THE BARNDOOR

 

 

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.