Master Index of Archived Threads


What were they thinking?

DocTee Jul 28 2007 08:55 PM

On this Hall of Fame election day, some thoughts: 1. 9 voters (of 415) left Henry Aaron off their HoF ballot in his first year of eligibilty. This is a man who STILL has an sizable lead on the Total Bases Record. In fact, if you spot Barry Bonds another 100 home runs, he'd still trail Aaron. Astounding. 2. Cy Young and his 511 wins were not good enough to be among the first entering class. 3. Johnny Bench had a higher percentage of votes than Willie Mays.

Edgy DC Jul 28 2007 09:15 PM

I think guys are either in or out, and I'm not sure that it's productive to get animated over the minority vote of guys either overwhelmingly voted in, or overwhelmingly passed on. Democracy needs a minority. Even on the first election, they were assigning 20th-century careers to the BBWAA, and 19th century careers to a veteran's committee. They didn't figure out quickly enough how to deal with Cy Young's hybrid career. The two groups didn't know how the other was voting, so they were perhas confused. Other things about the 1936 ballot: Writers were explicitly reminded that the names on the ballot were merely a suggestion, and that they could go off the ballot. Banned players, including Joe Jackson, were eligible, and indeed remained so until 1947. Jackson received two votes. There was an implied desire to have an initial class of only five players, another thing working against Young --- and Napoleon LaJoie, Tris Speaker, and the Rajah. There was no prohibition against voting for active players. That implied limit of five selections --- and the explicit limit of 10 yea votes --- was killer, as 37 (by my count) also-rans from that year were eventual Hall-of-Famers.

DocTee Jul 28 2007 10:01 PM

Good points, was unaware of the circumstances surrounding the 1936 induction. And I agree with the "either in or out" comment...my point is how did nine say Aaron shouldn't be in. (We'll leave the "first-ballot sanctimony aside for the time being) Something I learned today, to my surprise: in Ripken's 20 seasons, he had but three where he scored 100 runs, and only four with more than 100 rbi.

Nymr83 Jul 28 2007 11:53 PM

DocTee wrote: Something I learned today, to my surprise: in Ripken's 20 seasons, he had but three where he scored 100 runs, and only four with more than 100 rbi. Arod, Nomar, Jeter, etc have ruined forever the perception of what a SS needs to do to get respected. I predict that Omar Vizquel will one day be left out of the Hall of Fame largely because of the players that followed him.

RealityChuck Jul 30 2007 05:24 PM

Nymr83 wrote: ="DocTee"] Something I learned today, to my surprise: in Ripken's 20 seasons, he had but three where he scored 100 runs, and only four with more than 100 rbi. Arod, Nomar, Jeter, etc have ruined forever the perception of what a SS needs to do to get respected. I predict that Omar Vizquel will one day be left out of the Hall of Fame largely because of the players that followed him. True, but Ripkin started the process; he was not the typical shortstop and probably led to people thinking that Arod, Nomar, and Jeter could stay at SS as they developed.

Nymr83 Jul 30 2007 05:41 PM

good point.