One of the most fascinating things to debate is who deserves admission to a Hall of Fame, particularly the Baseball HoF in Cooperstown. You don’t hear many debates over the football Hall in Canton, other than they elect too many quarterbacks and how long will they keep Terrell Owens out? The Basketball Hal in Springfield, Massachusetts also doesn’t seem to generate the debates that arise every January when the Baseball Writers do their annual vote for Cooperstown.
The reason why entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame creates great discussions is that THERE ARE NO STANDARDS. It’s like debating which film deserves the Best Picture Oscar, or who was hotter, Mary Ann or Ginger (Okay, that last one is clearly Mary Ann, but as the kids say, YMMV)? It’s not like the system in place for the LPGA, where you get into their Hall of Fame based on reaching certain numerical career milestones. Derek Jeter will be a slam dunk, but for anyone else it is debatable.
With the rise of Sabermetrics there has been more emphasis on quantitative evaluations of player careers, and while I do appreciate this I worry when it becomes close to the LPGA model where anyone with, say, a lifetime WAR of 60 gets in. I’ve written elsewhere about my dismissal of Raphael Palmiero’s HoF resume, even before he failed a drug test after wagging his finger at Congress. Yeah, he has 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, but what did he ever DO? He made the post season three times and lost in the first round each time (and was never instrumental in his team getting there); he only led the league in a significant offensive category twice, and that was most hits in 1990 and most doubles in 1991; he never came close to winning an MVP award, and he only made 6 all-star teams in a 19 year career, and only started one.
To me that is not a Hall of Famer, it is a guy who had a long, injury-free career during a high-offense era, playing in hitter’s parks, who was never thought of as one of the 3 or 4 best players at his position while he was active. But, had he not failed that drug test, 3,000 hits and 500 home runs would have gotten him in to Cooperstown, probably on the first ballot (I suspect in several years the Veteran’s Committee will start fixing some of the steroid era omission “mistakes” like Palmiero and Mark McGwire).
I like to stress that the institution is called the Hall of FAME, not the Hall of good players who put up good numbers for several years. In addition to outstanding offensive (or defensive) numbers, I want to know that the player made a contribution other than just showing up to play every day. The rules for induction (what rules there are) say that entry should be based on a player’s whole career and not on individual season achievements, but those achievements do bolster a player’s Hall cred.
One criterion posited by Bill James in his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame was, could you write the history of baseball during the player’s career and NOT mention him? Some people have criticized the induction of Reggie Jackson, given his low batting average and high strikeout rate; fair enough, but could you talk about baseball in the 1970’s and not mention “the straw that stirs the drink” with the New York Yankees?
Bill Mazerowski was a controversial inclusion in the Hall, given his frankly anemic batting statistics. But he is considered the best defensive second baseman, a key defensive position, of all time. But it helps that he hit one of the most famous home runs in baseball history, a walk-off shot to win Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. An exceptional career absent post-season heroics may make a player a marginal candidate, but memorable post-season theatrics lowers the bar on how exceptional a player’s career stats have to be.
On the flip side, Jack Morris got a lot of support for induction into Cooperstown (67.7% of ballots on his last year of eligibility, just short of the 75% needed) despite posting fairly mediocre numbers over his career. But he had two factoids helping him; his 10-inning shutout in Game 7 to help the Twins win a World Series in 1991, and the fact that “he won more games than any other pitcher in the 1980’s.” But pitcher wins are an overrated stat, the coincidence of the prime of his career coinciding with a decade is just that, a coincidence, and his World Series performance in one game should not be a ticket to Cooperstown absent exceptional performance elsewhere.
It matters a lot to me how players were thought of while they were playing. How many All-Star games did they go to? How often were they in the MVP, or Cy Young Award, top 5 or 10, or won a Silver Slugger? While these things shouldn’t be over-valued (Roger Maris and Dale Murphy both have two MVP awards and deservedly are not in the HoF; Mike Piazza doesn’t have any MVP awards but should have been a first round inductee), but they give a better idea of who was FAMOUS while they were playing than looking over a player’s stats five years after retirement and saying, “Gee, I never realized he was that good.”
ESPN analyst Keith Law, in his book Smart Baseball, makes the point that, while he was playing, Detroit Tigers’ second baseman Lou Whittaker was frequently spoken of as a lock for the Hall of Fame, along with his double play partner Alan Trammel. Law notes that his lifetime WAR of 74.9 is the highest of any player not in the Hall, and if that new-fangled stat is too new-fangled for you, Whitaker would be in the top 8 among Hall of Fame second basemen in virtually every important old-school offensive category. Yet, in his one appearance on the Hall of Fame ballot he got only 15 votes, a figure so low it disqualified him from future consideration.
Law speculates on why Whitaker received such scant support, citing a crowded ballot (for many years there has been a backlog of qualified Hall candidates, and since voters are limited on how many votes that can give some players get lost in the crowd), the fact that Whitaker’s skills were atypical for second basemen, and the possibility that there was a hint of racism concerning his attitude toward the mostly white baseball writers. Here is a case where I would value contemporaneous judgment about Whitaker over the retroactive evaluation after his career had ended and vote him in.
Two pitchers with marginal Hall credentials are Jim Kaat and Tommy John. I think both should be in for contributions other than their pitching stats; Kaat won 14 consecutive Gold Gloves at pitcher and is considered one of the best fielding pitchers ever (Greg Maddux eventually won more Gold Gloves, but his pitching stats are impeccable), and Tommy John had a surgical procedure named after him that is nearly ubiquitous. To me these elevate Kaat and John for enshrinement even if their career win totals are slightly less than 300.
I hope there will never be universal agreement on who deserves to get into the Hall of Fame. Except, of course, when it comes to players like Willie Mays; whoever voted against admitting him should have had his voting privileges taken away.
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