A Hall of Fame Manifesto
Posted: December 4th, 2008 | Filed under: Baseball | 126 Comments »
So, the Baseball Hall of Fame ballot arrived in the mail on Tuesday … and brilliant readers already know that this time of year makes me crazy. Here we are, back at the beginning, back with the Jack Morris and Jim Rice arguments, back wondering why more people don’t see how good Alan Trammell was, back rooting for Bert Blyleven, back standing up for TIm Raines, back with the Mark McGwire hand-wringing.
Well, next post we’ll run down the ballot entirely, if we can get to that. This time, I’m going to try something different — I’m going to try and break down the Hall of Fame.*
*I’ve read ahead: I never should have tried.
See, the thing is, I think that as much as people TALK about the Baseball Hall of Fame, very few have a real and total grip of what it really is. I say this because … I don’t think I have a real and total grip of what it is. The Baseball Hall of Fame is a 286-inductee monstrosity with more than 70 years of triumphs, failures, trials, errors, experiments that flopped, risks that soared, political gambits and good old fashioned baseball love. It’s the Hall of Fame that matters for any number of reasons, including the hard-work that people have put into it, and the fact that baseball history jumps off the page. But because it’s the Hall of Fame that matters, its quirks and cracks are more visible to the public.*
*Nobody seems to know or care that Otis Taylor is not in the Football Hall of Fame. But EVERYBODY knows Bert Blyleven is not. It’s a different animal.
So, this is a Hall of Fame breakdown that will hopefully offer up a little bit better idea of what the standards have been and how the players that are in the Hall of Fame got there. Let’s see where it goes …
* * *
OK, first thing, we need to shave the Hall of Fame down so we get down to the essence — the modern Major League players who are in there. Let’s get this out there: OBVIOUSLY, I am not suggesting that the non-modern Major League Players are in any way less deserving to be there. In numerous cases, I think they are far, far MORE deserving. But that’s not what we’re going for here. We’re trying to get at the question: What’s makes up a Hall of Fame baseball player? And while few are as deserving of being in the Hall as, say, Alexander Cartwright, who did more to invent baseball as we know it than anyone, well, he’s not what we are targeting here.
So, we’ll start cutting them down. As mentioned, there are 286 people inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. That’s a huge number, and among those we have:
(6) Pioneers. These include Cartwright and also Candy Cummings, who is in the Hall of Fame for inventing/discovering the curveball (inspired, the legend goes, by throwing clam shells). That’s his whole case really — he pitched for two years in the National League* and had a losing record. So it’s the curveball, that’s the whole story, and man to get in the Hall you would think he didn’t just invent the curveball, he traveled around the country barefoot and taught it to small children like Johnny Curveball-seed or something. Trouble is, it’s pretty likely that Candy Cummings DID NOT invent the curveball — I was once working on a book about the history of the curveball (don’t ask) and I did some light research on the subject, and there are probably at least a half dozen other men who have as good a claim as Cummings, and two or three who have a significantly better claim. Putting him in the Hall for inventing the curve is like putting Romy and Michele in the Inventor’s Hall of Fame for dreaming up Post-It Notes. And yes, that’s my obscure pop-culture reference for today.
*To be perfectly fair, Cummings did have a good year in 1865, when he won 35 games, though to put it in context Dick McBride won 44 that year and I had never heard of him.**
**McBride also managed the Philadelphia Athletics that year, which might explain why he completed 59 of the 60 games he started.
OK, so now six pioneers down, we’re at 280 Hall of Famers.
(25) Executives. Here are all your owners, your commissioners, your Tom Yawkeys, your Effa Manleys, your Bowie Kuhns. You might know, I’ve been doing quite a lot of research about 1975 baseball — 09/09/09 — and I have to tell you, I have yet to find anything good that Bowie Kuhn did for baseball. I mean ANYTHING. Every quote from the guy was like a little molotov cocktail of stupidity — one minute he’s predicting that teams are going to fold, the next minute he’s talking about having a Western Division that would include teams in Hawaii, the Phillipines and Japan. One minute he’s talking about assigning a team to Seattle because expansion isn’t going to happen, the next minute he’s fighting for his job. People will talk about the worst players in the Hall of Fame … I have to tell you that the worst player in the Hall of Fame and the 500 players he just beat out for that spot are all INFINITELY more qualified for the Hall of Fame than Bowie Kuhn.
Now, with the executives out, we’re down to 255 Hall of Famers.
(8) Umpires. If you ever want to wow ‘em at a party, just say something like this: “Did you know that there are eight umpires in the Hall of Fame and not one of them has called a Major League game since 1978. So that’s 30 years — no Hall of Fame umpires.*†Oh believe me, that fact will be a hit at any party, seriously, you’ll get dates galore. Trust me. And, should anyone ask — and you know they will — It was Hall of Famer Nestor Chylak who umpired a game in ‘78 at the end of a 25-year career.
*I should say that I’ve been semi-involved with a group trying to get my friend Steve Palermo some Hall of Fame recognition. He was a fabulous umpire by all accounts I’ve picked up — a ball-and-strike savant — and he you certainly know he had his career taken from him when he was struck by a bullet and paralyzed when he tried to help strangers who were getting mugged. I’m not entirely sure what makes a Hall of Fame umpire, but Stevie’s a remarkable guy and a credit to the game.
Now we’re down to 247 Hall of Famers.
(19) Managers.
OK, we’ve finally pruned out all the people who are not in the Hall of Fame primarily (or entirely) for their playing. And we have 228 Hall of Famers. But we’ve still got some more cutting to do.
(30) Negro Leagues Baseball Players.
Everyone here, i suspect, knows how much I love the Negro Leagues and how much I appreciate what the Baseball Hall of Fame has done to honor those great players who excelled on rock hard diamonds and little towns while America turned away. Everyone, in the end, must believe what they believe, but I have no doubt in my mind that Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Martin Dihigo, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard and others were as great as anyone who came before or since. But the point of this exercise, again, is to get at the heart of the Hall of Fame, and realistically knowing some great Turkey Stearnes stories is fun, but doesn’t help much in the process. We just don’t have enough information about those players.
OK, 198 players left, and we have one more cut.
(24) Predominantly pre-1900 players.
Again, this is not to knock the quality of those players, but they’re not what we’re talking about here. Sure, it’s fascinating that Bid McPhee played without a glove, but let’s just move on.
* * *
So, that’s it. We are now at the juicy center of the Hall of Fame — we are down to 174 players, all of them Major League baseball players and all of them voted into the Hall of Fame primarily for what they did primarily after 1900.
Just for your amusement: On that list of 174, we have:
(14) First basemen
(16) Second basemen
(19) Shortstops
(10) Third basemen
(14) Left Fielders
(16) Center fielders
(19) Right fielders
(13) Catchers
(52) Pitchers
(1) Designated hitter
* * *
And now … we can start categorizing. The first group on the list I call, “The Willie Mays Hall of Famers.†You will appreciate that one of the things that happens anytime I suggest that, say, Alan Trammell is a Hall of Famer is that some people will angrily write in to say that I am trying to water down the Hall of Fame with mediocrity. They will inevitably say, “Alan Trammell? Come one. That’s not a Hall of Famer. Willie Mays, that’s a Hall of Famer. Babe Ruth. Guys like that. …â€
Well, of course, there aren’t ANY OTHER guys like that — if Willie Mays and Babe Ruth were the standard for the Hall of Fame … the Hall of Fame would have … Willie Mays and Babe Ruth in it. Maybe Mickey Mantle. Ty Cobb.
But I do appreciate the point … and I’m going to say that there are exactly 52 Willie Mays Hall of Famers. That would be the number of players who, I suspect, the casual fan thinks are in the Hall of Fame. The might not be thinking about THESE 52 players, exactly, but this would be the inner circle, the slam-dunk choice, the no-doubt Hall of Famers.
I didn’t just choose these 52. There are the 45 first-ballot Hall of Famers — including Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente — and then another seven I think who were not first-ballot Hall of Famers only because of timing or some odd quirk in the voting. Lajoie, Speaker, Ol’ Pete and Cy Young were all on the first Hall of Fame ballot and sort of had to wait for the monsters of the game to get in first. Hornsby was on the ballot three times, but there was already this sense that a player should wait until five years after he retired — five years after Hornsby retired he was voted in. Grove was on the ballot during World War II which held him up. And the DiMaggio Hall of Fame balloting was a mess — they put him on the ballot just two years after he retired, nobody was quite ready for him, it didn’t go the way anyone wanted.
So your 52 Willie Mays Hall of Famers are (the non-first ballot Hall of Famers are in italics):
1B (3): Lou Gehrig; Eddie Murray; Willie McCovey.
2B (5): Rod Carew; Joe Morgan; Jackie Robinson; Rogers Hornsby; Nap Lajoie.
SS (5): Cal Ripken; Honus Wagner; Ozzie Smith; Ernie Banks; Robin Yount.
3B (4): George Brett; Mike Schmidt; Wade Boggs; Brooks Robinson.
RF (8): Hank Aaron; Tony Gwynn; Babe Ruth; Reggie Jackson; Roberto Clemente; Frank Robinson; Al Kaline; Dave Winfield.
CF (6): Ty Cobb; Willie Mays; Mickey Mantle; Kirby Puckett; Tris Speaker; Joe DiMaggio.
LF (5): Carl Yastrzemski; Ted Williams; Stan Musial; Willie Stargell; Lou Brock.
C (1): Johnny Bench.
DH (1): Paul Molitor.
RHP (10): Tom Seaver; Nolan Ryan; Bob Feller; Jim Palmer; Christy Mathewson; Bob Gibson; Walter Johnson; Dennis Eckersley; Pete Alexander; Cy Young.*
LHP (4): Steve Carlton; Sandy Koufax; Warren Spahn; Lefty Grove.
*Think about this again: In the history of baseball only eight right-handed pitchers have been elected first ballot into the Hall of Fame and … Dennis Eckersley? Really? How did he get elected first ballot? In retrospect Kirby Puckett looks out of place too.
* * *
So that leaves us with 122 players who were not automatic, slam-dunk, no doubt Willie Mays type choices. Of these:
(54) were voted in by the Baseball Writers Association.
(68) were voted in by the Veteran’s Committee
So, let’s break ‘em down, right?
* * *
First, the baseball writer’s choices, and for those I’ll break them down by number of years it took for the writers to vote them in:
2nd year choices (4): Yogi Berra, Rollie Fingers, Carlton Fisk, Whitey Ford.
It seems impossible to me that Yogi Berra did not get inducted in his first year. In many ways, that baffles me more than any voting quirk in Hall of Fame history. Here you have: Beloved figure, New York Yankee, dominant player, three-time MVP, veteran of 18 All-Star games, World Series titan, had to be viewed then (as he is often viewed now) as the greatest catcher in the history of Major League Baseball or CERTAINLY right there in the photograph.
And what’s even stranger is Berra did get the MOST votes for anyone in the 1971 election … he just didn’t get enough. He got 242 of 360 votes — he wasn’t even that close, it was 67.2% of the vote and left him 28 votes short of induction. I went back to the papers of the time to see if there could be any explanation for Berra not getting in. There were none. Yogi was Yogi. ‘Well,“ he said. â€DiMag didn’t get in his first year either.“ There was actually some worry that Berra would struggle again in ‘72 because Sandy Koufax was added to the ballot. But in fact the next year, Berras got almost a hundred more votes, pulled down an 85.6% (about 1 percent less than Koufax). I don’t know. Something really weird happened in ‘71.
3rd year choices (8): Carl Hubbell, Catfish Hunter, Fergie Jenkins, Willie Keeler, Juan Marichal, Mel Ott, Gaylord Perry, Ryne Sandberg.
Man, the voters just loved Catfish Hunter. He’s generally regarded as one of the weaker Baseball Writers choices ever — one of the weaker pitchers in the Hall of Fame. That 104 ERA just SCREAMS out at you. Of course, the writers didn’t have ERA+ back in 1987 and even if they did I suspect most of them wouldn’t have used it — something about Catfish, his aura, his nickname, his quick moving games, something spoke to them. I like what Bill James wrote about him: Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had said that Catfish brought respectability back to the Yankees, even though he only had one good year for them — and in that one good year, the Yankees lost six more games than they had the year before. â€He was Catfish,“ Bill wrote. â€The Yankees were glad to have him anyway.“
4th year choices (5): Eddie Collins, Harmon Killebrew, Robin Roberts, George Sisler, Early Wynn.
Wynn was actually on the remarkable 1971 Yogi ballot. That was his third time on the ballot, and unlike Yogi he did not handle the disappointment well or privately. â€It’s a damn shame,“ he grumbled to reporters. The weird thing is, the next year — even with Koufax added to the ballot — he like Yogi got enough votes for induction.
Robin Roberts, I must always say when his name comes up, is an extremely nice man and undoubtedly the only Hall of Famer to ever call me up cold and ask me to give him a tour of a museum (he said, â€Hi, my name is Robin Roberts. I’m a former baseball player …“)
5th year choices (6): Roy Campanella, Frankie Frisch, Eddie Mathews, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton, Paul Waner.
