Jul 23 2015 08:19 PM
Well, it's ONE HoF vote revealed, and it's one from 44 years ago.
So the background here is that I'm trying to clean out my mom's house which not only suxx but it's complicated by the fact that she had most of my father's stuff and he never threw out anything. And I think many here know my dad was an artist - a cartoonist to be precise which put him in a position to be at least on friendly terms with a lot of guys a lot more famous than him.
So anyway I'm going through his files and came across a handwritten note to him from Willard Mullin, a name many here will recognize for his artwork on most of the NYM early yearbooks and prior to that in NY newspapers going back to earlier decades. And it's just a quick handwritten note on a piece of 5x7 note paper about some function they had both recently attended talking about nothing important. But at the end, knowing dad to be a big baseball fan, he sticks on a P.S. saying: "My vote for Hall of Fame was for three, and Only three, I thought should be in -- Wynn, Mize, and Kiner"
The date was from Feb 1971 so this obviously dealt with the vote from the previous month. In that year only Yogi Berra (on his first try) got the requisite 75% so it sounds like maybe Mullin was part of the no first-timers school of thinking. Early Wynn finished second that year with 66.7%, Kiner 3rd w/58.9%, Mize was 6th getting 43.6% (Enos Slaughter & Gil Hodges were 4th & 5th). All of Mullin's votes would later get in: Wynn in the very next year, Kiner and Mize, who were both in their 9th year of consideration at this point, would get pass the threshold in 1975 for Ralph while Mize would have to wait for 1981 and a vote by the Vets committee.
And then maybe the coolest part was that famous Willard Mullin signature at the bottom of the note, all those left-leaning vertical letters in his name unconnected to each other.