Baseball Musing has a nice little debate an some links on whether Dale Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame.  It's difficult for me to be objective about this.  I was born in 1972 and came of age in my awareness of baseball in Atlanta right as Murphy was hitting his stride.  It is difficult for someone who wasn't a boy in the South in the 1980's to understand just how much we loved him.  He was not only one of the best players in the game, but a complete class act.  A model citizen.  In a day when other stars were admitting to having cocaine vials in their uniforms, Murphy was a role model.

Personally, I would be fine with him going into the Hall on his peak.  And I'm fine with him being left out because of his collapse.  But to even talk about him in the same breath as Dawson or Rice is a bit silly.  Murphy was not only a better player than either of them, he was a better man.