Carew Is Easy Pick for Hall : Baseball: Former Angel, Rollie Fingers both deserve passage into the sport’s shrine.

NEW YORK —  The Hall of Fame ballot mailed before the Dec. 31 deadline contained check marks after six names. At least two should be announced tonight as having won election to the shrine in Cooperstown, N.Y., whose curators have been behaving as if caution and ignorance were synonymous.

First things first. The 1991 ballot. First-timers Rod Carew and Rollie Fingers did not require a second glance. The knock on Carew was the same Wade Boggs hears today. Where are the RBI? Carew batted .328 over 19 seasons in an era when .220 hitters had million-dollar salaries. He was not a cleanup hitter. His job was to get on base, which he did with regularity and style. If you were the best pure hitter of your generation, which Carew was, you belong in the Hall of Fame. Fingers put glamour into a job considered unglamourous and made the last pitch of a game more ceremonial than any first pitch. Relief pitchers have Hoyt Wilhelm, elected in 1985, to thank for opening the Hall’s doors to them. Wilhelm was the George M. Cohan of relievers, Fingers the Fred Astaire.

Ferguson Jenkins got the third check. He won 20 six years in a row, five at Wrigley Field, the Bunker Hill for pitchers. He was once busted for drugs, but he paid his debt by serving a suspension without squawking and doing community service. That can no longer be held against him. The fourth check went to Bill Mazeroski, still the best second baseman I ever saw, with a slew of records to prove it (most double plays, season and career; most years leading league in assists, double plays and chances). He could hit a little bit, too. Ask Ralph Terry. Checks five and six went to a couple of long shots, third basemen Ron Santo and Ken Boyer, who epitomized the position as gritty fielders and run-producing hitters.

Voters may choose up to 10 players. The others on the 45-man ballot didn’t quite measure up. Sure, it’s subjective reasoning, but I spend more time on this than my kids do with letters to Santa. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America has handled its assignment responsibly. Of the 205 Hall of Famers, 77 were elected by the BBWAA, and I’ll defend the election of each (yes, even Rabbit Maranville).

And so, the Hall’s establishment of a 12-person eligibility committee is unwarranted, especially because the writers hold only two seats (Jack Lang and Phil Pepe, the latter replacing Frank Dolson, who resigned in protest). This committee, as Dolson asserted and Lang and Pepe have echoed, is nothing more than a smokescreen to make sure Pete Rose isn’t on the ballot next year when he would otherwise become eligible. Hall of Fame president Ed Stack is on record as saying he opposes the idea of a man suspended from the game being on the ballot.

An opinion expressed here on more than one occasion suggests Rose does not qualify for election because of the actions that led to his suspension, but I believe his name should be on the ballot for all writers to judge. Give me the opportunity not to vote for him. Denied that chance may mean the ballot mailed this year could be my last.

Luke Appling, Hall of Fame shortstop who died Thursday at 83, played his last season in the majors when I was 2 years old. More than 30 years later, he provided me and 30,000 others on a drizzly night in Washington with a delicious memory, the sight of a 75-year-old man hitting a home run. It was the first Cracker Jack Old-Timers Classic, in 1982 at RFK Stadium. The dimensions of the park, which housed the Senators before they split for Texas, had been changed, so a temporary left-field fence measuring 270 feet was the target for right-handed batters. Call it a cheapie, but the fence was the same distance for men 30 years younger than Appling. Only two others -- Mazeroski and Jim Fregosi -- hit balls over it. Such right-handed, Hall of Fame sluggers as Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, Ralph Kiner and Al Kaline failed to reach it. In the clubhouse afterward, Appling was also a hit. “I didn’t even look,” said the man who hit merely 45 home runs in 20 seasons with the White Sox. “Heck, I didn’t want to run around the bases all at once. I had sense enough to get out of there, did you notice?” Appling started the game at short, led off the bottom of the

first inning and was replaced by Fregosi when the American League team took the field. “Slapping at the ball was what I was good at,” Appling said. “It was 345 feet down the foul lines at Comiskey Park, so I was better off as a Punch-and-Judy hitter.”

Calls to abolish the designated-hitter rule are a waste of time, according to Texas Rangers’ Manager Bobby Valentine, who says, “It’ll always be around because to get a rule change, you need the vote of the Players Association. Look at the salaries. A lot of DHs are making big money. If you look at taking away a high-price salary from at least half of the 26 teams, the Players Association won’t thin k that’s a very good idea. It’s here to stay.”... Charlie Hough’s signing with the Chicago White Sox reunites him with Jeff Torborg. The Chicago manager caught Hough’s major league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1970.

Cecil Fielder, who led the major leagues not only in home runs (51) and RBI (132) but in strikeouts (182) in 1990, and Rob Deer, the AL record holder for strikeouts in a season (186 in 1987), will be on the same club this year. The Detroit Tigers envision a slew of home runs from this duo, but Fielder and Deer are more likely to break the major league mark for strikeouts by two teammates than home runs. Roger Maris (61) and Mickey Mantle (54) set the latter with the ’61 Yankees. Don’t expect it to fall soon. Strikeouts by two teammates, however, is well within the reach of Fielder and Deer. Had they been teammates last year, they would have tied the AL record and come within two of the major league mark. Deer whiffed 147 times for the Brewers. Add that to Fielder’s total, and the sum is 329, precisely the figure the Seattle Mariners’ Jim Presley (172) and Danny Tartabull (157) teamed for in ’87 to set the AL mark. The major league standard is 331 by Mike Schmidt (180) and Greg Luzinski (151) of the ’75 Philadelphia Phillies. Deer has been part of a 300-plus strikeout total by two teammates. In ‘87, he and Dale Sveum (133) combined for 319 strikeouts. Other teammate strikeout totals surpassing 300 were 322 by Pete Incaviglia (168) and Larry Parrish (154) of the ’87 Rangers; 314 by Reggie Jackson (171) and Rick Monday (143) of the ’68 Oakland A’s and 301 by Jose Canseco (175) and Dave Kingman (126) of the ’86 Athletics. In ‘61, by the way, Mantle (112) and Maris (67) combined for 179 strikeouts, which Fielder and Deer each surpassed by himself in a season. And when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig combined for 107 home runs with the ’27 Yankees (60 for Ruth, 47 for Gehrig), their combined strikeout total was 173.