Kuzul

“Road trippin’, road trippin’, we’re not happy unless we’re road trippin’.”

The above should be the official anthem for any adventurous sports fanatic.

Sure, spectating at local games is a delight, but there’s a whole nation out there filled with wildly entertaining and historically significant venues that dot the landscape from coast-to-coast and everywhere in-between.

So get out there and find them. But before departure, use the following as your guide.

There are any number of great sports road trip destinations that await you, but we had to draw the line somewhere.

For us, 100 seemed like a nice, round number, including 10 apiece from 10 distinct regions around the U.S.

[Getting a little sick of this intro? Yeah, me too. Don’t worry, we’re almost through.]

The second-to-last installment in our trip across the nation to find the ultimate sports road trip destinations brings us to the Northeast, where baseball cathedrals—both new and old—dominate.

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The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame is getting three new members.

It was announced Wednesday that Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar each received votes from the required 75 percent of the ballots from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to be elected into the Hall of Fame, joining long-time general manager Pat Gillick, who was elected by the Veterans Committee last month.

For Blyleven, who amassed 287 wins, 3,701 strikeouts and a 3.31 ERA over his 23-year career as a major league starter with six different franchises, it was a long time coming.

Unsuccessful in his first 13 years of eligibility, Blyleven missed out by five votes last year, but received votes on 79.7 percent of ballots this time around. He is the first starting pitcher to be elected since Nolan Ryan in 1999.

Blyleven is fifth all-time on baseball’s strikeout list, and his 60 shutouts are ninth.

“It’s been 14 years of praying and waiting,” Blyleven told news services in a conference call. “I’d like to thank the Baseball Writers of America for, I’d like to say, finally getting it right.”

The wait was a bit less excruciating for Alomar, who gets in after being eligible for two years.

Alomar, a 12-time All-Star, received 90 percent of the vote after failing to be elected a year ago, perceivably because of his infamous incident with John Hirschbeck in 1996, when Alomar spat in the face of the former major league umpire.

A .309 career hitter, Alomar totaled 2,724 hits and 474 stolen bases in his 17 seasons, and his 10 Gold Gloves are the most of any second baseman in history. He also won two World Series rings in 1992 and ’93 with the Toronto Blue Jays.

“Robbie deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” said Gillick, who won two of his three world titles as Alomar’s general manager in Toronto. “He’s the best second baseman I have ever seen. Robbie could do it all.”

The 73-year-old Gillick served as the general manager of the Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners and, most recently, Philadelphia Phillies, where he won the last of his world championships in 2008.

Gillick is the 32^nd executive to be elected, but only the fourth credited with being a team architect, according to the Hall of Fame.

The three, who will be inducted on July 24, are all well deserving, and voters absolutely made the right call, if only a decade or so late on sending Blyleven through.

But the writers didn’t smile upon everybody.

Of the 27 names involved in the voting, only four were on 50 percent or more of the writers’ ballots, including several famous—or infamous—players.

Rafael Palmeiro, who along with Eddie Murray and Hank Aaron is the only player with 500 home runs and 3,000 hits in a career, received just 11 percent of the votes. He is joined by fellow slugger Mark McGwire, who received 19.8 percent of the votes, the lowest mark of his five times on the ballot.

Palmeiro and McGwire, who are 12^th and 10^th, respectively, on baseball’s all-time home run list, are presumed to be suffering in Hall balloting because of their link to steroid use.

And the same may be said of former Houston first baseman Jeff Bagwell, who has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, but received only 41.7 percent of votes in his first year of eligibility.

“I’m so sick and tired of all the steroids crap, it’s messed up my whole thinking on the subject…” Bagwell admitted to ESPN.com. “So much has gone on in the last eight or nine years, it’s kind of taken some of the valor off it for me.

“If I ever do get to the Hall of Fame and there are 40 guys sitting behind me thinking, ‘He took steroids,’ then it’s not even worth it to me. I don’t know if that sounds stupid. But it’s how I feel in a nutshell.”

Other big names on the ballot included Barry Larkin, who finished closest to Blyleven with 62 percent of votes, Jack Morris (53.5), Lee Smith (45.3), Tim Raines (37.5), Edgar Martinez (32.9), Alan Trammell (24.3), Larry Walker (20.3) and Fred McGriff (17.9).

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Cliff Lee is officially a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. The papers have been signed and sealed. Now it’s up to Lee to deliver.

The organization is counting on him to do just that, to the tune of a cool $120 million.

No pressure though, Mr. Lee. Vegas and baseball enthusiasts everywhere only expect you and Phillies to turn the National League into your own personal playground en route to a World Series appearance.

