ON DECK

 

               In sports sometimes the important thing isn’t what you do but when you do it. A case in point is the sportswriters’ election for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s class of 2021 now in progress, with the results to be announced later this month.

               Eleven new names are on the ballot and none of them appears likely to come near the 75% approval that brings a plaque in the Cooperstown, New York, shrine. That will increase the chances of success of the 14 holdovers from previous rounds. All those gentlemen have been retired from the game for six years or more, meaning that the objective reasons for their so-far exclusion (their stats) haven’t changed, and never will.  But it’s a beauty contest in which candidates are judged in relation to one another as much as to any set standards, so a fella who wasn’t pretty enough one year might be quite appealing the next.

               This year’s roll stands in sharp contrast to those of the previous seven years, in each of which a first-ballot candidate was elected. Indeed, in 2015 three players made it in that manner (Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz) and in 2014 three also did (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas). Electors can include up to 10 names on their ballots, so each one selected takes a place another might occupy.

               Of the 2021 newcomers (listed below) only two would merit my approval were I voting. One is the left-handed pitcher Mark Buehrle who in 16 seasons, mostly with the Chicago White Sox, compiled a 216-160 won lost record, pitched a perfect game and another no-hitter and earned a World Series ring (in 2005). He was a canny guy who got along on guile and was personal favorite of mine because of his catch-the-ball, throw-the-ball approach to pitching. When he took the mound a two-hour game was in prospect.

 The other is Torii Hunter, a swift outfielder who hit safely 2,452 times and accumulated nine Golden Gloves in a 19-season career with several American League teams. He also won the 2009 Branch Rickey Award for outstanding community service, something that might not count with some but should. Neither he nor Buehrle, though, dominated the game in the manner of, say, Randy Johnson or last year’s honoree Derek Jeter, and both will fall well short of election this time.

The primary beneficiary of the weak ballot-newcomer list should be the pitcher Curt Schilling. He had a 216-146 won-lost mark over 20 seasons, similar to Buehrle’s, but his 3,116 regular-season strikeouts were more impressive, ranking 15^th all-time. Further, he was a playoffs ace extraordinaire, posting a 11-2 record postseason and earning two World Series rings, with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001 and the Boston Red Sox in 2004.

Schilling’s main problem in his eight seasons of Hall eligibility has been that he’s anything but curt in his off-field utterances, which have made him a regular on right-wing talk radio.  One particularly off-putting remark—an assertion that transsexual individuals lurk in public rest rooms to molest women and children—costs him a job as a baseball analyst on ESPN.

Schilling has bad-mouthed his Hall chances, saying “the writers hate my politics,” but that didn’t keep him from polling a 70% vote last year, and no one who has come that close with time remaining hasn’t gotten over the hump the next time. I don’t agree with his politics but I voted for him three times when I could, in 2013, ’14 and ’15. His Cooperstown acceptance speech should boost the ceremony’s TV ratings.

More interesting should be the votes for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, towering figures in the sport who have been deeply tainted by suspicions of steroid use during their careers, a sin against the game. All-time home-run leader Bonds and 354-win-pitcher Clemens, also in their ninth years of eligibility, have run as a sort of entry in Hall elections since they joined the sportswriters’ ballot in 2013, a year in which Bonds got 36.2% of the vote and Clemens 37.6%. Not much more than 1% has separated them since as they climbed to 60.7% last year (Bonds) and 61% (Clemens).

It’s still quite a leap from those totals to the magic 75%, and both men have but two more years to go before they’re dropped from the writers’ ballot. After that their cases will be in the hands of one of the old-timers’ committees that offer a side door to the Hall. Their acceptance or lack thereof is an annual referendum on how steroid use is regarded by the press-box denizens. Not this year is my guess. Not next year either, I hope.

The next-highest vote getter last year, at 52.6%, was Omar Vizquel, the web-magician shortstop. He figured to get a good bump up this time but recent domestic-violence allegations by his estranged wife probably nixed that.

Virus permitting, there will be an induction celebration in July even if no one is named when the votes are announced later this month. Last year’s class (Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons and the late players’ union head Marvin Miller) has one coming because their honors were postponed.  Come to think of it, we have one coming, too.

First-year eligibiles this year besides Buehrle and Hunter are Tim Hudson, Dan Haren, Barry Zito, Aramis Ramirez, Shane Victorino, H. J. Burnett, Nick Swisher, LaTroy Hawkins and Michael Cuddyer.