Fenway Got Fisk Into The Hall

I was playing around with some numbers on Fenway Park's advantage to hitters when I learned that the advantage Jim Rice enjoyed in Fenway was actually less than the advantage enjoyed by Carlton Fisk.

Rice certainly hit better in the Fens, with home field gaps of 43 batting average points, 44 on-base percentage points, and 87 slugging percentage points over his road games. But then look at Fisk. He batted .300 in Fenway and .259 everywhere else. He got on base at a .377 clip in Fenway, .329 everywhere else. And he slugged .532 at Fenway and just .433 everywhere else. Take his career averages everywhere except Fenway and extrapolate them out to his full career, and his numbers look a tad worse than Ted Simmons.

	G	H	XBH	RBI	AVG	OBP	SLG
Fisk	2499	2276	771	1312	.259	.329	.433
Simmons	2456	2472	778	1389	.285	.348	.437

Now, Simmons came nowhere near being elected to the Hall of Fame (he received 17 total votes in his one year on the ballot), while Pudge got in on his second try. Why is it that his Fenway numbers weren't counted against him, while Jim Rice's are? Someone please explain that to me.

Other Sox Notes:

• Where to begin? How about with the pleasant news that Juan Gonzalez decided to pack it in as soon as he heard about Wily Mo. Maybe I was a bit hasty in evaluating Pena's value. By getting rid of Gonzalez, he's providing benefits already...
• It looks like Pena will still be used as an outfielder, meaning that Dustan Mohr is the odd man out, but he played well enough this spring to have some trade value, so a nice signing by Theo and Gang nonetheless. This also means that Youkilis will still be the regular first baseman (at least as of now) and the Lowell will still be the starter at third, so I guess the front office isn't panicking about him yet. His bat has picked up in recent days anyway, so I guess there's hope...
• So Johnny Damon doesn't approve of the Arroyo trade, huh? So let me get this straight: I'm supposed to care about the opinion of a self-described "idiot" who told the world in his autobiography that he cheated on his wife then married a pole dancer before leaving town to our arch-rival over money? Ummm, I don't think I'll be losing any sleep over Johnny's sage assessment of Theo's moves. Here's a tip Johnny; Get over it. You asked for more money and years than anyone but New York thought you were worth, then settled for the same number of years the Sox offered without ever giving them the chance to match the money. You made that bed, so quit crying "disrespect" and go play for your new team.