BARN DOOR II

 

               The drama in the annual elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame used to center on the sportswriters’ mail balloting, which takes place around year end with its results announced in January. Not so the last few years as the so-called veterans’ committees, now renamed, have done the bulk of the electing, accounting for nine of the 11 inductees in 2021 and 2022. The committees once were described as side doors to the Hall but lately they’ve been barn doors.

 For better or worse, that will be the case again this year, when the Contemporary Era Committee, charged with examining the credentials of men who performed mostly after 1980, peruses a slate of eight former players and announces its conclusions on Sunday, December 4. The sportswriters then will do their thing as usual with a different slate, but a less-interesting group of candidates means less attention to their proceedings. So score another for the vets.

The reasoning behind the system is opaque, to say the least. All the player-candidates the vets will examine have been rejected by the sportswriters on at least 10 annual occasions (it used to be 15),  and being retired from the diamonds their objective qualifications haven’t changed since their exits. That can bring into play other, fuzzier considerations, such as the post-career managing or broadcasting jobs and plain old popularity.  With 400 or so men and women doing the sportswriters’ voting, and a 75% vote needed for admission, the peripheral stuff pretty much cancels itself out. The 16-member vets groups also require a 75% vote, but that works out to just 12 yeas, so the table can easily be tilted. Would Benjamin Franklin have approved?

The procedure will get particular attention this time because three of the eight vets’ candidates have sterling objective credentials but were denied election on another ground. That would be their credible connection to the illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs during their playing days. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were the best hitter and pitcher, respectively, of their era, while Rafael Palmeiro had more than 3,000 hits and 500 home runs over his 20-season career, both numbers formerly automatic Hall triggers. But by reliable accounts all three chose to gild the lily of their abundant talents by juicing up, in the process putting ugly and permanent asterisks on the records that are baseball’s lifeblood.

Bonds and Clemens began their sportswriters-ballot odyssey by getting about a third of the vote in 2012 and ended it last year at about two-thirds, close but no cigars. Palmeiro, who under oath denied steroids use to a Congressional committee before failing a drug test, was rejected out of hand by the writers, flushed from their ballot after four years for failure to get the 5% vote required for retention. Thursday’s voters include seven Hall of Fame players, six executives and three longtime news media members, so their action will measure how what amounts to baseball’s Establishment views the steroids era, roughly 1990 to 2005. I’d be surprised if they welcomed any of the three, but I’ve been surprised before.

Two other vets-ballot members also haul lots of baggage. Albert Belle was an accomplished slugger but also one of the surliest men ever to play the game, a noted smasher of teammates’ boom boxes and upsetter of clubhouse buffet tables. His sportswriters’ vote topped out at 7.7% in 2006 and it’s a mystery why he’s getting another look. Curt Schilling was a fine pitcher but was disliked by other players and has spent his post-baseball career badmouthing minorities and the news media on right-wing political outlets. He got a 71% vote in 2020 anyway just might make it this time.

By me, the remaining three fit into the very-good-but-not-great category of many Hall nominees. Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy and Fred McGriff were also-rans in the writers’ voting, with Mattingly and Murphy never topping a 30% result. Mattingly now has an edge over the other two because of his managerial service and nice-guy rep.

               Of the holdovers on the writers’ ballot Scott Rolen, Todd Helton and Billy Wagner have the best chance of election by virtue of each polling more than 50% last year, but I’d vote only for Helton.  Pitcher Andy Pettitte is an interesting candidate because of his 256 career victories and post-season prominence, but his chances are discounted because of his admitted use of banned HGH in injury rehab and the fact that New York Yankees’ pitchers have a leg up in the wins department.

               Among the 14 writers-ballot newcomers only Carlos Beltran has first-ballot playing-field credentials, with 2,725 hits and 435 home runs in a 20-year playing career, but he carries his own potent negative—involvement in the 2017 Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Indeed, he was the only player named in the commissioner’s report on the matter, and it caused him to be fired as the New York Mets’ manager shortly after he was hired in 2018. How Beltran fares in the voting will presage how other Astros’ stars such as Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will do when their names come up in retirement.

               It’s possible that the sportswriters could refrain from electing any new Hall members this time, as they’ve done in some past years, and that’s a reason the vets committees are given the sway they have. The biggest event on the Hall’s annual calendar is its July induction ceremony, a weekend fest of baseball and speeches, and it wouldn’t be much of an occasion with no inductees. On such matters does immortality hinge.

    Epilogue-- On Sunday the 16-member vets group unanimously elected McGriff to the Hall, his blameless life helping boost his very-good-but-not-great batting stats. A two-thirds vote was required for election. Mattingly gathered eight votes, Schilling seven and Murphy six. None of the other four candidates received more than three votes. McGriff never topped 40% over 15 years on the sportswriters' ballot.   

 

 

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