6th year choices (6): Luis Aparicio, Gary Carter, Mickey Cochrane, Jimmie Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Billy Williams.
Great catchers have just had a very hard time getting into the Hall of Fame. Johnny Bench remains the only first-ballot Hall of Fame catcher ever, and while I do believe that Bench is the greatest all-around catcher in baseball history — 09/09/09 — I think Berra certainly has a counter-claim, and I think that Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter, Roy Campanella, Mickey Cochrane — these guys were only slightly lesser gems, and not one of them went first ballot. I suspect Piazza will go first ballot; Pudge v.2.0 certainly will.
7th year choice (1): Pie Traynor
8th year choices (6): Luke Appling; Hank Greenberg; Joe Medwick; Herb Pennock, Al Simmons; Hoyt Wilhelm.
I should say here that the early years of voting were so baffling and such a free-for-all that some of these years-on-the-ballot totals are a bit misleading. For instance, Ducky Medwick appeared on one ballot in 1948, his last year as a player. So, really, he was on nine ballots, but do you count that one? He did not appear again on the ballot until 1956. And he did not get elected until 1968 — twenty years after he had retired. Many of the players of his era had similarly strange routes to 75% and the Hall.
9th year choices (5): Lou Boudreau; Bill Dickey; Goose Gossage; Ted Lyons; Tony Perez.
10th year choices (3): Joe Cronin; Dizzy Dean; Don Drysdale.
We are now getting into some of the more controversial Hall of Fame choices — and it only figures. These players who have been on the ballot eight, nine, ten years and more … I’ve never fully understood the phenomenon. Don Drysdale hovered between 50 and 65% for seven years, going back and forth, and then suddenly in ‘84 seventy more voters decided all at once that … what, he had waited long enough? His career looked better from the distance? More people came to know him as the affable announcer and that helped his cause? I don’t know. But it’s a common story, told over and over again in the late years of Hall of Fame voting.
11th year choices (3): Gabby Hartnett; Harry Heilmann; Duke Snider.
I know that it has been written about over and over and over again in books and poems and songs and magazine odes and whatever else … but think about a time in New York when they had three center fielders playing for three teams: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider. It’s no wonder people from New York cannot stop talking about that time … it’s absolutely extraordinary. And I have to believe that’s the reason the Duke had to wait 11 years for induction. He is, I suspect, one of the seven best center fielders in baseball history, but he was clearly third best in his own city while he played. He did not even break 50% in the voting until 1977, well after Boys of Summer had glorified him and his team.
12th year choice (1): Bob Lemon.
13th year choices (3): Ralph Kiner; Bruce Sutter; Bill Terry.
Can’t let a chance go by: Sutter won the ‘79 Cy Young, (though it could have gone to J.R. Richard who threw about three times as many innings and struck out 313). Dan Quisenberry lost the ‘82 and ‘83 Cy Young Awards to inferior starting pitchers. Sutter had only one good year in his last four, but because of his situation he picked up 85 late-career saves. Quiz pitched as well or, often, better than Sutter his last four years, but because of his situation only picked up 27 late-career saves. Sutter played a role in popularizing the split-fingered fastball, I guess. Quiz just said lots of funny and wise things.
After years of study, these three differences seem to be the reason why Bruce Sutter stayed on the ballot for 13 years and was eventuallyinducted into the Hall of Fame while Quiz stayed on the ballot for one year, picking up only 18 votes (3.8%). It’s one of the quirks of the Hall of Fame voting and a real shame. The voters simply fell asleep on Dan Quisenberry, who was every bit the pitcher that Sutter was and maybe a touch better. Now it’s too late to fix it. Maybe the new Veteran’s Committee will revisit.
14th year choice (1): Rabbit Maranville.
15th year choices (2): Red Ruffing, Dazzy Vance.
Red Ruffing was a guy that Bob Feller pushed hard for the Hall of Fame … and it seems he made a difference. Up until 1962, Ruffing had only once gotten half the votes, and most of the time he was way below 50%. then Feller wrote in an article that Ruffing deserved to go to the Hall of Fame, and in ‘64 Ruffing got 70.1% of the vote. His 3.80 ERA suggests he was a fairly weak choice, though Bill James did rank him the 51st best pitcher in baseball history back in the New Historical Baseball Abstract … I guess it depends if you think there should be 51 pitchers in the Hall of Fame.
Vance probably deserved to go earlier but he only had 197 career victories. His 1924 season, when he went 28-6 with a 2.16 ERA and had 127 more strikeouts than any other pitcher in the league is one of the all-time great seasons — and he might have been even better in 1928 (and maybe even in 1930). He led the league in strikeouts six other times, ERA twice more, shutouts four times. He was a truly dominant pitcher who had to wait forever because he just didn’t have enough wins.
* * *
OK, whew, so now we’re left with the most controversial 68 in the Hall … the 68 players selected by the Veteran’s Committee. Truth is, the Vet’s Committee righted quite a few wrongs and did quite a few good things. They also inducted Jesse Haines. I’m breaking these up by position and by the Bill James Historical Abstract ranking, which might give us a decent idea about the Veteran’s choices.
First base: Johnny Mize (6th); Orlando Cepeda (17th); Frank Chance (25); Jim Bottomley (36th); George Kelly (65th).
Mize was a pretty clear miss by the Baseball Writers … I think he’s among the most underrated players in baseball history. Look, he led the league in runs created and extra base hits in ‘38; he led the league in hitting in ‘39; he was almost certainly the best player in the league in ‘40 (led the league in homers, RBIs, OPS+, runs created, total bases, you name it); he had a slightly down year in ‘41 but still had a 156 OPS+ and led the league in doubles; he was back to leading the league in slugging percentage in 1942. So that’s five straight years when he led the league in something major. He was almost certainly the best player in the National League over those five season. Then … he went to war for three years. He only played in 101 games in ‘46, the year he came back, but he was a dominant force — he hit .337/.437/.576. And then he hie hit 51 homers in 1947 and was probably the league’s best player again. He hit 40 more homers in 1948 when Musial had his monster year. Then, at the end of his career, Mize played part time for Case Stengel’s Yankees and was part of five World Series winners in a row. Seems like a pretty clear Hall of Fame career to me.
Second base: Billy Herman (14); Nellie Fox (15); Bobby Doerr (18); Tony Lazzeri (19); Johnny Evers (25); Red Schoendienst (28); Bill Mazeroski (29).
Mazeroski, of course, is the man who sort of became the symbol for Veteran’s Committee cronyism — the committee was broken up the year after he was elected. I’ve never been quite sure that’s fair. I mean, Maz was probably the best defensive second baseman in baseball history. I’m a Frank White man myself, but there were undoubtedly defensive things Maz could do better than anyone ever (like turn the double play). Point is: Is it really so tragic to have the greatest defensive second baseman ever in the Hall of Fame even if he didn’t hit all that well? I’m just asking. And he did hit a pretty important World Series homer …
Shortstop: Arky Vaughn (2); Pee Wee Reese (10); George Davis (14); Phil Rizzuto (16); Hughie Jennings (18); Joe Sewell (23); Dave Bancroft (28); Joe Tinker (33); Bobby Wallace (36); Travis Jackson (40).
The Baseball Writers did not exactly cover themselves in glory by missing Arky Vaughn and Pee Wee Reese in my opinion. Vaughn was an especially awful miss — Vaughn never got more than 29% of the voting despite being a dominant presence (from 1932-41 he punched up a .415 on-base percentage and a 141 OPS+, and he was a good to excellent defensive shortstop) until his career was shut down by World War II. Reese was a good offensive player (he walked a lot), a great defensive player and the core for the Boys of Summer. I’m just not sure why the writers missed him.
So the Veteran’s Committee really did make the Hall of Fame a LOT better. On the other hand, they put in Tinker, Evers AND Chance, so you’d have to call it a mixed result.
Third base: Home Run Baker (5); Jimmy Collins (17); George Kell (30); Freddie Lindstrom (43).
A mixed bag again. Home Run Baker had been a major oversight but they put in “Better than†Freddie Lindstrom. I’m sure you know how that nickname words. Let’s say you are a huge Matt Williams fan and would like to see him go to the Hall of Fame. You probably don’t have a great case. But, you can always say this: “He was better than Freddie Lindstrom.â€
Right field: Sam Crawford (10); Enos Slaughter (12); Elmer Flick (23); Sam Rice (33); Kiki Cuyler (39); Chuck Klein (40); Harry Hooper (43); Ross Youngs (46).
What percentage of baseball fans out there would know that Ross Youngs is in the Hall of Fame? What percentage of baseball fans could NAME Ross Youngs? It can’t be 5%, right?
Center field: Larry Doby (11); Earl Averill (14); Edd Roush (15); Richie Asburn (16); Hack Wilson (19); Max Carey (23); Earle Combs (34); Lloyd Waner (50).
In a way you almost have to admire the utterly cold, callous and unsentimental way the BBWAA has voted when it comes to certain important things. They gave Larry Doby seven votes in 1966, 10 votes in 1967. And that’s it. First black player in the American League. He was a seven time All-Star, two -time home run champ, one-time RBI king, brilliant defensive center fielder — I mean, he was a legitimately outstanding baseball player. And, again, he was the first black player in the American League, which it should be pointed out was the MUCH more racist league. It wasn’t until the mid-50s that the Yankees added their first black player and it wasn’t until 1958 that Detroit added its first black player, 1959 that the Red Sox added their first black player — this was the environment Larry Doby had to thrive in. And he did thrive. He was the first black All-Star in the league (1949, same year as Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella). He was the first black man to START an All-Star game in the league (1950, cracked two hits, including a double). He was a truly great player and an inspiring figure.
Seven votes in 1966. Ten votes in 1967.
Left field: Goose Goslin (16); Fred Clarke (22); Zack Wheat (23); Heinie Manush (30); Chick Hafey (59).
Heinie Manush has always been one of my favorite names. Fred Clarke is also in because of his managing talents. Chick Hafey is another candidate for worst player in the Hall of Fame — he did lead the National League in slugging in 1927 and in batting average in 1931.
Pitchers: Ed Walsh (19); Three Finger Brown (20); Jim Bunning (30); Eddie Plank (34); Hal Newhouser (36); Joe McGinnity (41); Rube Waddell (53); Red Faber (56); Burleigh Grimes (62); Eppa Rixey (75); Waite Hoyte (78); Addie Joss (80); Vic Willis (84); Chief Bender (NR); Stan Coveleski (NR); Jesse Haines (NR): Rube Marquard (NR).
Not sure how the writers missed Three Finger Brown, who was an utterly dominant deadball era force (26-6, 1.04 ERA in 1906 stands out, but he had four or five other seasons only slightly below). Eddie Plank was a pretty dreadul miss too, as was in my opinion Hal Newhouser, who seemingly just got ignored because he’d been so dominant during World War II with the stars away (though he proved in ‘46, when the stars returned, that he was just pretty darned good). But the bulk of the Veteran’s Committee pitching choices are pretty suspect.
And, whew, we are through the Hall of Fame. What did we learn from this 4,774 word extravaganza? I think it’s pretty clear: We learned that the Hall of Fame is anything you want it to be … there’s a case to be made for almost anybody. More, though, I think we learned to never again attempt to start blog posts while on serious medication.
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It’s amazing how far some of these guys slipped through…Collins and Killebrew in the fourth year, Mathews in the fifth, Cochrane and Foxx in the sixth? What about Double-X would make anyone who has ever seen a baseball game or heard of the game of baseball think, “well, maybe I could be convinced eventually…but not this year, or the next, or the four after that”?
Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace! Mark Grace!
Okay, I know he doesn’t deserve it, but I thought I’d throw it out there. Most hits in the 90s, you know.
Ahhhhh, Heinie Manush. I remember watching him play like it was just yesterday. Heckuva glove…
I’m impressed it only took two comments to get Gracie’s name out there. I have to say, he’s easily atop my list of players that I know don’t deserve to be in the Hall but nonetheless would love to see in there. And I HATE the Cubs, but Mark Grace is Mark Grace, and the world’s a better place for it.
Yeah, I’d say the thing that puzzles me the most about the Hall of Fame is the whole complicated calculus of “well, he’s a Hall of Famer, but not a first ballot Hall of Famer.”
Now, I can understand that in some cases, someone’s career looks far better in retrospect than it did at the time — I think that’s what you were getting at with Duke Snider. With some guys, you have to step back from the context and say, damn, that guy was actually pretty freakin’ good.
And then you have the clear, slam-dunk no-doubters: your Seavers, your Ripkens, your Benches. No debate about these guys (although the “no-one-deserves-100%-of-the-vote” thing bugs me too).
But then you get to those guys who everyone agrees had a HOF career, ought to be in the Hall, but since he’s not as good as Willie Mays, let’s make him wait 3 years. Huh?
