Some thoughts on the Hall of Fame
Taking a break from being mad at sports owners to be mad at sportswriters
Sometimes I think about people on power trips.
It must feel so good, right? To have all this power and to use it just to show people that you can. To lord it over everyone else that they would do something good, but you, you don’t have to. You can do whatever you want. You were given this gift, and you are going to use it, and if they don’t like it, they can shove it.
In one form, that looks like this:
Look at this asshole. He’s an asshole! He’s doing this to be an asshole!
Steve Marcus, who identifies himself on his Twitter feed as a former sports reporter at Newsday, voted for no one for the Hall of Fame for the second straight year. Two ballots ago, he voted for only Derek Jeter, meaning that over his last three ballots, Steve Marcus has voted for exactly one (1) Hall of Fame candidate.
If you’re a big math person, that’s a third of a candidate per ballot. If that helps.
This is preposterous. Is it actually possible that for three years, there was only one player worthy to be enshrined in Cooperstown? Of course not. Even if you, like a rube, totally discount anyone who used steroids, then you still have Scott Rolen and Jeff Kent and Todd Helton, all of whom were clean. You still have Mark Buehrle and Billy Wagner, who pitched against these roided up monstrosities and therefore should get double credit for every one of their stats. You have a really interesting argument for Andruw Jones, who was dominant for a decade before he fell off a cliff.
There are, by any stretch of the imagination, by any definition of the term, Hall of Famers in this class. The reason not to vote for anyone is to show off that you voted for no one. On Twitter, Marcus said that he didn’t vote for Rolen because he thinks the HoF is only for all-time greats, and then he spent a lot of time advocating for Gil Hodges, who was a similar hitter to Rolen (120 OPS+ in 8104 PAs, compared to Rolen’s 122 OPS+ in 8518 PAs) at an easier defensive position (first base compared to third). It’s all self-interest. He thinks of himself as The Pure Hall Of Fame Guy, and wants everyone to know it, and will punish other people accordingly.
The Hall of Fame is all about him, and he will hurt other people for as long as he has to to let everyone know it.
And if we’re being honest about it, “as long as he has to” means “until they die.”
It is great that Gil Hodges got into the Hall of Fame. It would have been greater if he’d gotten in while he was alive, but he died at 47, so there wasn’t time while he was alive. It is great that Minnie Miñoso made the Hall of Fame. It would have been greater if he’d gotten in while he was alive, but he never got voted in. It is great that Buck O’Neil made the Hall of Fame. It would have been greater if he’d gotten in while he was alive, but it didn’t happen. It is great that Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat made the Hall of Fame while they are able to enjoy it, and I commend the Veterans Committee — the voters in this case — for doing the right thing.
It is a tragedy that Hodges, Miñoso, and O’Neil never got to see that they received baseball’s ultimate honor. If you give your life to baseball, and you are one of the all-time greats, you should be able to receive the plaudits that you deserve in person, when you are there to see it. I am happy for their families, glad that their wives and children can enjoy the honor, but the moment would mean so much to these people, and they won’t be able to enjoy it.
Dick Allen fell one vote short, though, for the second straight ballot. Allen was a spectacular hitter, and a worthy Hall of Famer, and because he had some off-field controversies (a white teammate hit him with a bat and Allen wasn’t allowed to tell his side of the story, he played in Philadelphia and the fans wouldn’t stop throwing shit at him, one time he got stuck in traffic and missed a double-header), sportswriters hated him. The man had a 156 OPS+ over 7300 PAs in his career and couldn’t even crack 5% of the sportswriter vote for the Hall.
Allen died one year ago today, so he wouldn’t have been around to enjoy the honor even if he’d been voted in, but he deserved the recognition as much as anyone. He deserved the validation that the baseball establishment had always been so tentative about giving him. He had a much better career OPS+ than Tony Gwynn, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and then I stopped plugging random Hall of Famers into Baseball Reference because I got bored.
Dick Allen is the victim of people like Steve Marcus, people who go out of their way to find a way to exclude deserving players from the Hall of Fame. Marcus here represents that baseball groupthink that decides who really deserves it, shuts people out for facile, lazy reasons, and gets uppity about sabermetrics when called out on it. This is the harm that Steve Marcus helps cause. The Hall of Fame is a wonderful institution celebrating a wonderful game, but the bad things about it really hurt.
Putting Hodges, Miñoso, and O’Neil in the Hall, even posthumously, helps heal some of that hurt, but some of it just has to exist in the world. While they were alive, they were denied an honor they all (rightfully) believed they deserved. Now, the Veterans Committee has given them what it could, and their families, at least, can celebrate. Hopefully, someday Dick Allen’s family will get to experience that same feeling.