Just to clear things up, there are some peripheral issues around Joe DiMaggio and several other inner-circle-but-not-first-ballot Hall of Famers. When DiMaggio retired at age 36, there was no five-year waiting period: he was eligible immediately. Many writers thought the retirement was a temporary thing and held off voting for him, not wanting to induct a potentially “active” player. After a couple of years, they finally realized that Joe D wasn’t coming back, and the Yankee Clipper got the votes in 1954. That same year, the five-year waiting period came in.
Cy Young’s “first ballot” would have been the inaugural 1936 polling. He was competing against sixty years of organized ball; his omission is understandable. Similarly, Babe Ruth had only been retired a year by that point; the hagiography that makes a Hall of Fame without Babe Ruth unfathomable today was still building, which may account for the Bambino garnering “only” 95% of the vote. There are numerous other peccadillos associated with Hall of Fame voting over the years, and these are summarized reasonably well by Bill James’ Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?
What I’m expressing here is that DiMaggio and Young’s waits for induction should not affect the process for someone like Mike Piazza. Joe D and Cy Young weren’t excluded on their first try just because it was their first ballot; there were other, reasonably valid circumstances keeping them out. There is no reason to withold a vote just because it’s a player’s first time on the ballot, and I hold writers who do so in contempt.
ETA: It appears that I’ve made the same points RickJay made while I was typing.
I’m honestly struggling to understand what I’m supposed to make of this; can you maybe explain the argument? If what you’re saying is there’s no movement towards a first-ballot veto in the 2000s,
The existence of the sentiment doesn’t necessarily mean guys won’t get in. I mean, 20-25 people didn’t vote for Rickey Henderson, for God’s sake, but he still got in.
The data sample is a bit small to draw any conclusions, and
At least to my eyes, the quality of first ballot choices is clearly not the same all the time.
It is interesting to note that the number of players who get votes has declined significantly, even in years when the ballots are rich with good candidates. In the 1950s, when Joe DiMaggio had to wait a few years, most writers used every spot on their ballot. For the decade most ballots had 8, 9 or 10 players named. In the 1960s and 1970s, the typical ballot had seven or eight names. In the 1980s it dropped, going below 7 names per ballot for the first time in 1987, then below six in 1993, and never getting back up to seven since. That is, again, consistent with the notion that a backlog was solved, but for quite awhile it appeared the voters were happy to put clearly qualified candidates in on the first ballot. For instance, in 1999, the votes per ballot suddenly jumped with the arrival of Nolan Ryan, George Brett, and Robin Yount, but it still wasn’t what it once was.
The basis for my claim is that the “first ballot veto” thing just wasn’t around 20 or 30 years ago the way it is now. I admit to more than a little extent that’s a subjective thing, but I cannot find it being used nearly as often in the past as it has been recently, at least not publically - indeed, on the few occasions it was, it was a newsworthy, unusual thing. Now it’s par for the course. Now people, a lot of people, seem to accept it as a meaningful standard, a sort of Other Hall of Fame Class, despite the fact that it’s meaningless. (I’m betting even most of serious baseball fans, given a quiz on Which Of These Hall of Famers Were First Ballot Choices, would fail.) There’s no equivalence between this and the way it worked prior to the player backlog being dealt with.
But hey, I could be wrong; it’s just my perception of sportswriters, which is admittedly a contemptuous one.
Bumping for anyone who still wishes to vote or comment-looking like, as in our ballot, that nobody will be elected-Biggio leads all candidates in ballots already released (c. 20% of the total) with c. 67%. The fact that nobody is pushing 75% here either suggests that the problem is mostly structural, inherent in the voting restrictions, what happens when you get a glut of qualified candidates but only 10 spots you can use. Combine that with the relative lack of any sort of consensus thanks the steroid issue, and this is the kind of mess you can get. Average # of names per ballot is also almost the same as the BBWAA’s, in the low 7’s. (7.15)
It’s amazing that on such a loaded ballot, which so many obvious (to me at least) Hall of Famers, that BBWAA may elect nobody on Wednesday. Something is obviously broken, and hopefully the Hall will recognize it and react.
I’ve been saying for a couple of years that they needed to let the voters pick more than 10 players per ballot. Maybe they’ll make that change if nobody in this group gets elected.
BBWAA Rules for Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Rule 5: Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.
BBWAA’s results are announced tomorrow. The results will be interesting.
That’s funny, considering only now does that clause suddenly become relevant. Where was all the caviling and pulpit-mounting when the likes of Gaylord Perry and Ducky Medwick were getting elected?
Or consider that in the initial voting Ty Cobb got more votes than Babe Ruth.
Did any of you see the morally outraged ESPN headlining column about why Wallace Matthews won’t vote for any steroid users? Somehow he comes up with this ballot: Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling. Not mentioned anywhere in his column? Jeff Bagwell.