Joe:
Lou Brock is first ballot. Tim Raines struggles to get a significant portion of the vote.
Look at their stats. Tell me how Brock is the better player. The only thing he is better at is making outs, both at the plate and on the bases.
Yeah, he played well on the biggest stage and he set a couple of SB records (which since have been broken by THE Rickey), but Raines is by far the better player.
So despite his first ballot selection, I would not consider Lou to be a Willie Mays HOFer.
Joe –
I see by your posterisk that you find at least two of the “Willie Mays” HoFers questionable: Eckersley and Puckett.
I would like to add some others to that list:
Carew
Ozzie
B. Robby
Gwynn
Clemente
Brock (there really are too many outfielders)
Molitor (there really shouldn’t be ANY DHs, IMHO*)
Ryan
*Not too sure about relief pitchers, either.
They probably all belong in the HoF (though I am not sure about Ozzie, B. Robby, and Brock — yes, my standards are very high), but I would not put them into the “OMG! How could not be in the HoF on the 1st ballot?!” category.
Thanks for your support (sort of) to Mazeroski. The best fielding second baseman (who played on a rockhard diamond half of his career at Forbes Field, the other half he was on the road…) deserves to be in the Hall. I know that former Pirate GM Joe Brown pushed very hard for his induction and pissed more than a few folks off by doing so but if you could have seen Maz and Pirate shortstop Gene Alley turn some of their double-plays it would be a no-brainer to get Maz inducted. The WS homerun didn’t hurt either!
And of course it has been remarked upon before (and will be again), but it is remarkable how many of the most questionable choices from the VC played with Frankie Frisch either in NY or in St. Louis. Just look at Joe’s list.
1B: The two lowest ranked picks are Frisch teammates (Bottomly and Kelly)
Of course, none at 2B
SS: the lowest ranked is a Frisch teammate (Jackson)
3B: The lowest ranked is a Frisch teammate (Lindstrom)
RF: The lowest ranked is a Frisch teammate (Youngs)
CF: None
LF: The lowest ranked is a Frisch teammate (Hafey)
P: An unranked pitcher is a Frisch teammate (Haines)
Cronyism indeed.
This is a great analysis, but half way through — I think — I am reminded how goofy it is to restrict a candidate to one category only. If one should be at the 75% level for admittance, Joe Torre is at, say, 65% as a player and surely 70% as a manager — 135% — but he may paddle off to that great surfing beach beyond the sunset without being inducted. Buck O’Neil may have been only 40% as a Negro League player, but then there’s 15% as a manager, 15% as a Cubs pioneer, and 60% as an executive/contributor of the Kansas City Museum and as the shining face of Ken Burns’s history — another 135%. People aren’t categories, people are people, and why can’t the Hall figure out how to treat them that way.
(If Steinbrenner gets in and part-player/part-manager Biliy Martin isn’t inducted at the exact same time, baseball should no longer be categorized as entertainment.)
Oh, two additions. Dave Bancroft, the fourth lowest SS, is also a Frisch teammate. And there was a CF from his teams elected by the VC when Frisch was on it. However, I do think he probably deserves to be in the HOF. His name was Casey Stengel.
I’ve never understood people’s love for Mark Grace. I think Will Clark has a far more compelling case amongst borderline HOFers of that era, and I don’t hear his name mentioned in HOF discussions very often.
Re a lot of the 20s-30s guys slipping past the first few rounds: the ballot was very crowded in the late 1940s, since the BBWAA’s consideration set was all 20th-century players, not just those in the past 20 years. As a result, there were 20-25 super-qualified candidates on the ballot at the same time, so no one really had a chance until the Veterans’ Committee’s predecessor started to clear out the old-timers. On top of this, there were some years where the BBWAA didn’t vote at all.
D in T:
Fred Clarke and Frank Chance could be considered in for a combination of their abilities as a player and a manager, and I think some day the same will be said for Torre.
Current managers who will one day be in: Torre, LaRussa, Cox, Piniella (??), Jim Leyland (??)
Extremely hard to believe that Berra didn’t get in to the Hall in his first year of eligibility. I knew one old writer who would only vote for a guy in his 1st year of eligibility once in a blue moon. I asked him about Piazza once, and he said he wouldn’t vote for him in his first year. I asked him about the next year and he said he definitely would because he deserved to be in the Hall.
I never got the distinction between thinking someone was a first-ballot guy vs. someone who should get in sometime later. If they belong in the Hall at some point, then they belong in the Hall the first year.
Silly power play by some of the BBWAA members if you ask me.
Is John McGraw the only guy who could have made it as a player or a manager, completely independent of what he did at the other job? I guess Tris Speaker might have had a shot at that distinction, if his managerial career hadn’t been cut short abruptly.
Fine post, Joe. Fine post.
Any post that mentiones Romy and Michelle makes me think of Mira Sorvino. Any post that makes me think of Mira Sorvino = A FINE Post.
Mira Sorvino is also married to Chris Backus. Why is this significant?? Chris Backus is probably the only graduate of Shawnee Mission East High School married to an Oscar Winner.
I wonder if he’ll bring Mira to his 10 Year Reunion?? Nah…they’ll probably just send Lisa Kudrow. She could use the work!! OH!!
(See, any round-about, rambling, quasi-substantive, disjointed post deserves an equally round-about, rambling, quasi-substantive, disjointed attempt at humor in the comments section)
It’s cool if we want to induct Maz as a great defensive second baseman who couldn’t hit – but can we make room for a nearly-as-great defensive second baseman who could also hit a ton? Bobby Grich out-OPS+s Maz 125-84, and won 4 Gold Gloves (likely would have won more, but Frank White won the next 6). Nobody with any influence even mentions the guy as a Hall candidate.
“Is John McGraw the only guy who could have made it as a player or a manager, completely independent of what he did at the other job?”
Joe Torre is very close as a player (I think he’s a lock as a manager, even if his greatest managerial skill was keeping the Yankees on an even keel in the face of the NY Post and Steinbrenner the Elder). Career 128 OPS+, was thought to be at least an adequate backstop (one Gold Glove, good SB/CS ratio) during the years he caught. Obviously his case is diluted some by the move to 3B/1B, but I still think that case is very solid.
I’m not nearly as bothered by the first-ballot HOFer versus others distinction as others are. Many things about HOF do drive me nuts but I think there’s a reasonable distinction to be made between “inner-circle” members and non, and it creates another topic of discussion which is really what the HOF is worth to most of us anyway. Certainly one can and should be a HOFer without being Mays, but say Pujols keeps doing what he’s doing for a while, obviously he’ll be a HOFer but will he be an inner-circle Williams/Ruth/Aaron/Mays type HOFer? (The answer to that question is yes and I should have come up with someone a bit more marginal)
I think one of the reasons Jim Rice has been overlooked is because he became eligible just as the steroid-fueled seasons began happening. Sure, his numbers are dwarfed by McGuire, etc.; but, he was perhaps the most-feared slugger of his era. That’s what bugs me most about baseball’s steroid era… the distortion of comparable stats.
Also, interesting to note that Tom Seaver would have been a unanimous first-ballot choice had a couple of voters not withheld their ballots in protest of the poor, misunderstood Pete Rose.
“Is John McGraw the only guy who could have made it as a player or a manager, completely independent of what he did at the other job? I guess Tris Speaker might have had a shot at that distinction, if his managerial career hadn’t been cut short abruptly.”
You can make the case for Joe Torre. Actually, Torre has a much more solid case as a player than does McGraw. you can probably make a case for Clark Griffith as well, albeit a weak one. He’s kinda iffy both as a player and as a manager, but clearly deserving when you look at both together.
The support for Mark Grace is probably mostly because he’s such a funny, quotable guy, and was good enough of a ballplayer for it not to be *completely* ridiculous to suggest he should get in (unlike, say, Uecker). Being funny and likable shouldn’t get one into the HoF, of course, which is why I say above he’s undeserving, but it makes me wish he could, if that makes any sense.
Not that I’m a fan of Brooks Robinson, but his glove was enormous in sweeping my Dodgers in the 1966 World Series. I mean, insanely important. For a lot of the “glove guys” who really rose to the occasion at the big moments, it’s so easy to overlook or forget them because “Fielded huge” doesn’t make it into baseball-reference.com. And complaining about Clemente? Clemente was more than just a great player. He was a great defensive player, arguably the strongest right field arm of all time (along with lots of other worthy candidates), had an OPS+ his final season before dying in a plane crash (on a humanitarian mission) in the offseason, was top 20 in MVP balloting 12 years out of 13 (including his final season), and still managed 3,000 hits in a career that included the worst climate for hitters since the dead ball era, won 13 straight gold gloves (including his final season). You *must* look at context when you are evaluating players, especially great defensive players. And for guys like Brooks, who play an underrepresented position and nobody seriously suggests isn’t at least tied for the best defensive third baseman of all time, whose glove was so good that three times he got MVP consideration despite an OPS+ below 100, you are *nuts* to think he is not a clear cut choice.
I don’t think Drysdale deserved being in the HOF. But there’s no other way to explain the Dodgers tying for the pennant (or better) four out of five years from 1962-66 when Koufax was only pitching one out of every four games. I mean, Maury Wills? Wes Parker? Tommy Davis? The team was the best in baseball for a five year period and Drysdale was by far the second best player with a huge dropoff. I mean, the Giants had Mays, McCovey, Marichal, and Cepeda. So somebody on the Dodgers had to be enshrined, because no man, not even a Koufax, was good enough to explain that five year period without some backup. But they were wrong: it *was* Koufax.
And if Piazza doesn’t go first ballot, it will be a travesty. Not only is he the best hitting catcher in history, but he excelled at that little known (and hard to find) yet critical defensive statistic: catcher’s ERA. For almost every team he was on, despite his famous throwing problems, the team had a better ERA when he was catching than when his subs were playing. Catchers in general got jobbed by the HOF, and keeping Piazza out his first year is unconscionable.
““Is John McGraw the only guy who could have made it as a player or a manager, completely independent of what he did at the other job? I guess Tris Speaker might have had a shot at that distinction, if his managerial career hadn’t been cut short abruptly.â€
You can make the case for Joe Torre. Actually, Torre has a much more solid case as a player than does McGraw. you can probably make a case for Clark Griffith as well, albeit a weak one. He’s kinda iffy both as a player and as a manager, but clearly deserving when you look at both together.”
McGraw’s peak value is really, really good and for some reason, perhaps unbeknowst to anyone but himself, he decided that once he was manager of the Orioles and then Giants, he wasn’t good enough to play in the field. He was 28 when he essentially quit playing in the field and posted an OPS+ of 172 that year. I suppose his teams had better third basemen than him, but I kind of doubt it.
Thank you for all the work out into this Joe. It very clearly illustrates an obvious point – the Hall of Fame wants a lot of members. They allow every eligble player fifteen shots at election even when 95% of the voters think he’s not a Hall of Famer. On top of that that, they perpetuate the existence of the Veteran’s Committe, the clearest posible sign that they think the BBWAA is too restrictive in its voting practices. They even tweak the structure and rules for the VC on a regular basis, just to be sure they are still electing players who have already been passed over multiple times.
And finally, they have accepted each and every selection, no matter how preposterous. Think about that. This is perhaps the premier bastion of baseball history on the planet, a museum of the sport, one that employs a fair number of knowledgeable baseball historians, and yet they didn’t blink at accepting Red Schoendienst, or Chick Hafey, or Highpockets Kelly, or Jesse Haines or any of the other selections that must have made them scratch their collective head and say, “Really? THAT guy?” Instead, they welcomed all of them with open arms, and gave them the exact same kind of plaque they gave Ruth and Mays and Aaron and Williams.
If the BBWAA would ever collectively realize that, it would go very far toward eliminating much of the controversy about the HOF. “Oh, you mean you WANT guys like Waite Hoyt and Lloyd Waner? Oh, okay, we can do that.” We could do away with the Veteran’s Committee (except the part that elects the umps, managers, etc.) and all the finger-pointing could finally end.
With respect to Eric J’s comment about Bobby Grich, the great injustice to him is that Grich was on the ballot in 1992, didn’t get the necessary 5%, and was therefore never considered again. There ought to be a box to check “Not yet, but be sure to give me another look next year.”
Similarly, if everyone (or even 96% of the voters) had treated Yogi Berra as the “one old writer” B.E. Earl refers to above, Yogi would have had to wait for the Veterans’ Committee.
Clark Griffith was inducted as an executive/pioneer, not as a player or as a manager. McGraw was inducted as a manager, though — as Brent points out — his abbreviated playing career probably qualifies him. [To those suggesting Torre, see my post above.]
There are two obvious way, in my book, to dissect the Hall. One is by position, and the other is by era.
And I don’t know how do do era. Positions overlap a little, but its easy enough to say “a plurality of their games” or “a plurality of their winshares” or something like that. Eras aren’t so easy.
