The first-ballot Hall-of-Famers appear in alphabetical order.

Have you ever seen a major league player as bad as Kimothy Batiste? Maybe Vic Harris, but I don't want to commit myself on this one. Batiste was wretched. He started out just dandy: a pinch-homer in his first at-bat as a Giant, on Opening Day. His (and the Giants') next pinch-homer came in August, against the Dodgers. The Giants lost both of these games, plus 92 others, which tells you that even on the rare occasions when Batiste did something good, it was to no avail. (For more on Batiste, see last year's August notes.

What I find funny is that on the 1993 National League Champion Phillies, Batiste was Dave Hollins' defensive replacement at third base -- apparently on the hopelessly faulty premise that anybody who's this bad a hitter must be a marvelous fielder. When he played for the Giants, I honestly never expected -- as I've said before -- that he'd successfully field a ground ball and throw it to first for an out; I actually expected some sort of failure on every single ball hit his way. (That's more or less how I view Glenallen Hill these days.)

In 658 major league at-bats, Batiste managed a .234 average with 10 home runs, 59 runs scored, and 64 runs batted in. Of course, these numbers aren't absolutely awful by themselves, but stick them next to 120 strikeouts (a .182 strikeout average) and 14 walks, not to mention 4 of 10 in stolen base attempts -- and, let's not forget, a .318 slugging percentage and .252 on-base percentage -- you have One Big Tweak. And bear in mind that this includes his good year, 1993, when he hit .282 with five dingers in 156 at-bats, with a .436 slugging percentage.

Even before coming to the Giants as a Rule 5 draftee before the 1996 season, he'd long established an appallingly bad defensive reputation, but once he was in orange and black, the man set new standards. In 72 chances as a third baseman, he made 11 errors -- okay, so the upside is that my expectations of his failure were right only 15 percent of the time. Amazingly, he handled 15 error-free chances as a shortstop. But these numbers don't take into account the foul pops he didn't get to, or the easy ground balls he never managed even to touch. This man is simply and clearly the worst defensive ballplayer I've ever seen, and probably one of the 10 worst who ever played in the major leagues.

He hit his nadir as a Giant -- which should go without saying -- by managing a .208 average with three home runs in 130 at-bats as a "power threat off the bench." He legged out six doubles, too, for a .323 slugging percentage, and he walked five whole times (a career high), leading to a .237 OBP. Most appalling were his strikeouts: 33 (for a strikeout average of .254). That number surprises me -- I'd have guessed at least twice that, because as a pinch-hitter, he had to have been good for at least twice that many. (In 1994, he walked once and struck out 32 times in 209 at-bats for the Phillies.)

One can only wonder what controlled substance was ingested by the pileful in the Giants' front office, but whatever it was led them to the aforementioned Rule 5 draft of Batiste from the Orioles' organization. (The Orioles were never retarded enough to bring him up to the big club in 1995.) Somehow Batiste made the Opening Day roster -- by hitting during spring training. (Now, how many awful ballplayers make clubs by putting on a good show in Arizona or Florida -- before the pitching starts to come around?) The Giants had to keep Batiste on their 25-man roster all season, or risk losing him back to the Orioles at half the waiver price. And God knows the Giants tried to do that. Apparently the Orioles literally snorted with laughter when the Giants attempted to tender his contract back to them.

Batiste was demoted to Phoenix at least three times. Now, the man was out of options, meaning that he would need to clear waivers before being able to report to the minor league club. "Oh, no!" somebody in the Giants' front office probably thought. "Gosh, if we put him on waivers, somebody might snap him up! Whatever shall we do?" But they did it anyway, and held their breath -- and Batiste cleared. The other teams were always too busy laughing to claim him. A degree in rocket science is not required to realize that if a man can clear waivers multiple times in one season, you probably don't want him on your club. The Giants didn't figure it out, though, till it was far too late.

I don't know if he's playing in some other hapless team's chain now. For the sake of all other teams but the Dodgers, I hope not. Kim Batiste was an appalling ballplayer and a no-doubt first-balloter. The vote to place him in the Giants Tweaks' Hall of Fame was unanimous, and scrap iron is already being melted for a statue in his honor. The metal will be used to construct Batiste himself, his uniform, etc. His bat will be fashioned from Swiss cheese. For his glove, we plan to use his glove.

