The new class of inductees into
Baseball’s Hall of Fame has been selected, and there will be a party for them
at the Cooperstown, New York, shrine a week from Saturday (July 23). Seven men
will be inducted: David Ortiz, Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso,
Tony Oliva and Buck O’Neil.
But
“Wait a minute!” some will say. Wasn’t Boston Red Sox slugger Ortiz the only
player picked by the sportswriters at their last election? That’s right, but
there are other roads to immortality in the National Pastime, namely the
so-called “veterans committees.” Their deliberations don’t receive as much
attention as the writers’ balloting, but their results have the same effect.
Those
avenues have been called “side doors” to the Hall but, lately, that’s been a misnomer.
They’re more like barn doors in their permissiveness. Of the 11 men dubbed for
the 2021 and 2022 classes only two—Ortiz and Derek Jeter—have entered via the
writers’ vote. The rest—Marvin Miller, Ted Simmons and Larry Walker in addition
to the above-mentioned six—are vets’ choices. A bit of an overload, don’t you
think?
First
things first, the vets’ committees aren’t called that anymore. Their number has
varied from time to time but for the last few years there have been two of
them—the Contemporary Baseball Era group, covering the playing years 1980 to
the present, and the Classic Baseball Era group, covering previous years.
Each committee consists of 16 members,
including Hall of Fame players, former team executives and newspeople of long
standing. Each meets once every three years. Candidates are funneled to those
sessions by a steering committee. For induction, a vote of 75%, or 12 members,
is needed. That contrasts with the 400
or so writers who have taken part in recent elections conducted by the Baseball
Writers Association of America. Seventy-five per cent approval also is required
for election by that group, but the difference between the two is greater than
that of scale. Getting three-fourths of any sports-writer assemblage to agree
on what day it is quite a feat, much less on anything more contentious.
Hall vets’ committees have been around
since 1937, a year after the Hall opened, but for many years they weren’t much active.
That’s partly because the game didn’t have as much past then as it has now.
From the start the units have had sole control over the admission of
non-playing candidates, who now account for 74 plaques on the Hall’s walls of
honor. That breaks down to 33 executives, 22 managers, 10 umpires and nine
Negro League stars, the last category a recent addition. Of the 268 players who have been honored 105—or
39%-- have entered via the vets’ route.
Interestingly to many, there are
few standards for players appearing on Hall’s ballots. One only must have had a
Major League career of 10 years or more, be retired for five years and not be
on the game’s ineligible list. That last requirement is what has kept Gamblin’
Pete Rose out. A screening committee also must give its okay but that’s been granted
liberally; every year’s list contains 25 or so new names but only about a
half-dozen get the requisite 5% vote to go on to the next year. If a player
falls short of the magic 75% count in 10 years (it used to be 15), he's turned
over to the vets.
Vet-committee actions sometimes
correct obvious injustices. For example, Nellie Fox, the old Chicago White Sox
second baseman, was denied admission despite having received a 74.7% tally in
his last year (1985) with the writers, but was admitted by the vets, albeit 12
years later and well after his death. Usually, though, the differences are
greater. Among this year’s vet-picked player inductees only Hodges, the
ex-Dodgers’ first baseman, topped 50% with the writers (63%). Oliva topped out
at 47% and Minoso and Kaat never hit 30%.
Were they very good? Sure. Great? Uh, maybe.
O’Neil made the Hall as an exec,
but his credentials were varied. He had a long Negro League playing career, then
became noted as a scout and mentor. In 1962 the Chicago Cubs made him the
game’s first African-American coach and he later helped start the Negro League
Hall of Fame in Kansas City.
The case for Fowler is more iffy.
Born in 1858, he was recorded to have played with a mostly white professional
team in Pennsylvania at age 14 in 1872, apparently making him baseball’s first
African-American pro. A barber by trade, he stuck around the game in various places
and capacities until 1904. He died in
1913 at age 55. Record keeping then wasn’t what it is now so any information
from that era is questionable, and no one who might be able to say yea or nay
firsthand is still alive. His addition
extends the vets’ dubious practice of digging up ancient names for recognition
long past the time those honored might have enjoyed it.
Indeed, almost all the question-mark
names in the Hall were put there by the vets, with non-playing considerations
and popularity often involved. Cases in point are Ron Santo, Phil Rizzuto and
Richie Ashburn. All were excellent players, and fine fellas, but their stats
were H of F-borderline at best. Santo never topped 43% in 15 years on the
writers’ ballots, Rizzuto's and Ashburn’s tallies were mostly in the 20 and 30
per cents. But all stayed in the game as
broadcasters and made friends and influenced people, including the 12 men whose
votes made them immortal. The rest of us should have that sort of shot.
