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Chick Leads Huge Negro League Class

Edgy DC Feb 27 2006 04:24 PM

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Effa Manley became the first woman elected to the baseball Hall of Fame when the former Newark Eagles executive was among 17 people from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues chosen Monday by a special committee. This year's Hall class -- 18, including former reliever Bruce Sutter -- is by far the biggest in history. The previous record was 11 in 1946. Manley co-owned the New Jersey-based Eagles with her husband, Abe, and ran the business end of the team for more than a decade. The Eagles won the Negro Leagues World Series in 1946 -- one year before Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier. Manley was white, but married a black man and passed as a black woman, said Larry Lester, a baseball author and member of the voting committee. "She campaigned to get as much money as possible for these ballplayers, and rightfully so," Lester said. Manley used baseball to advance civil rights causes with events such as an Anti-Lynching Day at the ballpark. She died in 1981 at age 84. Buck O'Neil and Minnie Minoso, the only living members among the 39 candidates on the ballot, were not elected by the 12-person panel. Mule Suttles and Biz Mackey were among the 12 players selected, along with five executives. Ray Brown, Willard Brown, Andy Cooper, Cristobal Torriente and Jud Wilson were the other former Negro League players elected. Five pre-Negro Leaguers -- Frank Grant, Pete Hill, Jose Mendez, Louis Santop and Ben Taylor -- were also chosen. Alex Pompez, Cum Posey, J.L. Wilkinson and Sol White were the other executives elected. The new inductees will be enshrined with Sutter -- elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America last month -- on July 30 in Cooperstown, N.Y. The new group brought the Hall's membership to 278. Only 18 Negro Leagues players had been chosen for the Hall prior to this election. The election was the culmination of a Hall of Fame project to compile a complete history of blacks in the game from 1860 to 1960. More than 50 historians, authors and researchers spent four years sifting through box scores in 128 newspapers of sanctioned league games from 1920-1954. The result was the most complete collection of Negro Leagues statistics ever compiled, according to the Hall, and a database that includes 3,000 day-by-day records and career leaders. "What we're proudest of is the broadening of knowledge," Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey said. "When we started five years ago, we had 20 percent of the stats. We've got 90 percent of the stats now." Candidates needed nine of 12 votes -- 75 percent -- from the committee of researchers, professors and baseball historians for election. Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent chaired the committee, which voted by secret ballot. Vote totals were not released. O'Neil, now 94, started his playing career in the 1930s and hit .288 lifetime. He became the first black coach in the majors in 1962 with the Chicago Cubs, and played a key role in the building of the Negro League museum in Kansas City. He served on the Hall's Veterans Committee for nearly two decades. Minoso played in the major leagues for 17 seasons, mostly with the Chicago White Sox, and hit .298 lifetime. He was a seven-time All-Star and won three Gold Gloves in the outfield. "I know that baseball fans have me in their own Hall of Fame -- the one in their hearts," the 83-year-old Minoso said. "That matters more to me than any official recognition. "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and I am truly honored to be considered. I've given my life to baseball, and the game has given me so much."

KC Feb 27 2006 04:38 PM

Seems to me a bit of a stretch letting in some of these lifetime achievement inductees.

ScarletKnight41 Feb 27 2006 04:43 PM

Let's petition for Mrs. Payson's induction into the HOF! (SC = high, but the concept amuses me)

Edgy DC Feb 27 2006 04:43 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Feb 27 2006 05:43 PM

Well, a class of 17 from any source would be a stretch. I don't argue with any of these selections specifically (I don't know enough to), but giving one committee full induction power seems like ill judgment. Congress refers narrow issues to committees of more informed members to analyze them closely. Then they make their recommendation and return the issues to the full body to vote on. I''d like to see something more like that. And if they do really see 17 worthies, roll them out at three or four per year, for Pete's sake, and so allow all honorees a chance to get a full moment. Before the article is over, the focus shifts to who isn't elected.

Frayed Knot Feb 27 2006 04:45 PM

I'm always leery when somebody(ies) suddenly "discover" oodles of deserving yet un-honored H-o-F-ers

Johnny Dickshot Feb 27 2006 04:50 PM

]And if they do really see 17 worthies, roll them out at three or four per year, for Pete's sake, and so allow all honorees a chance to get a full moment. I disagree. If you're in, you're in. The whole discussion of first-ballotworthiness is one of the worst things about the HoF and probably, some voters are thinking that way, -- "let's not induct too many guys regardless of their worthiness so as not to obscure the others..." Meh.

KC Feb 27 2006 05:18 PM

They interviewed some woman on the radio (I didn't catch what her authority on the subject was) and she was going on and on about hard enough being a person of color back then but a black woman as well makes her bbbyyy. The article says she was white.

Edgy DC Feb 27 2006 05:23 PM

She was a white black person, or something. I didn't mean that to relate to first-ballot-worthiness. Rather I meant to relate to presenting the honor with gravity of a class size an attendee of the ceremony would remember the next day. As far as "discovering," the fact is --- as Petroskey points out --- a large amount of Negro League data has actually been "disovered," or dug up and compiled. Presumably the revelation of new facts and statitistcs re-frames candidacies. The problem with Negro League stats has long been (and I guess still is, though we have more of them) that many of the more successful teams spent more time making more money playing exhibitions, and they'd play far fewer league games than the other teams in the league. So better players produced fewer statistics, and perhaps lesser players had their statistics pumped up by the better teams taking large parts of the season off, allowing good players to perhaps look very good (stitistically) against a disproportionate number of weaker opponents.

Nymr83 Feb 27 2006 07:50 PM

This is INSANE. The method by which they got in was bad enough but so many at once is just a big fuckin joke. Why don't we just induct every player to ever play in the negro leagues and be done with it.

metirish Feb 28 2006 12:35 PM

Without knowing much of anything about the Negro Leagues I was still surprised that Buck O'Neil was not voted into the HOF, I would have thought he would have made it easy, but what do I know.

MFS62 Feb 28 2006 02:01 PM

Its a shame that Minnie didn't get in. His problem as I see it is that he spent so much time in the majors that he was a "tweener" - not enough time in the Negro Leagues and not good enough stats to be in the regular Hall. Too bad. Later