Give to a Very Good cause

Broadway has its “angels,” folks who love the theater and are willing to contribute bug bucks to see their name in the program or merely for the satisfaction of knowing they’ve helped the arts.

Here’s your chance (on a much more affordable scale) to celebrate that genre of ballplayers who are in a kind of limbo: way too good to be considered average, not quite good enough to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

Baseball writers Sky Kalkman and Marc Normandin are leading an effort to give these athletes their due in a digital book, The Hall of Very Good (not to be confused with the website for The Hall of Very Good).

They’re trying to raise $3,000 via Kickstarter to fund the project.

From the Kickstarter.com project page:

The Hall of Very Good is an ebook meant to celebrate the careers of those who are not celebrated. It’s not a book meant to reopen arguments about who does and does not deserve Hall of Fame enshrinement; rather, it’s meant to remember those who, failing entrance into Cooperstown, will unfairly be lost to history. It’s for the players we grew up rooting for, the ones whose best years led to flags and memories that will fly together forever. Players like Bret Saberhagen, Will Clark, Dwight Evans, Tim Salmon, Wilbur Wood, Orel Hershiser, and literally hundreds of others.

Among the writers involved in THOVG are Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, Will Leitch, Josh Wilker, Emma Span, and many others.

You can pledge as little as a dollar, but anything over $10 earns “rewards,” such as copies of the book, recognition within its pages, etc. If they don’t meet their goal by the deadline — March 24 — you get your money back. I’ll be making my pledge as soon as I move some money into my Paypal.

Watch the video and see if you can’t skip a cup of coffee to become a literary angel. I’m sure Tim Salmon would approve.