And that’s the problem. Until you can give me an ironclad standard of which players are kept out due to PED use I would vote for all of them. Better a guilty man get in than an innocent man be kept out due to unfounded suspicion.
No, I’m suggesting they will have the option to vote for more than 10. I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a record number of people getting more than, say, 20% or 30% of the vote - the SDMB poll has 12 players with more than 20%. This year is a perfect storm of strong candidates, PED controversies, expansion, holdovers and other stuff, and because the number of votes is limited I think a lot of the players are simply subtracting votes from each other. So we’re looking at a stalemate where there could be 10 or 12 deserving candidates and none of them get in. So next year all of these guys would still be on the ballot (as would Lee Smith) PLUS Greg Maddox, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina, and (here comes the PED train again) Luis Gonzalez. I’m sure some of this year’s eligibles would get in next year because there’s also the anti-first ballot protest vote to be considered and there will be holdovers no matter what, but this just looks like a mess to me.
If you’re keeping out PED users, Bagwell’s clean career with slightly lesser numbers than the cheaters looks even more impressive. By excluding him, he’s punishing the PED users and then also holding Bagwell to the statistical standard they set and excluding him as well.
The only complications next year will be Mussina and Thomas. Maddux and Glavine will be swept in with ease, so while they will push everyone else down a bit they’ll only be on for a year. There’s no controversy at all surrounding them and both are way overqualified. Mussina will have a tough go because while he wasa genuinely great pitcher, he’s sort of the Tim Raines of pitchers, a guy who didn’t get the key highlights like Cy Young Awards or 300 wins. Thomas will, I think, have a tough go because
He will be lumped in with the roiders, even though the guy was a genetic freak and dominated before the steroid craze began,
He is a big power hitting first baseman and superficially similar to many existing candidates and contemporaries, and
Thomas was mostly a DH. Even when he was playing first base.
Luis Gonzalez won’t be a serious candidate and doesn’t deserve to be. He was a good player, but steroids or no, is not a Hall of Famer.
I am intrigued by today’s votes, I have to say. If we on the SDMB can’t even elect no-brainers like Mike Piazza or Tim Raines, the BBWAA will be hopeless. They’ve fooled me before, though.
My point is that there is no logically consistent standard. Certainly not one that allows you to vote for Curt Schilling and not for Jeff Bagwell like this writer did.
If you disregard PED use then Schilling is a much more marginal case than Bagwell (who is basically a no-doubter). If you consider PED use then there is just as much evidence that Schilling used as there is that Bagwell did (which is zero, or perhaps the fact that they played with known users).
And then notice the throwaway line in the article: “Everyone was doing it: Just because “everyone” is breaking the rules doesn’t mean you don’t penalize those who get caught. And ask Derek Jeter if “everyone” was doing it.”. The obvious implication being that there is no way that Derek Jeter used PEDs. How do we know that? Neifi Perez used. Jeter has come back strong late in his career from injuries, just like some other known users. He played with just as many users as Bagwell did (Pettite, Giambi, A-Rod).
I don’t mind keeping out users. But give me your rationale and then apply it to everybody fairly. “I feel like that guy probably used but this guy probably didn’t” is not a fair standard, and anyone promulgating it deserves to be chastised.
I half-heartedly hope that someday (after he is likely nearly-unanimously elected to the HoF) that some ironclad evidence (and perhaps admission) of PED use by Jeter is discovered. Not because I have any animosity towards him, but just to blow up once and for all this ludicrous “eyeball standard” that most of the “keep roiders out of the Hall” seem to use.
I don’t dispute your main point here- even today I think it’s stupid to suggest you know for a fact that a player is clean. (Ryan Braun, anyone?) However I’ll say that unlike Roger Clemens prior to his revival, Jeter was being tested for PEDs over the last couple of seasons.
That’s certainly a fair point, and a distinction could make between Clemens and Jeter. I’m not sure how well that applies to separating Bagwell from Biggio, but it’s something.
However, I would caution against anyone using passed tests as a vote of confidence, as the Lance Armstrong case has shown. I know you don’t make this mistake, but I’m sure others will.
Look, I’m happy to apply the standard that anyone that fails a test can’t make the Hall of Fame. I could even at least respect a standard that says that anyone that failed a test or had evidence of their use presented in open court or admitted to using shouldn’t make it. But standards that catch guys like Bagwell and (soon) Thomas are ridiculous.
Someone linked to a chart for all released ballots-basically a vote against Bonds was also linked to a vote against Clemens, Sosa, McGwire, and Palmiero (almost invariably), AND was also linked to a marked decrease in the votes given to Bags and Piazza (who in this voter cohort dropped to c. 30-40% of the vote)-even Biggio lost several points of support from them as well.