And if you don’t win a title, don’t sweat it. There will be plenty of blame to travel up and down the payroll, which, as of this moment, exceeds $170 million.

But never mind the Series. Before you or any other of the New Four Horsemen hurls a ball plateward this season, there are some questions to answer.

Do the Phillies Now Own One of the Best Rotations of All Time?

If you believe in the power of sabremetrics, then yes.

According Sports Illustrated’s Cliff Corcoran, who accumulated 2011 statistics for each of Philadelphia’s Big Four using Baseball Prospectus’ Support Neutral Lineup-adjusted Value Above Replacement (SNLVAR) — geez, what a mouthful — the quartet of Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels, and Roy Oswalt compares favorably with some of history’s best pitching foursomes.

Corcoran’s projections predict that in 2011, the Big Four will be worth 26.6 wins above replacement, a figure that compares favorably to what the numbers indicate are the two best pitching rotations since 1954: the 1966 Dodgers and 1997 Braves.

[Side note: For those not up-to-date on their scientific baseball lexicon, the WAR formula assesses how many wins a player is worth over the course of a season.]

That Dodger rotation, which included three future Hall of Famers among the foursome of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Claude Osteen, and Don Sutton, registered 32.5 wins above replacement. The Braves rotation, with the unforgettable trio of Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine, was fraction behind at 32.4.

You make the call. Does the Phillies rotation deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the best of all time?

My answer is no, at least until they prove the numbers are accurate.

How Many Runs Will Lee and Co. Require?

You would think not many. None of the Big Four has a career ERA over 3.85. In fact, in 37 combined years of major league service, there have been only five instances in which any of them recorded an ERA higher than 4.32 in a given season.

The next logical question is, can the explosive Philadelphia offense, which finished 2009 ranked seventh in runs scored, get the job done more often than not?

When you average together the career ERAs of Lee, Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt, the result is 3.47. In other words, all the Phillies have to do is score four runs a game and they’ll win 130 games in 2011, right?

Easier said than done.

I went into minor detail yesterday about the possible pitfalls that may await the Philadelphia lineup in the absence of Jayson Werth, who was either first or second on the team in nearly every major statistical category last season.

Who picks up the slack? Maybe Domonic Brown, but the 23-year-old only has 62 career at-bats and may not be ready to provide the Phillies with a legitimate threat either in front of or behind Ryan Howard.

Another thing to keep in mind: assuming Brown becomes a mainstay in the place of Werth, the average age of the Phillies lineup this season is nearly 32 years of age. As many teams are trending younger to save cash, Philadelphia will be one of baseball’s older teams. Can they support the pitching staff on a consistent basis over a 162-game season?

Is the Contract Too Long?

Lee signed a deal that guarantees him $120 million over the next five seasons. It also includes a vesting option worth an additional $27.5 million for 2016. Of the three teams lobbying for Lee, Philadelphia was the only one whose offer didn’t include guaranteed money for six seasons; the Yankees offered two deals, one of which guaranteed seven years, while Rangers offered a seventh year as a vesting option.

Lee took the shortest deal. Still, is his new contract too lengthy? Assuming Lee pitches either 200 innings in 2010 or 400 innings over the course of the 2014-15 seasons, and his option vests, he’ll be pitching during the back end of his final season at age 38.

True, left handers generally last longer than right handers, but what kind of production justifies paying that sort of money to a 38 year old Lee, who would be in his 15^th season in 2016?

I suppose that’s why the deal also includes a buyout, valued at a slightly smaller $12.5 million.

Also consider that of the 52 free agent pitchers that have signed deals of four years or more since 1990, only five have averaged 30-plus starts and posted an ERA 20 percent better than the league average, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

If Not No. 1, Then Where?

There’s more than one numbers game involving Lee in Philadelphia, the first of which has to do with the terms of his contract. The other is which slot of the rotation he fills: No. 1 or No. 2?

In all fairness to Roy Halladay and his recent historical heroics last season, he should be the undisputed ace of the staff. He has proven more consistently over the course of his career that he is deserving of that role. But disregarding the whole right-left-right-left setup, wouldn’t Oswalt, whose career ERA of 3.18 trumps Lee’s 3.85, have just as much a right to that second spot? And what about Hamels, whose 3.53 career ERA would fit nicely in the No. 3 hole?

I suppose in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t matter, but isn’t $20 million just a tad too much to be paying a pitcher that, statistically, is only your rotation’s fourth-best performer?

Does Lee Really Make the Phillies Better?

There’s something to be said for team chemistry. It doesn’t necessarily come in the form of dollars and cents or home runs and on-base percentage. And some managers will tell you they’d rather have a second-tier player who meshes well with the remainder of the locker room than a superstar whose antics threaten to tear at the fabric of the team.