Call us insane. We actually believed that Jose Bautista might have been a player for the San Francisco Giants after having acquitted himself reasonably well for the Orioles and Cubs. Actually, that's not entirely true. He broke in with a 6-15 record and a 4.30 ERA as a starter in 1988. He never really got any better with the O's, and after 1991 he was dust. The Cubs took a flyer on him in 1993, and as a swing-man he went 10-3 with an ERA of 2.82, pitching in Wrigley Field for a living.

His ERA went up a run the next year, so naturally the Giants took a chance on him and signed him as a free agent, even though all he'd ever done to impress Bob Quinn was pitch well against the Giants (which rather explains guys like Mark Portugal, too).

The rest is history: Six starts, 46 relief appearances, a 3-8 record with an ERA of 6.44; 24 home runs in 100-2/3 innings; that, coupled with giving up one more hit per nine innings than the previous year -- 10.73 in '95, 9.74 in '94, and 8.46 in '93, a pattern which should have suggested the following to the Giants: Don't sign this goofball for 1996.

And they didn't. They waived him. However, he cleared waivers, because no other team could possibly have been stupid enough to sign him, so the Giants signed him to a minor league deal. He pitched well at Phoenix, and soon enough he was back in orange and black. His ERA, in an amazingly pitching-poor year for the Giants, was a comparatively microscopic 3.36 -- but he still gave up 10 home runs in 69-2/3 innings and reverted to his previous pattern of giving up home runs when that was exactly what the Giants needed not to have happen.

Unfortunately, some strange circulatory problem put Bautista on the disabled list for much of the last part of the season, but I suspect that if he hadn't had this problem, he'd have had typical on-field problems, which is why his numbers look relatively good.

He recovered enough to go to Detroit and be released by the Tigers, so I'm glad that his physical problem doesn't seem serious. However, he's still a charter member of the Giants Tweaks' Hall-of-Fame, and in his honor, I offer the following evocative sound effects:

• Whack!
• Boom!
• Pow!
• Kkkkhhh!
• Doont!

As I said in "My Giants, My Tweaks", Dave and I were kidding when we suggested that the Giants might Bob Knepper to the Astros for Enos Cabell. Surely that could never happen -- it'd be too stupid. But lo and behold, not long afterward, it did.

I also pointed out in that piece that just before the trade, Cabell hit .276 with two home runs and 55 RBIs, playing third base every day. He had shown himself to be an awful fielder at third and first. With the Giants -- coming from the Astrodome, mind you -- he hit .255 with two home runs and 36 RBIs, mostly as a first baseman. He walked five times as often as he struck out. He was an appalling waste of money and the fans' ardor. Happily, he only spent one season here, as we traded him to Detroit for Champ Summers. He wound up back in Houston, as Knepper's teammate.

Last I heard about him, he did play-by-play during a Giants game for one inning in 1993. That was the year the Giants played Musical Broadcasters with Hank Greenwald, who never knew if his partner for the evening would be Ted Robinson, Barry "Running Track" Tompkins," Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, Bob Costas, Vida Blue, Alicia Silverstone, or Enos Cabell.

Cabell, thankfully, had a very quick inning -- "thankfully" because not only did he sound as though he'd never announced before, but he also sounded horribly inarticulate. Greenwald said last year, though, that Cabell just happened to be in the booth with him at the time; Hank had said, "Wanna try it?" and before Cabell could say no, Hank was out the door for a smoke or a burger or something. Cabell evidently said later that he'd never been so scared in his life. "And we never saw him again," Hank said.

That alone should land Cabell in the Giants Tweaks' Hall of Fame, but factor in his actual on-field performance, and you've got the Enos Cabell Wing, which houses the Enos Cabell Snack Shack, featuring Steak-ummm sandwiches, Jujy Fruits, and Cragmont cream soda. (Dave won't mind this part, as he actually likes cream soda.)

What? Mark Davis won a Cy Young Award! How can he be in the Giants Tweaks' Hall of Fame, let alone a charter member? Sure, the guy had basically two good years, but they were real good, so how does he merit placement here?

