”, before dropping the demonic portion of their name in 2008.  Saddled in the ultra-competitive American League East, Tampa has managed to make the playoffs five times, including an American League Pennant in 2008.  They have yet to win the World Series to date. 

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.

Remember, this is ONLY based on what a player does on that particular team and not what he accomplished elsewhere and also note that we have placed an increased importance on the first two categories.

This list is updated up until the end of the 2019 Season.

The complete list can be found here, but as always we announce our top five in this article.  They are:

1. Evan Longoria

2. Carl Crawford

3. Ben Zobrist

4. David Price

5. Kevin Kiermaier

We will continue our adjustments on our existing lists and will continue developing our new lists.  

Look for our All-Time Top 50 Boston Red Sox coming next!

As always we thank you for your support.

A few days following the passing of Jerry Sloan, another Hall of Fame Coach passed away. Eddie Sutton, one of the most successful college coaches died at the age of 84.

A Head Coach at Division I for nearly four decades, Sutton took four different schools to the NCAA tournament.  As a player, Sutton played at Oklahoma State (1955-58), and following his playing days, transitioned into a role as an Assistant Coach for one year.  This would be Sutton’s only season as a subordinate, as he took over the reins at Tulsa Central High (1959-66).  Sutton’s teams were very good, and it garnered him a resume to take to the next level.  Sutton took over at Southern Idaho (1966-69), again doing well with an 84-14 record.  That would be the end of his JuCo career, as Division I came calling.

Creighton University signed Sutton to take over in 1969, and he took the Blue Jays to the NCAA Tournament in 1974.  With Creighton, he had an overall record of 82-50, a nice record for a good school but he landed a higher-profile role with Arkansas of the Southwest Conference.

He ran the Razorbacks program from 1974 to 1985, where Sutton would take them to the Tournament the last nine seasons.  With Arkansas, he was the Coach of the Year (1978), four-time SWC Coach of the Year, and in 1978, he brought the Razorbacks to the Final Four.  

Following Arkansas, Sutton took over the program at Kentucky, where he did well, winning his second AP College Coach of the Year (1986), but his end there ended in a booster scandal, forcing him to resign.  Sutton may have left the program in disgrace, but he would rebound two years later, as he went back to his alma mater, Oklahoma State in 1990.

Sutton’s tenure at Oklahoma State was the longest of his coaching career (1990-2006) and he was a three-time conference Coach of the Year.  The Cowboys would be the fourth team he brought to the dance, and Oklahoma State went to the Final Four twice under Sutton’s guidance.  He resigned in 2006, and came out of retirement briefly to coach the University of San Francisco on an interim basis for one year before he retired for good.

Sutton was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011 and he was chosen this year for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.  Sadly, that induction will now be posthumous.  He had an overall coaching record in college of 806-326.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the friends and family of Eddie Sutton.

Regular visitors of Notinhalloffame.com know that we are slowly working on the top 50 of every major team in the NHL, NBA, NFL and MLB. Once that is done, we intend to look at how each team honor their past players, coaches and executives.  Eventually, we plan to do that for the major colleges in the NCAA.  As such, it is news to us that the St. Louis Cardinals has announced that Tom Herr, John Tudor and Bill White were chosen for their franchise Hall of Fame.

Herr and Tudor were elected via the fan vote.  They beat out Keith Hernandez, Edgar Renteria, Steve Carlton, Lee Smith and Matt Morris to earn this honor.  White entered by the Red Ribbon Panel, which was created for players from an earlier era.

Tom Herr, Second Base (1979-88).  Herr was a member of the Cardinals 1982 World Series Championship Team, and he collected 1,021 for the franchise.  His best season was in 1985, where he was an All-Star, was fifth in MVP voting and batted .303 with 110 Runs Batted In.  While he was never a Gold Glove winner, he was a good fielder and had a Defensive bWAR of 4.0 for St. Louis.

John Tudor, Pitcher (1985-88 & 1990).  After the 1984 season, John Tudor was traded from the Pittsburgh Pirates to St. Louis, and the southpaw proceeded to have the best season of his career.  Tudor finished second in Cy Young voting after going 21-8 with a 1.93 ERA and a National League leading 0.938 WHIP.  Tudor was a huge reason that the Cardinals won the Pennant, and Tudor won his first two starts, losing the third against Kansas City.  Tudor had a 62-26 record for the Redbirds.

Bill White, First Base (1959-65 & 1969).  An All-Star in five of his years in St. Louis, White was a member of 1964 World Series Championship Teams.  Playing at First Base, White was considered one of the best defensive players at that position, and he won six of his seven Gold Gloves as a Cardinal.  White had two top-ten MVP finishes and as a Cardinal had 1,241 Hits, 140 Home Runs and a .298 Batting Average.

The Cardinals Hall of Fame came into existence in 2014, and has quickly become one of the best franchise-run Halls of Fame.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to the impending members of the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.