Why does this matter? Well, I don’t think that there are enough pitchers in the hall. Pitching is what? 40% of the game? And less than 1/3 of the central group is pitchers. Less than 1/3 of the Willie Mays/Babe Ruth group is pitchers. That seems low.
So, when are they missing from? How do we figure that out?
We know that — regardless of what Jack Morris fans would have us believe — judging by decades is wrong. Not everyone fits nicely in a decade. What I want to know is what it means for for players to be from the same era, and what happened to the transitive property?
Did Clemmens and Jack Morris pitch in the same era? Did Clemmens and Mussina? Did Mussina and Morris? How do we work this out?
Based on the timeline, it’s easy to assume Arky Vaughan’s career was interrupted by war, but that wasn’t the case. He was fed up with Leo Durocher, and when the Dodgers wouldn’t trade him his only recourse was to quit. He came back in ‘47 when Durocher was suspended.
Bellweather Johnson – nice quasi-substantive comment. Very nice.
Maybe some day Paul Rudd can marry an Oscar winner (cause lord knows he won’t) and bring her to his Shawnee Mission West reunion.
[...] Joe Posnanski examines the merits of each and every Hall of Fame inductee in an attempt to better understand … something. He must have been an unbelievably hyper child. [...]
Lou Whitaker is another one who didn’t even survive 1 year on the ballot. I mean, he should at least be in the discussion as a borderline guy, right?
dude, joe, you can’t give this kind of post away for free. This is great and a load of work. I say charge people at least 5 bucks to read this gem.
Brent –
Frank Chance is in the HoF; hard to tell exactly what weight to give contributing factors. From Bullpen Wiki:
“Frank Chance had one of the shortest playing careers of any Hall of Famer. However, he was quite prominent, partly because of his playing days, partly because of his exploits as a manager, partly because the Cubs of his time were a truly great team, partly because of the poem about Tinker to Evers to Chance, and partly because of his role in the Merkle Bonehead Play.”
Sounds like he may have mostly qualified for his “fame”.
Lance –
Jim Rice is definitely not a HoF player.
*His numbers are actually inflated by the era in which he played. His actuals were .298/.352/.502; if you neutralize his stats (per BB-Ref), you get .290/.343/.489.
*His power numbers are not bad, but they are grossly inflated by Fenway Park. His career splits:
Home: .320/.374/.546 — 208 HR, 802 RBI
Away: ..277/.330/.459 — 174 HR, 649 RBI
*Not only did he walk infrequently (as you can see from his BA/OBP numbers; career high of 62), but he also grounded into 315 DP (6th all-time; 3rd when he retired).
*His career high in OPS+ was 157, which is tied (with 29 others) for 571st all-time. A list of the luminaries with at least one higher single-season OPS+ includes Boog Powell, Jimmy Wynn, Phil Nevin, Bob Cerv, Rico Carty, and Cesar Cedeno — not even close to HoF caliber.
*His career OPS+ was 128, which is tied (with 16 others) for 177th all-time. Among those tied with him are John Olerud, Kent Hrbek, and Moises Alou.
*His defense was, to be polite, adequate. I know fielding statistics are not as useful as batting or pitching stats, but his range factor/9 innings was 2.15; the league average for outfielders for his years was 2.45. Restricting to only his LF games, the numbers are 2.16 and 2.26.
Bill James has a very interesting essay in the All-Time Baseball Abstract under the Jim Rice entry which basically concludes that he was significantly less helpful to winning games than his contemporary Roy White. White was certainly a fine player, but he is definitely not an HoF candidate.
To make another comparison: he was less valuable to the Red Sox than his teammate for all 16 of his years, Dwight Evans. Evans career OPS+ is 127, his career high was 162. Evans hit more HR and more 2B. Evans was a MUCH better fielder (8 GGs in his career).
I don’t mean to pick on Jim Rice; I actually think he was an excellent player and the subject of one of my more interesting personal BB stories.* But we have lots and lots of outfielders already, his offensive stats are not that extraordindary for his position, his defense adds nothing to his qualifications — he was physically impressive, he hit HRs, he was on some famous teams (including the team that played the Reds in the 1975 WS — someone should write a book about that).
Jim Rice is not a Hall of Famer.
*I was at the 1982 All-Star game and festivities in Montreal. Rice had achieved some notoriety earlier that year for (allegedly) breaking his bat on a checked swing. (This, of course, was back when bats were made out of real wood and it took some doing to break them; unlike today’s maple bats, which break if you sneeze on them.) I was rather skeptical of this claim, given the bats of those days and the pre-workout, pre-steroid physiques of most ball players.
Until I got on to the same elevator as Jim Rice, on the way to the pre-game luncheon. He was wearing a finely-tailored 3-piece suit, but not a form-fitting one. As we approached our floor, he straightened his arms to adjust his cuffs — and I am not kidding, you could see his muscles ripple through the suit. At which point I said to my companion, “Yeah, I guess he could have broken his bat on a checked swing.” It was truly one of the more impressive and memorable sights I have seen.
I have to comment on the ‘first ballot’ points — while I am a firm believer that Kirby Puckett and Paul Molitor are head-scratchers as ‘first ballot’ HoFers (and that Puckett is something of a head-scratcher for the HoF in general), I’ve come to understand that the problem isn’t with Puckett and Molitor themselves, but rather with the BBWAA, or more specifically, with the realization that the BBWAA could grant ‘first ballot’ status to a guy and thus attempt to give him additional honor over and above simply being elected to the Hall.
In that sense, the concept of the ‘first ballot’ should be handled much like The Game (http://www.losethegame.com/), in that, if you think about voting for someone based on their first-ballot status, you lose.
Being a first-ballot Hall of Famer becomes less meaningful the more voters recognize that they have the ability to influence whether or not a player enters the Hall on the first ballot. That’s why the most questionable first-ballot HoFers are also the most recent first-ballot HoFers.
Joe, great stuff – as always!
One interesting point that I thought you could have touched on: How ironic is it that there have only been 11 first ballot HOF pitchers…but that there are at least 5 active right now?
Aren’t all of these guys sure-fire?
Greg Maddux
Randy Johnson
Pedro Martinez
Mariano Rivera
Roger Clemens
FYI, Alexander Cartwright, like Morgan Bulkeley and Candy Cummings, is also the result of the primitive state of baseball research at the time of election.
I love the HOF discussions just so I can hear the sweet analysis of Jim Rice being feared and Jack Morris being a big game pitcher. Thanks for bringing it a bit earlier Joe.
And for those of you who haven’t heard of the Hall of Merit should check it out, good times.
It also teaches that you cannot undo bad decisions; they hang around forever. Are you listening politicians? No? I thought not.
Re: Lou Whitaker and Bobby Grich (and we can throw in Frank White, Willie Randolph and possibly Robbie Alomar into this discussion).
I think 2B is a hard position for the Hall to judge. The only two recent (if the early 80s are recent) are Joe Morgan and Ryne Sandberg (and the dubious inclusion of Rod Carew as a 2Bman). Why is that? Let me propose two possible reasons.
First, once a player is done as a 2Bman, he is usually done as a ball player. The skills it takes to play 2B don’t really translate to another position. Usually, they don’t hit enough to play anywhere but SS or Catcher and if they cannot play 2B anymore, they certainly aren’t going to play those positions. A couple players (Carew and Molitor) were perceived as good enough hitters to move to another place on the diamond, but most of the time that doesn’t happen. Therefore, unlike a 3Bman, who can move across the diamond when he cannot play 3B anymore, the 2Bman has nowhere to go. Even a SS, once he no longer has the range to play there, can move to 2B (if he is a light hitter) or 3B (if he can rake, ala Cal Ripken) or even 1B (if he can really rake, ala Ernie Banks). So most of the time, really good 2Bman have 15 year careers, not 20 year careers and that means that they cannot rack up the counting stats like guys at other positions, who add on to their counting stats in their late careers.
Secondly, of all the positions, 2B is the most physically demanding after catcher. We perceive that catcher is physically demanding and don’t expect great catchers to compile great numbers, because they are catchers and their bodies just don’t hold up for them to do so. But I don’t think anyone thinks of 2B as the next most demanding position, but I think it is. I would think that 2Bmen endure more violent physical contact than any position, probably even more than catchers. On the pivot of the DP, unlike the SS, who is a moving target for the runner and can basically see the hit coming and adjust himself accordingly, a 2Bman must stand in and take the hit. This means that they are involved in a lot more plays involving contact than any other position. This has to wear them down faster than any position other than catcher. Again, we see games played steadily decreasing on them quicker than we do their cousins, the shortstops.
Anyway, I think that Randolph, White, Grich and Whitaker are being held to a standard that is nearly impossible for a 2bman to reach. Even as great as Alomar was in his prime, often there is questions as to why his career abruptly ended.
My two cents worth on my favorite position.
Also, interesting to note that Tom Seaver would have been a unanimous first-ballot choice had a couple of voters not withheld their ballots in protest of the poor, misunderstood Pete Rose.
If I recall correctly, Seaver missed by 5 votes. Three of these were blank ballots in protest of Rose. One of these was cast by a writer who later confessed that he hadn’t spotted Seaver’s name and would’ve voted for him. The fifth was never explained.
Is no one else going to rant about the lack of a single unanimous selection? Jackie Robinson? Lou Gehrig? Cal Ripken? George Brettt? HANK AARON?!! Willie Mays? Ted Williams? Stan The Man? (Gasping for air …)
We can all come up with our own lists, but consider the fact that someone — nine someones, in fact — somewhere in some walk of life said that Hank Aaron wasn’t a Hall of Famer. Not only should such people lose their right to vote for the Hall of Fame, they should lose their right to vote for dogcatcher.
Bob Ryan of the Globe wrote a great piece apologizing for the fact that Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn didn’t go in unanimously.
http://www.boston.com/sports/articles/2007/01/28/no_excuse_no_defense_for_these_ballot_balks/
The ultimate argument, in my view, against not voting for someone in their first year when you already know you’ll vote for them in year #2: You don’t want everyone else to vote the way that you do.
If you really believe in your vote, you should want everyone else to do the same thing. But if everyone who would vote for Mussina eventually decided not to vote for him in year #1, he’s off the ballot with 0%. And then you’d never get to vote for him.
Game, set and match.
Frank Chance was the star player and manager of one of the most successful teams of all time: the Cubs of the first decade of the 1900s. I know he’s in as a player, but it seems pretty clear to me that he merits the Hall of Fame honor. It’s a shame he gets downgraded for getting in with Tinker and Evers, who admittedly probably should not have been enshrined. But look how much those Cubs teams won, throughout the decade. And the common thread was Brown, and the three poetic Cubs. While their Hall of Fame place is often mocked, I don’t think any of them, individually, are all that indefensible.
The Frankie Frisch selections, however, cannot be mocked enough. Throwing out his teammates put in by the VC would be a good start. The VC has righted some wrongs, but who rights their wrongs?
“I was once working on a book about the history of the curveball (don’t ask)”
You throw out that you were working on a WHOLE BOOK on the history of the curveball and we’re not supposed to ask how you got roped into that?
“I wonder if he’ll bring Mira to his 10 Year Reunion?? Nah…they’ll probably just send Lisa Kudrow. She could use the work!! OH!”
Ouch. Well played.
I suppose it’s all subjective, but I always felt that Berra, Killebrew, Ford, Foxx, Jenkins and Matthews were definitely Willie Mays type Hall of Famers.
Seriously though, how did Killebrew and Foxx not make it in until their 4th and 6th years on the ballot? That just baffles me. This calls for some research.
And who the hell is Ross Youngs?
I went to the Hall of Fame for the first time this summer, and took my camera with me. I took pictures of many of the plaques. Using the same criteria (no Negro leagues, managers, etc.), I took pictures of 37 plaques. They break down as follows:
“Willie Mays” – 29
2nd Ballot – 3
3rd Ballot – 1
4th Ballot – 2
5th Ballot – 1
6th Ballot – 1
7th-15th Ballot, Veteran’s Committe – NONE
So, to meet my “picture-worthy” HOF, I think they can cut the time on the ballot down from 15 years to two. The pictures I took of those who took more than two years* were for personal reasons as much as HOF-worthiness.
*Roy Campanella is probably the most deserving to be in. Ryne Sandberg was a personal favorite because the Cubs were my NL team growing up. I mainly remember Catfish Hunter for allowing famous home runs to George Brett. Harmon Killebrew played his last season with the Royals. Jimmy Foxx has a cool name, and is probably the second most deserving of these 5.
It seems to me like the BBWAA could fix a significant problem with a write-in vote.
So if people like Lou Whitaker and Larry Doby don’t get 5% of the vote one year, they can be write-in votes the next year. If they get more than 5% as a write-in candidate, then they’re back on the official ballot. No harm no foul.