Often times, camaraderie trumps talent. Just ask the 2008 Yankees, who finished third in the AL East and missed the playoffs despite a payroll that neared $210 million.

I’m not insinuating that Lee has been or will be a destructive force. He clearly made the Phillies better in 2009, and there’s no reason to believe his likeable character won’t gel with his teammates this time around.

But there are no promises. Perhaps more in baseball than in any other professional sport, teams have to coalesce into a single, cohesive unit from season to season in order to be successful.

The Phillies had that make up each of the past three seasons. It was one of the biggest driving forces behind their success, and maybe the main reason why they came so close to becoming the first NL team to win three consecutive pennants since the St. Louis Cardinals of the 1940s.

The Phillies may ultimately win 100-plus games with Lee on the roster for a full season. But as the dog days of August give way to playoff races in September, will the Phillies—who welcome back roughly the same cast of characters as in recent seasons—have the right chemistry to propel them into October?

Or will the addition of one single player, even one of Lee’s modesty, be enough to derail what has been the most successful run in team history?  

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Cliff Lee is a happy man.

Forget the fact he swindled himself out of more than $30 million to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies. Okay, maybe not swindled, because Lee voluntarily left that money on the table.

He knew what he was doing. He knew he’d be the most at peace in Philadelphia. His trial run there in 2009 — despite the fact the Phillies failed to sign him that time around — was nothing short of magical.

So, it is with shallower pockets but a lighter heart that Lee comes to Philadelphia, providing an already intimidating gang of starters with an additional bully.

Watch out, National League East: Lee’s signing may have been the ultimate kill shot. Sorry, Atlanta Braves: the division was previously a table for two, and you’ve just been asked to leave.

Not only are the Phillies unanimous favorites to win the East, odds makers in Vegas have been influenced by the Lee deal, adjusting Philadelphia’s chances of winning it all from 5-1 to 5-2 overnight — the best in baseball ahead of the Yankees.

The quartet of Lee, Cole Hamels, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt is unrivaled in baseball: Thirteen All-Star appearances. A combined record of 481-275 and an aggregate ERA of 3.47. Two World Series titles. One perfect game. One no-hitter.

All that and at an average age of 30 — not exactly youthful in baseball years, but not yet geriatric.

The Phillies should be dominant on the mound, just as they should be proficient at the plate — even sans Jayson Werth. Though, it appears, they won’t have to score very much.

On paper, Philadelphia has the look of a 100-win team — easy. By locking up Lee, the Phillies have made the unrealistic prospect of winning four out of every five games somewhat realistic. Based on preseason projections and expectations alone, their backs will be fitted for targets before a pitch is even thrown.

Maybe that’s why the Phillies will disappoint in 2011.

Suppose they win 106 games during the regular season, breeze through the NLDS and NLCS, but come one run short of a world title. Is that, then, considered a disappointment? Some would say yes.

What if Halladay doesn’t even sniff either a perfect game or a no-hitter in 2011, and both Hamels and Oswalt, who has the best career ERA (3.18) of the four, perform like your average third and fourth starters? Does that constitute an underachieving staff?

And assume Lee finishes a hair below his numbers from a season ago (12-9, 3.18), or even those from his first go-around in Philly (3.39 in 12 starts). Will the Phillies’ shrewdness and $120 million sneak attack against the Yankees and Rangers be for naught?

No, but the goals that were set the moment Lee signed on the dotted line say otherwise.

The Phillies now have upwards of $170 million dedicated to the 2011 payroll, including more than $60 million tied up in the Big Four of Lee, Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt. Even if starter Joe Blanton, as rumors suggest, is dealt to create space, they would still leapfrog the Red Sox for the second-highest payroll in the majors.

With that sort of cash flying around, isn’t it only reasonable to expect big, big things from Philadelphia this season, much like we do annually from the Yankees, who hand out the game’s most exorbitant paychecks?

Again, most people would say yes.

And what of the offense? There’s a good chance the lineup won’t operate on auto-pilot as often as it did with Werth, who at times was like Robin to Ryan Howard’s Batman, leading the team in games played, runs, walks, doubles, and on-base percentage, and finishing second in home runs, RBI, and hits.

Already under the microscope, much like the pitching staff, how much pressure will be applied to the Phillies’ hitters if they fail to perform consistently? After all, you can’t hold down the opposition’s offense every night.

Philadelphia has the ingredients available for a dream season. But if things don’t go exactly according to plan, which will likely be nothing less than a World Series title, the 2011 campaign may be a recipe for disaster.

How will Lee feel then?

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com