Today at 11:00a in San Diego at baseball\u2019s Winter Meetings, Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark took the podium in the first significant scheduled news event of the week to announce the new inductee(s) to baseball\u2019s Hall of Fame from the \u201cGolden Era Committee.\u201d\u00a0 Ten candidates, whose primary contributions to the game occurred between 1947 and 1972 were considered by a 16-member committee of former players, executives and veteran writers.\u00a0 In order to be elected, a candidate needed to get 12 votes (75%) from the panel.<\/p>\n
The committee pitched a shutout.\u00a0 The result was zero, zip, zilch, nada.<\/p>\n
When Clark made the announcement that no new members were inducted, the silent letdown among the assembled media was noticeable.\u00a0 All you had to do was look at the long faces of the committee members on the dais (Ferguson Jenkins, Pat Gillick and Steve Hirdt) to see that they shared in that disappointment.<\/p>\n
The silence turned into a few groans when Clark dropped the next bombshell, which was the vote totals.\u00a0 Dick Allen and Tony Oliva each received 11 votes, only one shy of the 12 needed for enshrinement. \u00a0Just one lousy vote between Cooperstown immortality and the bitter pill of another three-year wait to try again.\u00a0 Ouch! \u00a0This is bitterly disappointing and problem is not the intent of the 16 voters, the problem is the process (more on that later).<\/p>\n
Jim Kaat received 10 votes, Maury Wills got 9, and Minnie Minoso received 8.\u00a0 The other candidates (Gil Hodges, Luis Tiant, Ken Boyer, Billy Pierce, and Bob Howsam) each received 3 or fewer votes (the Hall does not disclose the actual vote totals if a candidate receives 3 or fewer votes, most likely to avoid embarrassing anybody who might have earned none at all).<\/p>\n
So No Soup for You Minnie! \u00a0Do Not Enter Dick! \u00a0Tough Luck Tony! \u00a0Keep Out Kitty! Move Aside Maury! \u00a0Get Lost Gil! \u00a0Buzz off Billy, Bob and Boyer!<\/p>\n
The 16-member Golden Era Committee consisted of 7 Hall of Fame players (Jim Bunning, Rod Carew, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith and Don Sutton), 5 former executives (Pat Gillick, who is also a Hall of Famer himself, Jim Frey, David Glass, Roland Hemond, and Bob Watson), and 4 media members (Steve Hirdt, Dick Kaegel, Phil Pepe and Tracy Ringolsby).\u00a0 The committee met on Sunday to discuss the candidates and then voted in secret today.\u00a0 Each voter was limited to four votes per ballot and while it\u2019s hard to tell from the vote totals if each voter filled their ballot with a full four names, it looks like they probably did.\u00a0 Ringolsby, appearing on MLB Network shortly after the vote, commented that no negatives were brought up, that there was a strong feeling and sentiment for everyone on the ballot and that it was not a matter of whether any of the members were Hall-worthy but which four each member liked best.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the annual induction this summer will not be devoid of players.\u00a0 The 500+ members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) will consider several dozen players who played much more recently.\u00a0\u00a0 Two first-time candidates (Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez) will certainly be inducted and there will probably be one or two others (most likely Craig Biggio, who finished two votes shy a year ago).<\/p>\n
Personally, as a baseball fan, I\u2019m really bummed about today’s doughnut.\u00a0 I\u2019m from the \u201cmore the merrier\u201d school of thought about the baseball Hall of Fame and this ballot had ten worthy and legitimate candidates.\u00a0 Despite what some purists would like, the Hall is not reserved for players of the caliber of Ruth, Aaron, and Mays.\u00a0\u00a0 There are dozens of players already in Cooperstown (mostly from before 1940) who are inferior to all nine player candidates who were on this ballot.<\/p>\n
Since there were no flies on the wall on Sunday, it impossible to know exactly how the discussions in the committee went, but here are some speculative takeaways, looking forward, from today\u2019s big bummer:<\/p>\n
The first is that the committee favored the living.\u00a0 Three of the ten candidates are deceased; each received three votes or fewer.\u00a0 Former Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman and New York Mets manager Gil Hodges passed away in 1973 and has, over decades, received a higher percentage of Hall of Fame votes than anybody in history who is still outside the hallowed Hall. \u00a0Former Cardinals 3rd<\/sup> baseman Ken Boyer passed in 1982 and former Cards and Reds GM Bob Howsam left us in 2008.<\/p>\n Second, this vote shows the increased awareness of the importance of OPS (On-Base % + Slugging %) as an important statistic.\u00a0 I\u2019m speaking specifically about Dick Allen, one of the top 20 hitters in MLB history in the category OPS+.\u00a0\u00a0 The \u201cplus\u201d in OPS+ is a sabermetric statistic that takes a players OPS and adjusts it for ballpark effects and the overall ease or difficulty of the era in which the player hit.