It’s almost too easy…
David in NYC – Those are solid arguments for the most part. All but this one:
“…Bill James has a very interesting essay in the All-Time Baseball Abstract under the Jim Rice entry which basically concludes that he was significantly less helpful to winning games than his contemporary Roy White…”
You’re right, that’s what James concluded. But it should be noted that he concluded that despite the fact that, by his own calculations, Rice compiled more Win Shares, compiled more Win Shares per season, had better neutralized stats, was a better defender and played a longer career than Roy White. In short, every objective measure he used throughout the book pointed to Rice being the better player, but he decided to rank White ahead of him anyway. You would have to ask him why he gave so much subjective weight to White.
What always interests me is comparing my childhood memories of who was great to the slightly more objective writers. Howard “HoJo” Johnson stands out as more impressive in my memory than Pudge, but I realize that the former has no place in the hall and the latter does.
Same for Andy Van Slyke, Fred McGriff, John Olerud, plenty more.
Maybe the Hall should have more than one category- other than “Best baseball people ever” I mean. Sure the guy who “invented” the curveball should be in there somewhere, but do we need to put him next to Ruth/Mays/Bench? Same for whatshisname who made the ball split with his finger.
First of all, I am not really comfortable with throwing out the entire class of Negro League players just because we don’t have enough information. Owners? Sure. Pioneers? You betcha. Umpires? Yerr OUT! (Heh, heh!) Oh, and Bowie Kuhn? Makes Bud Selig look like the captain of the MENSA College Bowl Team. But to exclude the Negro Leaguers on the grounds of not knowing enough about them just doesn’t work for me.
You know who I wish would get in on the Veterans’ Committee vote? Sherry Magee. There arent’ too many great players named Sherry, and the Hall needs gender equity. I jest, but check this guy out on BRef. He looks like the kind of guy who was just downright enjoyable to watch. (441 lifetime SB, and 23 of them were of home!)
Jim Rice was about the same player as Juan Gonzalez.
Frank Tanana was a better pitcher than Jack Morris – better peak, better career.
Discuss.
I hope Omar gets some of the Maz love.
It is (pretty) safe to say that in any given year, there are 30 future Hall of Famers playing MLB.
Qualification: when I did my research, I did not stop to segregate from the lists the handful of players like Dick Williams (who is recorded by Play Index as a HofF but who got to Cooperstown as a manager). But 30 is a good rule-of-thumb.
No doubt you can easily guess when the lowest totals were.* Years below 29 (total HofF) were 1903, 1911, 1918, 1946, 1948-50 [28 each year], 1952, and (logically enough) any year after 1983.
There was a stretch from 1925 through 1934 when more than 50 HofF were in uniform every year. And a spike of 39 in 1956.
On some future occasion it might be interesting to guess who are the 30 (at least, probably) who played in 2008. I figure 10 are already qualified, 10 are probables unless their career path goes over a cliff, and 10 are guys we’d be lucky to bat .300 with.
*19 future HofF in 1943; 15 in 1944, 14 in 1945.
You know the solution, JoPo, we’ve discussed it many times: Cap the HOF at 200. If you want to put someone in, then you’ve got to take someone out. Over time, the weak will be weeded out in favor of the more deserving and the 200 will represent the truly oustanding, most impactful participants in baseball history. You could have a wing of former HOFers to recognize those who had a run in the Top 200. Harsh, perhaps, but at least finally there’s be some hard consideration of EVERYONE in the Hall, and not just ridiculous scrutiny of contemporaries while the Hall is filled full of those who skated in earlier.
Josh in DC –
To add to your rant re no unanimous selections: how about the first 5 HoF members ever?
Cobb (98%)
Ruth (95%)
Cy Young (95%)
Christy Mathewson (91%)
Walter Johnson (84% — WTF!?!?)
Or, to put it another way:
4,191 hits (at the time [I know the number has changed since 1939 due to SABR research]; most ever) or
714 HRs (most ever) or
511 wins or
373 wins or
414 wins (2nd most ever) AND 3,508 Ks (most ever, at the time [same as Cobb's comment])
were not enough to impress at least some voters.
Never mind not letting them vote for dogcatcher — these people should not have been allowed to breathe.
Oops, I forgot a “most ever” after 511 wins.
I still want to see (from anyone, anywhere), the explanation for Rabbit Marranville being in the Hall of Fame.
Wow…what a great post. There’s just so many juicy details to comment about, I don’t think I’ll get them all out. I will start out by saying that I’m a major Hall of Fame buff, which is odd because I’ve never been to the Hall of Fame, and my opinion regarding players on the ballot can change as easily as a breeze in the wind. (Case in point, I was all for Jim Rice going into the Hall…and then I started reading Joe’s Hall of Fame columns etc.) Nevertheless, I must admit that I knew who Ross Youngs was as early as when I was 12 or 13 years old. (Mostly because I knew him as the Hall of Famer who was dead by the age of 30.)
Anyways…starting at the very beginning…Candy Cummings may have been an egregrious pick among the Pioneers, but I think he wasn’t THE worst. That would have to be Morgan Bulkeley. The guy served one year as the president of the National League and then left to become a Senator or something. I read somewhere that the early VC was looking for a National League executive to counter Ban Johnson going into the American League, and picked Bulkeley just because he was the first president. Meanwhile, William Hulbert, the real brains behind the National League and a man who had been dead for 50 years, was left out. He would remain on the outside for another 60 years until the VC waved him in in 1995, another wrong the VC righted. (I believe that if Ken Burns’s documentary really led to somebody’s election, it would be Hulbert, becuase Burns really took focused on his contributions.)
Regarding Bowie Kuhn…he may not have done anything good for the game…but he really loved it! (At least that’s what all of the biographies said after his election.) Is that not enough? Anyways, if Kuhn got in, Selig would waltz in.
Regarding umpires, it’s a real shame that Doug Harvey hasn’t gotten in after three new VC ballots. I mean, his nickname is “God.” If that isn’t respect then I don’t know what is. Speaking of which, I only know Nestor Cylak as the umpire who went in with George Brett, and the person who suspended the Disco Demolition Night game.
Your mention of the non-first ballot Hall of Famers who were listed as “Willie Mays Hall of Famers” really showed how screwed up the Hall of Fame vote was in its early years. I mean, you’ve got players getting on the ballot before their 5 years were up (heck even before they retired as you mentioned), people staying after getting way less than 5% of the vote, and holding run-off elections after nobody got in. If anything, the history of the Hall of Fame election would be an interesting book to read.
And is it just me, or are the BBWAA really biased towards the 3,000-hit milestone? It doesn’t matter how low the player’s peripheral stats are, everybody who got 3,000 hits after Paul Waner were elected in on the first ballot! Everybody! That’s probably why Lou Brock waltzed in on his first ballot while Tim Raines never even got half of the votes. Rafael Palmeiro will probably break that streak, though.
No mention about how Rabbit Maranville is quite possibly the worst player voted in by the BBWAA? And as far as Frisch VC choices go, would Travis Jackson really count? He was enshrined by the VC in 1982, almost a full ten years after Frisch’s death. Would Frisch’s effect be felt so long afterwards? That’s what I’ve been wondering.
Anyways, while we’re talking about players who probably doesn’t deserve the Hall but we hope get 5% of the vote…why no love for David Cone? The guy did win a Cy Young, throw a perfect game, play on five World Series teams, retire with a 120 ERA+ despite two absolutely abysmal seasons late in his career, and he was a real classy guy.
@ Brent: Whenever I think of Red Schoendienst, I think of him as the manager of the 1967 and 1968 Cardinals rather than their second baseman. Maybe he’s not a guy who could have made it at both, but he’s certainly done a fine job at each job. Oh, and Frank Chance was the manager for the 1906 Cubs, who had the highest single-season winning pct. by any “modern” team.
@ David in NYC: Christy Mathewson’s 373 wins is still tied for the most ever by a National Leaguer, and he was still one of the most popular players in early baseball. And actually, Cy Young wasn’t one of the first five even with his 511 wins. He wasn’t elected until 1937, and even then he squeaked by with only 76% of the vote. The fifth spot was occupied by Honus Wagner.
Anyways, great post, Joe. Hope to read your comments regarding this year’s ballot soon. Go Bert!
RE: Eckersley and Puckett, it’s actually pretty clear how both of them made it in on the first ballot. Eck was widely credited with inventing the modern notion of a closer — rightly so or otherwise. He also posted five straight seasons that make any other closer in history look like a train wreck. Puckett scored a ton of sympathy points for the glaucoma. Puckett’s numbers were not slam-dunk worthy, but his public persona (before things went south after he retired) was.
Addendum: There were 54 future Hall of Famers playing in 1926, 1928, and 1932 — the largest number ever. Mel Ott and Joe Medwick had just come up in one of those years, and Pete Alexander, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Red Faber were almost ready to retire.
As Brent has pointed out, Frankie Frisch (1919-1937) was active at this time and at subsequent Veterans’ Committee meetings. Still, it may have been something of a golden age: the best athletes weren’t playing pro football or pro basketball. And . . . the lists of 54 don’t include the Negro Leagues Hall of Famers who were active in these years.
Dave B, I’m pretty sure Joe isn’t saying that the Negro Leaguers should be excluded from the Hall (or pioneers, or executives, or umpires). He’s just saying that they’re tough to use for comparison purposes, mostly because the average fan doesn’t have a good concept of what they were like as players.
The argument goes “How can you say Alan Trammell is a Hall of Famer? He’s not Babe Ruth!” Nobody says “He’s not Turkey Stearnes,” just like nobody says “He’s not Dan Brouthers.” Turkey is very deserving of his plaque (just like Brouthers is), but it’s hard to use them when discussing modern players. So we “remove” them for discussion purposes, not for actual Hall-related purposes.
Owen and Chardon Jimmy:
I remember reading some article (can’t place it now, of course)
but the gist of the article was turning the Hall into a pyramid. Only the best of the best on the top:Gehrig,Ruth,Cobb,Walter Johnson, Koufax, etc etc
Maybe only like 22 guys.
In order for a guy to make it to the top, somebody has to drop a layer. Maybe cap out the 2nd layer at 50 guys.
Third layer could be like 75 players.
Then the ground floor would be the curve ball guy,owners,umpires,and about 100 players.
Imagine the debates for top pyramid players.
Not that anyone cares,but here is my top 22-and you need to fill it out like a team. You can’t have 22 centerfielders.
Gehrig 1B
Hornsby 2B
Wagner SS
Schmidt 3B
Brett CI
Ripken MI
Ruth RF
Cobb CF
Ted Williams LF
Musial OF
Mays OF
Mantle OF
Aaron OF
Bench C
Walter Johnson P
Seaver P
Mathewson P
Gibson P
Carlton P
Koufax P
Young P
Spahn P
Hall of fame omissions
1. Buck O’neil ( I know that a award and statue are now in place but the committee that put in 15 or so negro league players and exects. and left out a (living at the time) Buck o’neil should be stripped of any future voting and kicked in the as$.
2.Gil Hodges
3. Jim Rice ( I heard all of the arguements against so hold your breath . He Belongs and hhas waited too long)
4. Tony Oliva
5. Luis Tiant( catfish clone)
6. Ron Santo
7 Bobby grich
8. Whitey herzog
9Bert Blyleven
10 Billy martin (MGR and Player combined)
10A never liked him but Steinbrenner belongs
Hey! I like flossing!
“Anyways, while we’re talking about players who probably doesn’t deserve the Hall but we hope get 5% of the vote…why no love for David Cone? The guy did win a Cy Young, throw a perfect game, play on five World Series teams, retire with a 120 ERA+ despite two absolutely abysmal seasons late in his career, and he was a real classy guy.”
Big time Cone fan and, while I don’t think that he merits HOF induction, he is a great counter in my mind to all of the pro-Morris arguments that we hear every year. The only thing that Morris supporters will have over Cone is win total, and they’ve been quick to dismiss that in the case of Bert Blyleven.
Davey Concepcion gets no love. Maybe if he’s featured in a critically acclaimed book….
Because there are so many writers who won’t vote for a guy in their first year, I’ve always thought the 5% rule should not kick in until a player’s second year on the ballot. A lot of players would have avoided their one and done fate if that were the procedure.
This is a great post, Joe. Too good. Thanks.
But some of these comments are just as good, especially that very informative post by AJNRULES. Thanks to you guys too.
@Brent, re: second-basemen
I think those are some pretty good points. I mean, where does a 2B go after he ages out of the position? by that time, his bat isn’t worth a corner spot, and his body is too old for SS or CF. good question.
Your statement about second basemen having shorter careers made a lot of sense to me, so I decided to look into it to see just how much shorter they were. I found everybody who played 1000 games at a given position (it seemed like a decent threshold for a “long-time” player), and then I found the average total games that those players played (meaning, I counted games at all positions they played, including DH or 1B). I then created the below chart. I also ran the list for players who played 1200 games at a given position, to try to limit it to longer tenured players.
MIN: 1000 G MIN: 1200 G
# Avg Games # Avg Games
C 109 1406.83 67 1576.25
1B 125 1709.25 92 1823.05
2B 107 1623.43 72 1748
SS 120 1716.86 90 1862
3B 100 1667.15 67 1825.64
OF 424 1583.91 288 1754.27
P
DH 8 2181.38 5 2237.6
As you can see, besides catchers, 2B do play the fewest number of games in their career, though by a less substantial margin than I’d expect. and though “long-tenured” 3B seem to have longer careers, there are actually fewer of them than 2B.
