Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Castor, Louisiana is now represented in Cooperstown.

Lee Arthur Smith, major league baseball’s all-time saves leader from 1993-2005 — he finished with 478 career saves while pitching for eight teams — was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday by a veterans committee.

Castor is about 50 miles southeast of Shreveport. John James and I rode around with Lee Arthur in my truck back in July, 1987, a few hours after he’d been the winning pitcher for the National League — he was pitching for the Cubs then — in the All Star Game played in Oakland. He’d planned to come home after the game, and he did just that. I remember the cab of my truck being very full.

You can read that story on DesignatedWriters.com. The part of that day I remember most is the kids shooting basketball in Lee Arthur’s yard, a precious and optimistic little boy selling cantaloupes from his wagon on the side of the road, and riding by the spot in the nearby Jamestown community where the house Lee Arthur grew up in once was. As we passed, he fixed his eyes on a spot. “Gone,” he said.

Congratulations to a Hall of Famer whose enshrinement is long overdue.

A seven-time All-Star and a four-time top 10 finisher in Cy Young voting, he’s now third on the all-time saves list behind Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman.

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