\u00a0 It helps Allen\u2019s case because he put up huge on-base and slugging numbers in a pitcher\u2019s era, the late 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 Allen clearly suffered in past ballots where voters likely focused on his totals of Home Runs (351) RBI (1,119), and Hits (1,848), which are comparatively low because he had a relatively short career.\u00a0 \u00a0One would assume that Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau was in Allen\u2019s corner.<\/p>\n Finally, and this has always been true in the small committees, is that it\u2019s important to have an advocate: Allen never received more than 20% of the writers\u2019 vote and got scant attention with three previous versions of the Veterans\u2019 Committee, in which all living Hall of Famers (between 60 and 84) voted but not in a 16-person group that discussed the candidates.\u00a0 Without knowing exactly how the various members of this<\/span> committee voted (the Hall doesn\u2019t reveal each members\u2019 selections), it\u2019s notable that the 16 men included three former teammates (Bunning, Sutton and Jenkins), three others who played against him (Kaline, Carew and Morgan), and his former GM (Hemond).<\/p>\n Allen was always considered a bad apple and his playing career is marked by multiple disciplinary problems.\u00a0 It was notable that Ringolsby commented that members of the committee came to Allen\u2019s defense, indicating that there were many misconceptions and that in some of the incidents in Allen\u2019s past, he was the victim, not the instigator. Former teammate\u00a0Bunning went on record after the results were announced that he was “completely disappointed” with the outcome. \u00a0So at least we know that this cerebral man, a former U.S. Senator from Kentucky, a man who witnessed Allen’s first four years in Philadelphia firsthand, was in his corner.<\/p>\n Tony Oliva has always had support (more than Allen ever did) but never came as close to induction as he did this year.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but think that former teammate and roommate Rod Carew made an impassioned case for his fellow Minnesota Twin.\u00a0 It\u2019s also noticeable that Hodges\u2019 earned 9 votes on the last Golden Era vote (three years ago) but got 3 or less this time.\u00a0 The 16-member panel three years ago included Mr. Dodger Blue (Tommy Lasorda), four players who played against him (Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner, Billy Williams, and Juan Marichal) and Brooks Robinson, who saw first-hand the influence that Hodges had as the manager of the 1969 Miracle Mets which beat Robinson\u2019s heavily favored Orioles.\u00a0 Not one of the players on this year\u2019s committee played against Gil Hodges.<\/p>\n The \u201cEra\u201d committees meet every three years.\u00a0 Next year\u2019s committee will be the \u201cPre-Integration Era\u201d committee, which will focus on players, managers, executives and umpires whose contributions to the game occurred before 1947.\u00a0 In two years, the Expansion Era committee will consider individuals whose primary contributions were in 1973 or later.<\/p>\n So the players who came bitterly close this year will have to wait another three years before they and their fans can dream again.\u00a0 Although I\u2019m an advocate of his candidacy, it might be time to leave Hodges off the ballot.\u00a0 A separate committee actually determines the ballot that the 16-member group votes on.\u00a0 One would assume that Allen, Oliva, Kaat, Wills and Minoso (who gained 50% or more of the vote each) will get another shot.\u00a0 Less clear is the fate of the five others who received 3 votes or less.\u00a0 Tiant and Boyer got paltry support both this year and three years ago but perhaps three years from now the advanced statistic WAR (Wins Above Replacement) will become more mainstream.\u00a0 Tiant and Boyer were #1 and #2 in this ballot on that measurement.<\/p>\n As for Hodges, it\u2019s hard to say.\u00a0 I think he should be in the Hall but he has considered about two dozen times, with the first try coming shortly after Richard Nixon was elected president. Maybe it\u2019s time for his other supporters to back a different horse.\u00a0 I still like Tiant, Minoso and Kaat for the Hall and, based on his close call this time, I am now on the Dick Allen band-wagon.\u00a0 He certainly had personality flaws and wasn\u2019t always the best teammate, but a committee populated with people who actually knew him nearly put him into Cooperstown and that is good enough to be.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll finish with a suggestion (or maybe a plea).\u00a0 If the Hall of Fame is going to go through the exercise of having these \u201cEra\u201d committees, they should at least elect one new member per year.\u00a0 So I would advocate a run-off process.\u00a0 If nobody gets 12 votes, do a second ballot where each of the 16 committee members vote for one member out of the three highest vote-getters (plus ties).\u00a0 So, this year, the 16 members would have had a choice between Allen, Oliva and Kaat and whoever got the most votes from that trio would get into the Hall.\u00a0 If there\u2019s another tie after the second round of voting, let \u2018em both in, the more the merrier!