(I explore the numbers a little more at: wezen-ball.blogspot.com)
darn… that doesn’t look as good as it did as i was typing… let’s try again… hope this works better
…………..MIN: 1000 G ……………………MIN: 1200 G
……………..#……..Avg Games……………#…….Avg Games
C…………..109…..1406.83………………..67…..1576.25
1B…………125…..1709.25………………..92…..1823.05
2B…………107…..1623.43………………..72…..1748
SS…………120…..1716.86………………..90…..1862
3B…………100…..1667.15………………..67…..1825.64
OF…………424…..1583.91………………..288…1754.27
DH…………8………2181.38………………..5…….2237.6
[...] — Dave Studeman @ 9:06 pm Joe Posnanski just received his Hall of Fame ballot, and more than 4,000 words poured out of his febrile mind. If you ever wanted to know how every single Hall member got there, read this post.Order the [...]
No review of VC-elected catchers? Rick Ferrell, Ray Schalk… it gets ugly.
This is just a fantastic post. I’ve been waiting for years for someone to do this. Enjoyed every word. Thanks for writing it.
BTW, are you familiar with Bill Simmons’ pyramid scheme for the hall of fame? It’s a good idea, and you’ve taken the first step to implementing it …
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/020108
You know, if Pete Rose can be kept out of the Hall solely on character issues(can anyone REALLY dispute him as a player?), then Dale Murphy should get in solely on character.
[...] I believe that it has been a while since we have mentioned it, but man, we love Joe Posnanski. [...]
@Lar: Thanks for the research. That was interesting.
OK, my Rabbit Maranville defense. His defensive numbers are absolutely super. In fact, even as a 40 year old, he exceeded the league average in range factor and fielding percentage for the position he played at that point. In comparison, Omar Vizquel, a guy who kept winning GGs well into his late 30s, shows a significant decline in his range factor after age 32.
Now, there is no question that Maranville’s offense is putrid other than a very short period during WWI, but I think the argument for him is his defensive excellence, just as it is for Mazerowski.
To put Frisch’s effect on the HOF into perspective, let’s suppose 30 years from now, the HOF reconstitutes a VC consisting of Derek Jeter and 9 guys he can influence. Let’s further suppose at that point, only Jeter, Rivera, Clemens and Posada are in the HOF from the great Yankee teams that Jeter played on, then let’s suppose the VC adds not only Mussina and Petitte (which would be defensible choices), but also Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, Jason Giambi, and Hideki Matsui. Wouldn’t that seem suspicious?
It’s worth noting that sportswriters are only human, and can’t help liking players who are pleasant, friendly, courteous. cooperative, and quick with a quote. Guys like Kirby Puckett.
Puckett’s numbers were good, but not great. There’s absolutely no way he’d have been a Hall of Famer (let alone a first ballot inductee) if he ahdn’t been perceived as the Nices Man In Sports.
Today, of course, we know that he was anything BUT a nice guy.
So, if it had been widely known that Kirby was, in fact, a creep, would he still be a Hall of Famer?
It would be nice if just ONE sportswriter would come forward to admit, “Kirby didn’t belong, but I voted for him because, well, EVERYBODY said he was a saint. EVERYBODY said he embodied all that was good in sports, and I kinda went along with the crowd.”
It makes one wonder… when sportswriters went on and on about what a great guy Kirby was, did they KNOW the truth or not? I mean, there are only two possibilities:
1) The writers KNEW Kirby was a creep, but pretended he wasn’t, which makes them flat-out liars.
2) They had no idea whether he was a good guy or a bad guy, but parroted the general consensus, which makes them contemptibly lazy, incompetent sheep.
Here’s something that jumped out at me that reflects an amazing shift in the game’s dynamics:
There is only one “Willie Mays” hall of famer of Hispanic heritage on your list. Meanwhile, there are at least three such players that are active (A-Rod, Manny, Pedro), and it would surprise no one if Johan Santana and maybe Hanley Ramirez add their names to that list as well. Interesting stuff.
Count me in as someone who thinks of Jimmie Foxx, in particular, as a Willie Mays HOFer.
I also think it’s ridiculous that Will Clark gets no love for the HOF…not sure if that’s due to his surly personality or what, but he was a HOFer to me (of course, he was my favorite player as I started to fall in love with the game, so I’m biased).
And as an Atlanta native, it astounds me that Dale Murphy doesn’t get more consideration, although I can accept he’s a borderline case at best.
@Gorilla: Pete Rose is not being kept out solely on character issues. Pete Rose is being kept out for violating MLB rules. More specifically, he’s being kept out for violating the (arguably) single most important MLB rule. The one they say is posted in every clubhouse.
@Fozzie: You missed perhaps two of the most obvious ones, in Mariano Rivera and Albert Pujols. Surely they will be “Wille Mays” HOFers. If there were no steroid issues with Ivan Rodriguez (I refuse to call him Pudge, that nickname is taken) he’d be one too. He still might be.
One of the greatest things about this blog is that while Joe’s entries themselves are well- and thoughtfully-written, the comments are often great in and of themselves. A great discussion among people who know and love baseball? Sign me up!
On the downside, by the time I get around to commenting, there’s usually too much to comment on without writing a novella. A couple of points:
Puckett did, indeed, get in because of his rep as a great guy. He was a very good player, but because he was a chubby-looking, smiley guy, people loved him more than his stats warranted. As for Astorian’s comment, I think there was a third option: maybe Puckett SEEMED like a truly great guy to reporters. Maybe, based on everything they saw, he really did seem like the guy that the writers and broadcasters promoted. I’m sure we’ve all known someone who everyone thinks is a wonderful person, but who sets off our own personal jerk detectors. It’s not like reporters trailed Puckett every step of the way, so maybe he was just good at manicuring his image, a la Derek Jeter.
As for the Hall pyramid idea, it’s great in theory, but I don’t think it would solve anything. If anything, you’d still have the same arguments over who merits inclusion at the bottom level (though it probably wouldn’t be as heated, because it would be easier to say induction at that level’s not exactly the holy grail), but you’d also get a ton of battles over who belongs on which level. I’m sure some would argue until they were blue in the face that Dimaggio should be in the inner circle, while others would say he’s on the next level. Once again, it doesn’t solve the lack of consensus on how players should be valued, and people will start championing this guy or that guy as someone who’s being snubbed as a third-level player or what have you. While discussion’s never a bad thing, it would create even more fodder for ill-conceived support of pet causes.
Moving on, I’m also a bit baffled by the fluctuations in voting totals. While I don’t agree with the “not on the first ballot” sentiment, I can see it as the writers’ way of saying “this guy’s a Hall-of-Famer but not an inner circle guy,” akin to the pyramid concept. Once you get past that, it’s even more puzzling, especially when guys jump a great deal in one year. I’m all for writers becoming more informed, but shouldn’t they be doing their due diligence all along?
More puzzling is guys who drop a lot of votes. I can see leaving a guy off because you’re not sure, but how can you feel strongly enough about a guy to vote for him and then switch gears?
And I don’t like the whole “if player X wasn’t unanimous, nobody should be” argument. It’s similar to the arguments made against Blyleven in the voting – he never won a Cy and rarely finished even decently in the voting. The BBWA is just taking past wrongs (for which their body was responsible) and using them as justification for perpetuating more wrongs? Brilliant!
Anyway, Rickey, Rock, Bert, Tram should all be in. I have a feeling only Rickey will go of those four this year. Rice will likely go as well, which will help the Hall with its Halloween celebrations. After all, his plaque will instantly become the most feared plaque in the HoF.
Thanks, Joe.
@ Bob Tholkes: Why do you say (or imply? or maybe I’m just inferring?) that Cartwright doesn’t belong in the Hall as a Pioneer? I just finished editing a biography of A. J. Cartwright (publishes July 2009), and he certainly seems like he ought to be in the Hall! Just wondering what your reasoning is.
AJNRULES –
You’re right about Young and Wagner; I somehow transposed their information between finding it and writing it. Maybe it’s my lysdexia.
Anyway, the point remains the same.
Jim Rice was about the same player as Juan Gonzalez.
Frank Tanana was a better pitcher than Jack Morris – better peak, better career.
Discuss.
I can kinda sorta see the argument for Jim Rice = Juan Gonzalez. Both were huge right-handed hitters with power who played in bandboxes. Rice played 16 seasons, Gonzo played 17 years. Rice finished in the top 5 in MVP voting six times, winning once. Gonzo finished in the top 5 in MVP voting four times, winning twice (once controversially). Rice had twelve productive years before slowly declining for a couple of years; Gonzo had ten productive years and then fell off the face of the earth for four years before finally retiring. Rice had a career OPS+ of 128, Gonzo’s OPS+ was 132.
Now to Frank Tanana being a better overall pitcher than Jack Morris — NO NO NO NO, a thousand times NO. Tanana was a great pitcher for about 4-5 years as Nolan Ryan’s sidekick with the Angels, hurt his arm, and turned info a soft-tosser for 10+ years. Morris didn’t go on the DL at all in the 1980s. Not once. He was a horse for the Tigers.
Let’s look at the peak period for each pitcher:
Tanana (career 240-236, 3.66 ERA, 106 ERA+)
1975 16-9, 2.62 ERA, 134 ERA+
1976 19-10 2.43 ERA, 136 ERA+
1977 15-9 2.54 ERA, 154 ERA+
1978 18-12 3.65 ERA, 99 ERA+
Morris (career 254-186 ERA, 3.90 ERA, 105 ERA+)
1983 20-13 3.34 ERA, 117 ERA+
1984 19-11 3.60 ERA, 109 ERA+
1985 16-11 3.33 ERA, 122 ERA+
1986 21-8 3.27 ERA, 127 ERA+
1987 18-11 3.38 ERA, 126 ERA+
Tanana’s career years were more dominant at a time where 30 HR got you MVP consideration.
I’m not downplaying Tanana’s early dominance by any stretch; he was a hell of a pitcher for the Angels. But he got hurt and turned into a serviceable 3rd starter for most of the 1980s… the latter half of which came alongside Morris with the Tigers.
As a Tigers fan, I’ll never forget Tanana’s 1-0 masterpiece against Toronto on the last day of the season in 1987 to win the AL East. But to say Tanana’s overall career was better — I thumb my nose, sir.
Fozzie,
Is Manny a slam-dunk “Willie Mays” HoFer? I’d argue that he’s definitely at least on the cusp (the upper level outfield is pretty stacked), but I’ve heard enough writers ask whether he’s even a Hall-of-Famer at all. I find that talk patently ridiculous, but it’s there.
I think it’s interesting that 25 years ago, 400 homers made you a lock for the Hall in many eyes. I distinctly remember some gnashing of teeth when Kingman hit the milestone, with the whole “how can Kingman be a Hall of Famer” question butting up against the “how can we keep him out if he has 400 home runs” issue.
Nowadays, we have people with more than 500 homers who will likely have to wait a few ballots at least for induction, and that’s not even taking into account the McGwire/Palmeiro/Sosa PED crew. Some have said they’re not sure what to do with Frank Thomas (as with Manny, I couldn’t see keeping Thomas out – in the first seven full seasons of his career, his LOWEST OPS+ was 174. For a little perspective, Pujols has only had three seasons in eight with a higher OPS+ than Thomas’ early-career worst*).
Thome will also cause some consternation, partly because he was mostly a DH and partly because no one ever seemed to realize just how great his prime truly was. Sheff will get to 500 next year (but will have attitude and PED problems surrounding his candidacy), and Delgado could get there in ‘09 or early 2010…
*As great as Pujols is, Thomas’s career path shows why I think you have to hold off on the inner-circle talk. Pujols hasn’t even played the full 10 years required to be eligible for the Hall, though I’m sure they’d make an exception if he were to wake up tomorrow and decide he was tired of baseball and opted to take up a career as a crocheter or something instead.
You could argue that Pujols is a more well-rounded player than Thomas was – he’s more athletic, a better fielder and a better baserunner – and therefore more likely to age well, but Helton fit the athletic mold and he fell off the shelf a few years back.
Plus, some have whispered that Albert’s older than his listed age. His stats are phenomenal no matter whether he’s 28 or 31, but the difference between a player going into his prime and one coming out of his prime is usually pretty tangible.
I’m not slagging Albert here – he’s the best player in the game – but I think it’s premature to anoint him the next Lou Gehrig when he could be the next Frank Thomas (nothing to sneeze at, but also a very real cautionary tale).
Who belongs? 2 words…. DAVE CONCEPCION.
A further defense to Rabbit Maranville’s inclusion:
I don’t know why I am doing this, btw, I really don’t think he belongs, but I guess it is fun to be Devil’s Advocate.
