Mel Hall arrested
The Indians of my earliest years were not a great bunch of players. There was the occasional star (Joe Carter, Julio Franco) biding his time at Municipal Stadium until his contract ran out or he was traded, but for the most part, the Indians were full of mediocre players making up a less than mediocre team.
Mel Hall was somewhat better than most of the players the Indians had, which is to say he was somewhat better than average -- at the plate, anyway.
Since he retired more than a decade ago, he's become a name from the Indians' past. If I ranked him on the Indians index of my lifetime, he'd be somewhere above Terry Francona and somewhere below Tony Bernazard.
Still, Hall did have an impact with the Indians that stretched far beyond the end of his own career. The Tribe dealt the outfielder in 1989 to the Yankees for backup catcher Joel Skinner. The trade would be unremarkable except for the fact that Skinner has never left the Indians. After injuries forced his retirement in 1991, Skinner became a coach and then manager in the Indians farm system. He coached third base with the big league club under Charlie Manuel, then took over as manager at the all-star break in 2002 when Manuel was fired.
After the Indians hired Eric Wedge to manage in 2003, Skinner stayed on, as the third base coach. He must really like Cleveland.
Anyway, back to Hall. He played four seasons in New York, leaving after the 1992 season to do ... well I'm not quite sure. He returned to the bigs in 1996 with the Giants, playing in 25 games.
Hall probably never would have been mentioned again by too many people in baseball. But today he was back in the news for some very bad things.
It doesn't look good for the former Indian. Not good at all.