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today at 11:00a in San Diego at baseball\u2019s Winter Meetings, Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark took the podium in the first significant scheduled news event of the week to announce the new inductee(s) to baseball\u2019s Hall of Fame from the \u201cGolden Era Committee.\u201d\u00a0 Ten candidates, whose primary contributions to the game occurred between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball-hall-of-fame"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rqzv-15","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":24,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=24","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":0},"title":"2015 Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot Part 1: Overview","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"On the day after the conclusion of the thrilling 7th Game of the World Series, with all of the media pomp and circumstance of a trade of triple-A utility infielders, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum announced nine players and one executive who were nominated to be considered\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hall of Fame"","block_context":{"text":"Hall of Fame","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":106,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=106","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":1},"title":"“Oh My!” Dick Enberg is going to the Hall of Fame!","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"For baseball fans that love the Hall of Fame and were disappointed when the Hall\u2019s \u201cGolden Era\u201d committee failed to elect any new players into Cooperstown, Wednesday brought an unexpected treat, the announcement that legendary sportscaster Dick Enberg was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award and will be inducted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hall of Fame"","block_context":{"text":"Hall of Fame","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"DICK ENBERG COPYRIGHT","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/DICK-ENBERG-COPYRIGHT-281x300.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":31,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=31","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":2},"title":"2015 Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot Part 2: Dick Allen","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 6, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In Part 2 of this 4-part series about the Hall of Fame Golden Era ballot, we take a detailed look at the case for and against Dick Allen, no doubt a Hall of Fame talent but one whose controversial career makes him a fascinating study. THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hall of Fame"","block_context":{"text":"Hall of Fame","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":60,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=60","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":3},"title":"2015 Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot Part 4: The Rest of the Ten","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In Part 4 of this series on the Golden Era ballot for the Hall of Fame, we'll comment on the credentials of Luis Tiant, Minnie Minoso, Ken Boyer, Tony Oliva, Billy Pierce, Maury Wills and Bob Howsam. \u00a0Enjoy! HALL OF FAME CASES FOR TIANT, MINOSO, KAAT, BOYER, OLIVA, PIERCE, WILLS,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hall of Fame"","block_context":{"text":"Hall of Fame","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2234,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=2234","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":4},"title":"Part III: Selig, Steinbrenner and Schuerholz","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In the final installment of a 3-part series on the \u201cToday\u2019s Game\u201d Hall of Fame ballot, I\u2019m going to discuss the candidacies of the three gentlemen on the ten-man ballot who did not play or manage on the field. The candidates are former Commissioner Bud Selig, former Royals and Braves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Baseball"","block_context":{"text":"Baseball","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/SELIG-AND-STEINBRENNER.png?fit=693%2C567&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/SELIG-AND-STEINBRENNER.png?fit=693%2C567&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chrisbodig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/SELIG-AND-STEINBRENNER.png?fit=693%2C567&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?p=56","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":5},"title":"2015 Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot Part 3: Gil Hodges","author":"chrisbodig@gmail.com","date":"December 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In Part 3 of this 4-part series about the Hall of Fame Golden Era ballot, we take a close look at the case for and against Gil Hodges, one of the most respected man in the game whose accomplishments over 50 years ago are overshadowed by the gaudy offensive numbers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Hall of Fame"","block_context":{"text":"Hall of Fame","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbodig.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}