Anyway, in his first full season, 1913, Maranville finished 3rd in the MVP voting in the national league. Now remember in 1913, the Braves were a bad team, finishing 69-82 (5th place). Further, it is not like he had a reputation that preceded him. He was a first year player. Yet he finished 3rd, despite an OPS of .638, which translates to a OPS+ of 83 (even in the dead ball era, .638 is not impressive). So why? Why did he finish ahead of (among others) Christy Mathewson (a 25 game winner with the pennant winning Giants), Honus Wagner (who hit .300 with the 4th place Pirates), Johnny Evers (his middle infield teammate who had an OPS almost 100 points higher than Rabbit), or even Chief Meyer (the .300 hitting catcher of the pennant winning Giants) Given how lousy his offense was, can’t it be assumed that his Defense was outstanding that year? They had to be impressed by something.
The next year, of course, the Braves won the pennant and Maranville vaulted up to second in the voting. Again his OPS was atrocious (.632), his OPS+ was 85. He lost out to his teammate Johnny Evers that year for MVP. He finished ahead of teammate Bill James, who went 26-7 with a 1.90 ERA. He finished ahead of George Burns of the 2nd place Giants, who hit .303 with 62 Stolen bases. He finished ahead of Sherry Magee, who had an OPS+ of 157.
How? I think the answer must be that Rabbit was something special defensively. Then he disappears from the MVP voting until the 20s, which seems strange since his offense was actually respectable in 1917 and 1919. Guess what? They didn’t have an MVP vote in the NL between 1914 and 1924.
So the first year they have it again, Maranville finishes 7th, again with a very subpar OPS (.706 OPS, 86 OPS+). All the guys ahead of him had incredible offensive numbers (except the Winner, Dazzy Vance, who went 28-6 with a 2.16 ERA and 262 Ks in a hitter’s league) and most of the players behind him did too. His team at that point, the Pirates, finished in 3rd with 90 wins and he got the most votes from his team (ahead of Cuyler OPS+ 148, Wright, 111 RBIs and Carey, 113 runs scored and 62 SBs). Why, well I think it must be defense, right?
He continued to receive votes for MVP through the remainder of his career, including finishing 12th in 1933 when he hit .218 (with an OPS+ of 60) in his last full year of play at age 42.
My guess is that all that MVP love for him has to be because of his defense. Of course, I never saw him play, but his numbers appear quite good defensively.
I would venture to say that he might be considered the greatest defensive shortstop prior to Ozzie.
And that is why he is in the HOF.
Joe says: “Trouble is, it’s pretty likely that Candy Cummings DID NOT invent the curveball — I was once working on a book about the history of the curveball (don’t ask) and I did some light research on the subject, and there are probably at least a half dozen other men who have as good a claim as Cummings, and two or three who have a significantly better claim. Putting him in the Hall for inventing the curve is like putting Romy and Michele in the Inventor’s Hall of Fame for dreaming up Post-It Notes.”
It’s like putting the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and honoring Abner Doubleday with field just down the street.
Interesting question about categorizing Manny. I just assumed his numbers were beyond reproach. His OPS+ numbers have been consistently elite for 15 years. And for fans of the “old school” statistics who think milestones are important, he’s gonna get to 600 home runs if he sticks around for a few more years. If anything, I think Manny the baseball player is underappreciated in the Shadow of Manny B. Manny.
My bad on missing Pujols and Rivera on the list of Willie Mays level Hispanic players. They’re obvious, of course. And make the shift in the game’s demographics even more amazing.
Michael, thanks.
Cartwright is in the HOF because we was credited with creating the Knickerbockers’ rules. At the time, no one had heard of William Wheaton, the Gothams, or Doc Adams, or knew that the Knicks had a rules committee. Does the new biography reinstall Cartwright as THE pioneer of the New York game?
Bob
Go Whale,
The Hall’s performance as selector of major league baseball’s elite may be problematical, and it may have originated as a Depression-era tourist trap, but the library and museum and the Cooperstown ambience make the annual election nonsense worthwhile. And the players seem to take the honor VERY seriously.
Bob –
Yes, you’re right — the players treat this as something VERY important to them and how they will be perceived by history.
Regardless of its flaws (and there are many, only some of which have been brought up here), the Baseball HoF is, without a doubt, and by far, the most serious, significant, and influential of all the halls of fame in all the sports. As just one example: this post and its roughly 100 comments, all because this was the week that the NOMINATIONS were announced (not even the winners).
As Joe correctly points out, there is not a raging debate, even among hardcore football fans, about why Otis Taylor should or should not be in the NFL HoF. Personally, I think it is patently absurd that he is not, but as Joe also correctly points out, I didn’t even know that he wasn’t before I read this post — and the peak of my pro football interest roughly coincides with Taylor’s career.
And, having lived there for four years while in college, I must say that upstate New York in the summer is one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth.
David, thanks.
The boost to their potential income is undoubtedly another factor in the players’ attitude, but the candidates are also necessarily a very competitive group of individuals, accustomed to excelling and unaccustomed to failure.
Try Cooperstown in early October, when the leaves are turning and the crowds have gone south.
I’d like to see the Society for American Baseball Research make a proposal to the people who run the Hall of Fame that they (SABR) would create an Inner Circle of the Hall of Fame. The way it would work: Every year, a “ballot” of maybe 25 or so current Hall of Famers is announced for consideration of being voted by SABR into the Inner Circle, the home of the very best of the very best. The ballot is announced and publicized, and a few months later, the top 4 vote-getters are enshrined in the Inner Circle, and their plaques are moved to an actual special Inner Circle area inside the Hall, with a big ceremony.
After 5 years, when there are already 20 players in the Inner Circle, the number drops to the Top 2 vote-getters each year, so it would take a while before it gets too full. 30 players after a decade of voting, 40 after two decades, ten more each successive decade. It would take 30 years of voting to just get Joe’s Willie Mays HOFs in there, which is kind of the point– this is about history, and the very elite. There’s no need to rush these selections, and most players would be dead before they got in anyway. This is about history, which is why it should be done by historians, not sportswriters.
This would generate a lot of attention and discussion about baseball history every year, which is kind of the point of the Hall of Fame. And if it were to be proposed by SABR, they would do the voting, leaving the sportswriters out of it, and do a far better job. Leave it to people who are devoted to that kind of thing.
(Most sportswriters would probably prefer to not have to pretend to do research into baseball history anyway.)
If SABR doesn’t have the juice to get the Hall to go along with it, maybe a small committee of baseball researchers and historians could get to vote.
Whoever gets to vote, the instructions should be made very clear about exactly what people are supposed to vote for– how much should weight should be given to stats, character, influence on the game, etc.
This would eventually clear up the difference between enshrined players like Ruth and Maranville who are both in the Hall but were very different levels of players. But it wouldn’t require booting players out of the Hall, which will never happen and never should.
I like it better than the pyramid idea, because it’s simpler and doesn’t involve rearranging everyone in the Hall, picking and choosing different levels for hundreds of players. If that were to happen, at each level the decisions would be more and more arbitrary, and people wouldn’t care that much about deciding between 3rd level or 4th level. Most importantly, the BBWAA would definitely be the ones who would get to make the decisions in a change that big, and they would ruin it.
This building the Inner Circle idea would only involve evaluating the very best of the best players, and moving 4 (and then 2) plaques a year, in a big ceremony, after lots of attention and discussion and debate. (If the BBWA absolutely had to be involved in some way, then let them vote for who gets to be on the Inner Circle ballot each year, and then have the historians decide from there.)
The first 4 to move to the Inner Circle would be a nice discussion to start with.
Rabbit Maranville was also a well-liked personality around baseball. More importantly, he was known to be on his deathbed during his last round of HoF voting.
Snuckles:
That certainly could explain the HOF voting. What it doesn’t explain is why the contemporary voters for the MVP voting thought he was one of the 10 best players in the National League for a period from 1913 to about 1930.
The only explanation for that, I think, is that he was considered a great defensive shortstop. And since not one of us has seen him play SS and there is no film of it, the only other thing that I can rely upon is the stats, which support that he certainly was well above average as a SS, at the very least.
Put it this way. Currently, he is tied for 78th in career MVP shares. That is actually pretty good, it ranks him with Hal Newhouser and just below Dave Winfield and Roger Clemens. And just above Enos Slaughter, Pie Traynor and Bill Dickey. However, they didn’t have an MVP vote from 1915 to 1923 in the NL, 9 seasons. He was 3rd in 1913, 4th in 1915 and 7th in 1924. We can suppose that he probably would have got votes the other years too, right? Let’s be conservative and give him credit for the average of his votes from 1924 to the end of his career, which would be .12/year. Let’s give him credit for that per year for the years 1915-17 and 1919-1923 (he didn’t play much in 1918), that would be an additional .96 in MVP shares for those 8 years. I think that is pretty conservative considering his best offensive years were 1917 and 1919, but let’s be conservative. Anyway, then he shoots up to 3.09 career MVP shares and now he ranks just above Joe Morgan and Manny and just below Jim Rice and Mike Piazza.
The MVP voters at the time saw something in him. I am guessing it was incredible defense, given the lack of anything in his batting record that the voters could be giving him credit for.
Does it seem like a lot of the marginal players had catchy nicknames (Rabbit, Little Poisin), etc.?
As an Orioles fan growing up, I loved Brooks Robinson. His hitting stats seem more marginal now, especially the advanced stats, than they did to me then.
But looking at Baseball Reference, I was struck by a couple of things. He clearly was brought to the ML too young – he had over 200 games by age 21 and his OPS+ at that point was terrible. Then he began to hit at age 22 (1959). In 1960, he was 3rd in MVP voting, pretty close to Maris/Mantle. From then until 1974, he got MVP every year but two, winning one (’64) and finishing second in ‘66 (to Frank Robinson, with Boog Powell 3rd). His career MVP share ties him for 17th – every retired eligible player ahead of him is in the HoF and except for Rose (immediately behind him), every eligible player after him is in until #28, Dave Parker.
It’s a little like the Rabbit Maranville discussion – Brooks was such a good defensive player that he got MVP support even when you might wonder about his offensive stats (his best OPS+ was in his MVP season, 145, when he was 6th – his only top 10 finish).
I’d say his defense was crucial to the ‘66 and ‘70 WS (the first Big Red Machine was the 1970 Reds who couldn’t get the ball past Robinson with a cannon) wins and to the elevated stature of the O’s pitching staffs from about ‘66-’75.
Oh, I forgot to finish my thought on his coming to the bigs too soon (as a hitter). He also stayed about three years too long – both periods hurt his career offensive rate stats.
Buchholz –
I really like your idea, and not just because I am a SABR member and could potentially get a vote.
My first four for the Inner Circle:
Babe Ruth
Honus Wagner
Walter Johnson
Mickey Mantle
Bob Tholkes–
You asked “Does the new biography reinstall Cartwright as THE pioneer of the New York game?”
It does–or, I would say, at least as the codifier and proselytizer of those rules. And I think that Wheaton’s writing of the rules happened in 1848 and Cartwright’s in 1845. Again, this is based on my just having edited the book, which is really well written and was a lot of fun to work on–I have no actual historical axe to grind.
You should all buy the book when it comes out!
Michael
Fozzie,
I’m also hugely impressed with Manny’s numbers, but bear in mind that he played in a massive offensive era. His career OPS+ is 155, which is phenomenal, but when we’re talking inner circle, he still ranks behind Ruth, Williams, Bonds, Mantle, Cobb, Musial, Mays, Speaker and Shoeless Joe in the OF, and is tied with Joltin’ Joe, Ott and Aaron. That’s without finishing out his decline phase, mind you.
Great stats, and I’ve always been a Manny fan, but I don’t know that he gets an inner-circle call. One thing that shocks me about Manny is that, despite being an elite player for a decade and a half, and despite all the (reasonable) assertions that he’s on the short list of best right-handed hitters ever, he’s never finished top two in any MVP vote. He’s come third twice, fourth twice (including this year, based on two months in the NL), sixth three times, ninth twice and 12th and 18th once apiece.
While he deserved better in many of those years, there was never a year when you said “oh, come on. How could he NOT have won?” Even if he was the best hitter in a given year – even though he often had a claim for a better showing – he was never EGREGIOUSLY snubbed. There was always someone close enough that the voters could come up with non-ridiculous arguments against Manny. Not saying that he shouldn’t be considered one of the all-time greats because of that, but it’s definitely interesting (to me, at least) and shows how underappreciated he is. It’s almost like the Pujols conundrum, where he’s almost TOO good for people to fully acknowledge his awesomeness.
On June 12, 1925, Kiki Cuyler of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit into a triple play. With Max Carey on third and Johnny Rawlings on second, Cuyler hit a ground ball to New York Giants shortstop Travis Jackson. In the ensuing chaos, Carey got tagged out in a rundown between third and home, Rawlings got tagged out in a rundown between second and third and Cuyler got tagged out in a rundown between first and second.