First, how can you not merit consideration after a 5-17, 5.36 year in 1984? The next year, he began the pattern that clearly marked him as a tweak rather than merely as a bad pitcher: He'd go out there and put up decent ERAs -- 3.54 in 1985, 2.99 in 1986 -- and he'd have a strikeout-to-walk ratio of three or four to one, but he tended to come into games in which the Giants were losing, but within reach. Then he'd give up a home run, often with someone else's runners on base, and then he'd start striking out batters and looking like a world-beater -- never mind that the game was now out of reach. (Jeff Robinson did this from the right side, too.)

Plus, he was well known to fans as one of the Giants' standard head-cases. Now, we don't know if he really was one, but that was the perception among fans, and that's good enough for us.

Of course, he went to the Padres in the 1987 deal that brought us Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky, and Craig Lefferts, and we won two division titles in three years. Meanwhile, Davis put up a 2.99 ERA with 28 saves in 1988 and a 1.85 ERA with 44 saves in 1989 -- then tested the free-agent market. The Royals, who probably lost 100,000 fans as a result, signed him to a tasty deal, only to watch him go 2-7 with 6 saves and a 5.11 ERA. In fact, his ERA was 5.31 for the Royals from 1990 through part of 1992, when they finally canned him (and started writing his bio plaque for the Royals Tweaks' Hall of Fame). From there he went to the Braves, Phillies (his original team), and Padres again, before an 8.82 ERA earned him a trip home in 1994. I think he recently signed with the Devil Rays.

I think Mark Davis' performance as a San Francisco Giant can be best characterized by what Dave and I usually said whenever he entered a ballgame: "Oh, no, not him!"

Possibly the number-one tip-off about Vic Harris' tweakdom is that his middle name is Lanier, and we know what to expect from people in Giants uniforms named Lanier.

In Harris' first full year, with the Texas Rangers, he managed a .249 average with 8 home runs, 71 runs scored, 44 RBIs, 14 doubles, 7 triples, 13 steals, and even 55 walks. These are hardly spectacular numbers, but they're not awful, and they might even portent better things to come. A better portent, though, was probably the 16 double plays into which he hit.

For the Cubs over the next two years, his OPS -- his on-base percentage plus his slugging percentage -- was .526. His batting averages were .195 and .179. He wound up in St. Louis, where he rebounded to .228 with an OPS of .584 in 97 games.

I don't know much about the "new crop" of fielding statistics, but I am assured that a negative number in the "Fielding Runs" column is bad. In his "good" season at Texas, infielder-outfielder Vic Harris had/scored/made/garnered 2 fielding runs, after zero the year before. These are his high-water marks. With Chicago, it was -17 and -2, and -8 with the Cardinals. His fielding percentages (to which I pay little attention) were generally abysmally low.

So naturally the Giants just had to have him. As a "utility man" in 1977 he managed to hit .261 (his career high) with 12 doubles and a pair of home runs in 169 at-bats, for a slugging percentage of .370, which was pretty amazing, really. So in violation of one of my many beliefs -- the one that says that if you have a marginal player who plays over his head this year, get rid of him before next year, because he'll return to form, at best -- the Giants kept him.

They were rewarded with a .150 season, with a .220 slugging percentage and a .234 OBP. The Giants insisted in playing him in 22 games at shortstop -- twice as many as he'd ever played before -- and were rewarded with a -6 fielding-run performance. Stats aside, Harris couldn't be trusted to handle simple things like popups. It was not unheard of for Dave or I, while playing catch, to say, "Throw me a popup," and then, while it was in flight, to suddenly shout, "Vic Harris," and then drop the ball spectacularly.

For being Kim Batiste before Batiste had the chance, Vic Harris earns a bust in the Giants Tweaks' Hall of Fame, in keeping with his having been such a bust as a Giant. Set into the pedestal of the bust will be a video monitor that will play his fielding "highlights" endlessly.

Tragically, Salomon Torres fell one vote short of the two required to grant him Giants Tweaks' Hall-of-Fame Status. Buck up, Salomon -- maybe next year.

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