Andy Barr: “When you think about U.S. Senator Jim Bunning and when you think about his remarkable baseball career before politics…”

“When you think about U.S. Senator Jim Bunning and when you think about his remarkable baseball career before politics, Jim Bunning could have gone anywhere and he could have done anything, but it is important to remember that those early days during his baseball career--and I will have to recount a story that was in that tribute that Jim Host wrote about the Hall of Famer Jim Bunning. And he said that, after his career had ended, it had been about 15 years, and he had not yet been named to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the baseball writers, though when he retired, he was second in strikeouts to the famed Walter Johnson, he had won 100 games in both leagues, he had a perfect game in one of those leagues, and he had a no-hitter in the other league. He had never pitched for a pennant winner. A prominent sportswriter told me, quoting Jim Host, that the writers would have never elected him because he never developed relationships with most of them. But this wrong was corrected the first year that the old- timers committee of the Hall could vote on him. Probably his greatest thrill, other than the birth of his nine children, was the call he got from Ted Williams and others saying they were correcting a tragic wrong by voting Jim Bunning into the Hall of Fame. When he called Jim Host to tell him the news, his voice was filled with emotion unlike any that he had heard from him before.…”