I’m not quite sure how many times the ball got tossed around but Jackson, catcher Hank Gowdy, third baseman Heinie Groh, right fielder Ross Youngs, second baseman George “Highpockets” Kelly and first baseman Bill Terry were all in on the play. No word on whether the left fielder, center fielder and pitcher went out for coffee.
Interestingly, 6 of the 9 players who were involved in the play are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Cuyler and Carey for the Pirates. Jackson, Youngs, Kelly and Terry for the Giants. Terry is the only one who was not voted in by the Veterans Committee but, still, 6 out of 9 in one play is pretty cool.
It could have been 7 of 9 but Groh was filling in at third for “Better than” Freddie Lindstrom.
I like Sherry Magee for the HOF. He pales in comparison to Honus Wagner, but probably the 2nd best hitter in the NL during the early 1900’s.
David in NYC:
How could you pass up the opportunity to type the word “Boner” consequence-free?!?!?!
Not only is the Merkle Boner my favorite non-Rube Waddell related story of the Dead-Ball Era, it is the singular play that allowed the last Cubs World Series. Plus: Did I mention that you can type the word BONER consequence free when mentioning it??
The Merkle Boner: The Bob Saget standup routine of baseball lore.
Someone above (probably several people above, but I’m not reading all that) said that 400 HR used to be a lock (”cough,” said Evans and Kingman in unison), but that now there are guys with 500 who will have to wait a few ballots. And that’s a really common idea. But how accurate is it to say this is suddenly a big change? Read the post:
Ott – 3rd ballot
Killebrew – 4th
Mathews – 5th
Foxx – 6th
Billy Williams and Duke Snider had 400+, and went in on the 6th and 11th. I’d argue that all these guys except Billy were objectively better players than most of the 500+ guys that will be up for consideration soon, and Foxx, Mathews and Killer are, if not inner-circle, then in the narrow ring just outside the inner circle, and those guys spent a combined total of 15 years outside looking in.
So, yeah, a lot of the 500-HR guys will definitely have to wait a while, and I suppose it’s remotely possible that one or two might not make it at all (but not likely), I just don’t think that would be as unprecedented as people seem to assume.
great article.Its true how football passed baseball a long time ago in popularity but for some reason in terms of HOF’s- baseball seems more significant.warts and all the baseball HOF reign ’s superior over the other big 3.
Excellent article. If anything, I was left wanting more.
Many have brought up the concept of meshing various aspects of a person’s career (ie, Torre as very good player PLUS excellent manager = HOF no-doubter), and I’m surprised that this isn’t done.
BTW, if you do that, Frank Chance goes from being a controversial choice, to a no-brainer.
I would have liked to have been there for that Yankees-A’s game in 1928 that featured the most HOFers ever in one game,
(15?)including Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx and the Babe.
Oh, and Cornelius MacGillicuddy.
Not sure of the exact box score when the 1928 Yanks-A’s game took place, but the team rosters were quite stunning that year:
NY (HOFers)
Babe
Lou
Waite Hoyt
Lazzeri
Pennock
Stan Covelski
Earle Combs
Leo the Lip
Bill Dickey
Mgr. Miller Huggins
(TEN Yankee HOFers in that locker room.)
Interestingly, the team also had a number players who were either major stars, or even of borderline HOF players, including:
-Bob Meusel (Clemente-like OF arm, .309 career hitter, 118 career OPS+)
-George Burns (1926 AL MVP)
-Urban Shocker (over the previous 8 seasons, he had averaged 20 wins per year, with a high of 27; sported one of the best monikers in MLB history)
-Tom Zachary (won 186 games)
-George Pipgrass (arguably the ace of the staff that year, with 24 wins and 300 IP)
And as for that Philly team:
Tyrus
Foxx
Tris Speaker
Eddie Collins
Lefty Grove (think this was an intense clubhouse?)
Al Simmons
Mickey Cochrane
And of course Mr. Connie Mack
That’s 8 HOFers, for a total of 18 between the 2 squads.
The A’s also had their share of interesting non-HOF players:
George Earnshaw (who would win 24, 22 and 21 games over the next 3 years)
Jack Quinn (247 career victories)
Max Bishop (126 OPS+ for a 2nd sacker that year)
Eddie Rommel (former 27-game winner)
That A’s team also boasted some solid brain-power in the clubhouse…Speaker and Cochrane managed teams to titles in 1920 and 1935, respectively, and Cobb and Collins are considered two of the sharpest baseball minds the game has ever known.
It would have been a good time to down on the field with a camera.
If it’s one thing I love about baseball it’s the HOF arguments.
5% of the voters left Ruth out? Those people should be shipped to Siberia.
The greatest baseball stat there is:
When the Bambino hit his 600th career home run, no other player active or otherwise had hit more than 300 career.
Great idea regarding the “Inner Circle” by the way…
Any list leaving off Ruth and Teddy Ballgame would be an abomination.
Bill, good points, and admittedly I didn’t take into account the waits that Killer, Ott, Double X et al had to endure.
The fact remains, though, that until Kingman (as both you and I mentioned), everyone who had hit 400 big league homers was in the Hall. Evans became the second member of that club a couple of years later, and since then a few more have joined.
I see Thome having a problem getting in despite his great career. Some will use the DH factor against him, others will point to a (likely) pretty low career hit total (currently at 2,048) or a high career strikeout total (third all-time with 2,190) or find some other issue to use.
Mostly, I think they’ll say he just doesn’t FEEL like a Hall of Famer – an argument used by people who don’t want to do any research. They’ll also point to his poor showing in MVP balloting to buttress their arguments. He’s had one top-five finish and – though the writers won’t look at this – his 1.21 career award shares rank him alongside Kevin Mitchell and behind guys like Bobby Bonilla and Joe Carter. Not faring well in awards voting is commonly used against Blyleven – the fact that these guys were underrated their whole careers will continue to work against them.
Now I’m not saying Thome SHOULDN’T be in. I’m just saying that objectively, I could see it happening. I’ve read arguments against him and against Thomas. There were arguments against Raffy when he had 500 homers, 3,000 hits and wasn’t known as the finger-wagging guy who got busted for steroid use. McGriff finished seven shy of 500 and I haven’t seen anyone suggest he’s got even a snowball’s chance of getting elected.
I think baseball writers are becoming more informed, and I hope that more and more are – like the owner of this blog – thoughtful and actually thirsty to learn and adapt to newer and more insightful ways of looking at things. I guess I’m just a skeptic that we’ve come all that far.
Greg Maddux is set to retire on Monday. Now THERE’s a slam-dunk Inner-Circle, Willie Mays-type Hall of Famer.
I don’t understand why the Royals don’t retire the Quiz’s number. He was one of the most recognizable Royals from his era, was a fan favorite and a great pitcher. I think every kid growing up a Royals fan in that era loved to imitate Quiz when playing baseball, I know I did.
Short of the Hall of Fame, a retired number would be the greatest honor baseball could give the Quisenberry family and it’s, in my mind, unquestionably deserved.
Justin, let me make a pitch for the value of “career win shares.”
No single total, Bill James or not, should “qualify” one for the HofF. But career win shares have proved to be predictive, in that earning a particular total is 98% certain to get you in. (And of course those with lesser totals get in, too, and great HofF players with careers cut short, like Koufax, aren’t close to any predictive cutoff.)
But compile 370 as a first baseman and you’re in. 400 primarily as a DH and you’re in. Except maybe if you’re a suspect in the steroid era.
Here are some totals to compare Jim Thome to, including names mentioned in your post. Mathews 450, Eddie Murray 437, Foxx 435, Thomas 406, Griffey Jr. 406, Palmiero 395, Bagwell 388, Killebrew 371, Darrell Evans 363, McGwire 342, McGriff 340(?), Baines 307, Giambi 306, Delgado 305, Bonilla 267, Edgar Martinez 264, Carter 240, Kingman 195, Mitchell 178. Jim Thome, 350.
I wouldn’t have picked those numbers out of my hat, but I would have come pretty close to that order for career accomplishment.
Bull e Vard I agree Quiz deserves that honor he was money for years and a class act.
How about creating a great moments category to the hof. many team hof and collegate hof have the category. therefore great hall of fame moments could be offically recognzed without a player being inducted. ie Larsons perfect game …… joe Carters walk of world series winner………kirk gibson ditto ………….buckner blunder………. bobby thompson shot heard around the world………etc.
“…there are 8 umpires in the hall of fame and not one of them umpired a game after 1978.” Isn’t that about the time that ESPN started to take off, and TV started moving from seeing your team once a week at the very most (if you lived in New York) towards the way it is now? Umpire’s mistakes are now analyzed to death-whereas before, they built a reputation within the game. Once you had the rep, you could do no wrong.
Joe, I would like to know the highest rankings of those who are not in the Hall. (i.e. Where is Blyleven ranked etc.)
I came here just to comment on the fact that Arky Vaughan did not miss time to WWII, but due to clashing with Leo Durocher. I’m glad someone else caught it.
Also, Stan Coveleski is ranked in Bill James’ abstract, at 58, which I actually doesn’t do justice to Coveleski. He finished with a 127 ERA+ in just over 3000 IP. He also twice led the league in ERA+, and those weren’t even his peak ERA+ seasons. I’d probably bump him up 15 places.
Not sure how I’ve never been aware of this before, but I was astonished to see that it took the voters 13 years to vote in Ralph Kiner. I know he had a fairly short career, but through the late ’40s and early ’50s he was just plain the best hitter in the NL. Led the league in OPS+ in ‘47, ‘49 and ‘51, drew a ton of walks (more often than he struck out, even as a power hitter), and led the NL in home runs (or tied for the lead) SEVEN YEARS IN A ROW! I don’t generally put a lot of stock in “he’s the only one ever to do such-and-such” (because it leads us to silly results like Jimmy Rollins being NL MVP) but Kiner is the only player ever to do that. Not Schmidt, not Junior Griffey, not A-Rod, not Killebrew, not the Babe. Ralph Kiner.
Did the fact that the Pirates were generally not very good (”We finished last with you, we can finish last without you” is one of my favorite baseball quotes) have something to do with it? Was it the short career? Was he a bad fielder? Was he perceived as disagreeable before he became a beloved broadcaster? Because, I mean, I can understand maybe not thinking of him as a first-ballot guy (the AL was a better league during Kiner’s career, winning seven World Series in a row from 1947 to 1953, which coincided exactly with Kiner’s prime, so maybe the league lead in HR didn’t carry much weight, though in six of those seasons he led the majors in HR), but… thirteen years?
This is my favorite post ever.
wonderful piece
mays best ever at single position
ruth best ever…..as everyday player AND ten-year-2.28 era pitcher
(Dihigo stats might have challenged in a more perfect world)
[...] by Dave Studeman Joe Posnanski just received his Hall of Fame ballot, and more than 4,000 words poured out of his febrile mind. If you ever wanted to know how every single Hall member got there, read this [...]
Excellent Post.
Should be required reading for every HOF voter.
It’s amzing to me just how ingorant most HOF voters are about the actually membership of the HOF.
How is Bowie Kuhn in the HOF and Alan Trammell, Ron Santo, Tim Raines, Lou Whitaker, Bobby Grich, and Bert Blyleven out??
Kuhn’s biggest accomplishment was the introduction of the “SANS-A-Belt” uniform pant.
Joe, while I can agree with a number of your ideas, there are a few things that bother me, and that was the way you dismissed HoFers of which you know little.
Arthur “Candy” Cummings is usually cited as one of the worst choices for the Hall, voted in solely on the legend that he invented the curve ball. However, he actually was a pretty good pitcher in the amateur era and in the professional National Association, which was the major league before the National League began. His lifetime record was actually 145-94, not bad for his day. I do not argue that he was a legitimate Hall of Famer, but he was a bit more than your telling. By the way, that good year he had was 1875, NOT 1865. His 35 wins were third in the league, and Dick McBride was a pretty fair player in his day as well. I would argue that the fact that you personally have not heard of someone from the previous century means little to his worthiness for the Hall of Fame.
And how many “great Turkey Stearnes stories” do you know? You must know a few, as Stearnes played his last two seasons (1939 and ‘40) as a teammate of Buck O’Neil.
The truth is that Stearnes was an odd choice for you to use as an example of your “we don’t have enough information” statement.
Stearnes his .345 for his 18-year Negro Leagues career, among the all-time leaders, along with 183 home runs, an impressive amount given the short seasons of the Negro Leagues and also among the all-time leaders (well, there is that one guy, catcher named Gibson); he led the Negro National League four times in HR and once in BA. His 105 lifetime triples is a fairly impressive number by itself; even ignoring the short seasons, it would put him among major league leaders of the period.
And there really aren’t all that many great stories about Turkey Stearnes. He was a shy, taciturn man who rarely spoke on or off the field; he was better known for talking to his bats and himself than to his teammates.
Negro Leagues researchers are continuing to add to the database of what we know about that time, and are working toward a better understanding of how those numbers translate into a major league equivalency. I think your casual dismissal of the statistical base of knowledge of the Negro Leagues does an injustice to that work.
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