Alomar Sr. proud of Roberto

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Sandy Alomar Sr. saw plenty as a 15-year major-leaguer and as a coach after that. Not a minute of all that time, though, prepared him for Sunday. He will be a dad watching his son Roberto enter the Hall of Fame.

"I realized he was going to be a ballplayer when he was 6 years old," Alomar said, thinking back to 1974, when he was playing for the Yankees. "But nobody could say he was going to be a Hall of Famer. You have to be consistent, and he was. And we have to thank God because he was always healthy. To be here, you have to be healthy and you have to be consistent."

The elder Alomar, who, like Roberto and Sandy Jr., played for the Mets, added: "We have always been proud of him. We've been proud of the three [children], basically for the way they turned out to be as human beings. That's what really makes us proud. Whatever achievement he has got, it was because of hard work, and the respect and discipline for the game."

Roberto said that everything he has done in baseball, he owes to his father. That included lifting his spirits when Blue Jays fans taunted him after he left for the Orioles as a free agent. "My father said fans never boo the OK players, they boo the great players," he said.

Alomar will be wearing a Blue Jays cap on his plaque.

Blyleven prepares

Bert Blyleven, who will be inducted in a 1:30 p.m. ceremony Sunday with Alomar and executive Pat Gillick, said he is preparing for the event as he did for his starts. That is, he began getting ready three or four days ago, kept building up and will see what happens Sunday. Of his speech, he said: "It started out as 55 minutes and it's down to 45 now. I'm going to put you guys to sleep."

He is the first starting pitcher elected to the Hall since Nolan Ryan in 1999. He believes that starting pitching has become overanalyzed: "Today, they're twigging or twodding or whatever they do," he said in an apparent reference to Twitter.

He was encouraged that voters gave Felix Hernandez the American League Cy Young Award in 2010 despite a 13-12 record. "Wins," he said, "are hard to come by."

Other award winners

Awards presentations began Saturday in a ceremony at Doubleday Field on Main Street. Longtime executive Roland Hemond won the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award for efforts "to enhance baseball's positive aspect on society." Dave Van Horne, voice of the Expos and now the Marlins, was given the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence.

Bill Conlin, columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, was given the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for baseball writing. Conlin was introduced by Newsday's Ken Davidoff, the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Conlin's speech ended with a tour de force, imploring baseball to allow Pete Rose into the Hall of Fame.

"Mr. Selig," Conlin said in reference to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, "tear down that ban!"