Yesterday, (Saturday) was the 50 anniversary of Roger Maris’ 61st home run that broke the Babe Ruth’s HR record. Roger took more games to hit them, but did it in fewer at bats.
And he was hated for it. If anyone would have been “allowed” to break the Babe’s record, it would have been Mantle. The pressure Maris felt during the record chase was probably the worse any player ever felt in the history of sport, but somehow he did it.
And then the steroid trio of McGwire, Sosa and Bonds buried his record for good.
Maris is only one of two players in MLB history that won 2 consecutive MVP awards and is not in the Hall of Fame.
Yes, I know he hit .260 lifetime, but don’t you think this guy belongs in the Hall?
Sorry…two huge seasons does not a Hall of Famer make.
Yes, his star burned very brightly in '60 and '61. But…
He was only an All-Star four times. Despite hitting 61 home runs in 1961, he only hit 214 over the rest of his career. He only played in 130 or more games in five seasons.
Like it or not, the Hall of Fame doesn’t exist to recognize tremendous single-season accomplishments. It’s there to recognize career accomplishments. On that metric, Maris simply falls far short.
Like it or not, the HoF is there to recognize whatever the hell that year’s voters want. There is no fixed criteria for entry (other than the rules for eligibility - which say nothing about accomplishments).
Emphasis added. It says nothing about those contributions having to be career accomplishments. Do you think that if Jackie Robinson had had a mediocre career they wouldn’t have elected him?
Sometimes a one season accomplishment is enough to be an “outstanding contribution” and I for one think Maris’ record qualifies.
I’m a big Roger Maris fan (I was there when he hit #61), but he is not a hall-of-famer.
The HOF has always gone to players who were great over a career rather then a couple of seasons. Otherwise you’d have people like Denny McClain, Mark Fidrych, and Joe Charbonneu as members. In fact, there’s a better case for McClain – consecutive Cy Youngs, for starters.
In that Robinson scenario, it’s hard to say. If he had a mediocre career, he probably wouldn’t have had a long career, either. It’s difficult to look back in retrospect and say what the HoF voters would have done.
Parenthetically, Larry Doby, the first black to play in the American League, is a HoFer, but had to wait for the Veterans Committee to elect him in 1998, nearly 40 years after he retired…and he was an 8-time All-Star.
At any rate, I think that “leading the integration of baseball” is on a different plane than setting the single-season HR record.
Maris was a pretty good player but lots of players are better and aren’t in the Hall of Fame. I can name two dozen, easily. His flukey 61-homer season (for which he was not as “hated” as people would like to remember, or as the fast-and-loose-with-the-facts TV-movie 61* would have you believe) doesn’t really merit a plaque.
Yes, he won two MVP Awards. Both were pretty bad choices; Mickey Mantle was a better player in both seasons.
Maris was in the top 10 for SLG% only 3 times in his career, leading the league once.
He was in the top 10 for OPS only 3 times, never leading the league.
He was in the top 10 for TB 4 times, leading the league once.
He was never in the top 10 for OBP.
Now, even the “glamor” statistics that we all know people pay more attention to like HR, BA, RBI, Maris fares no better:
He was top 10 on HR 4 years, leading once (obviously.) His career HR numbers put him behind 164 others, and any HoFer with fewer career HR than Maris are persons like Robin Yount who did more than just swing for power. If you want to get in as a slugger (and Maris couldn’t be thought of as anything else) you need a lot more than 275 HR. People know guys like Brooks Robinson can get in on totally non-offensive merits, but that’s a rare situation.
For BA, Maris was never known to hit for average (which is irrelevant to his value offensively, but it’s an important metric nonetheless from a publicity standpoint.) For RBI Maris was only on the leaderboards 3 times, leading two of those times.
His numbers just aren’t there, in all honesty. Additionally, I would argue that the fact that the record he broke is a single season record undermines a lot of the claim that he should get in “just for that reason.” Lots of players have had fluke years, but that doesn’t make them Hall of Famers.
In 1961, Maris had one of the greatest non-steroid (I presume he wasn’t on steroids) seasons in MLB history. Several committees over several years have decided not to elect him to the Hall of Fame. If a player can be elected to the Hall of Fame based on one season, and Maris hasn’t been elected despite having one of the greatest seasons in history, I have to conclude that your interpretation of election criteria is a bit off from official policy. It may not be explicitly stated in the charter (opening the way for wild speculation), but it appears that the committees consider the totality of a player’s career, not just one or even a few seasons. If players can get elected for one great season, despite a mediocre career, we’d see a lot more people in the Hall of Fame.
The thing is that he didn’t. I know that’s not wholly relevant to your point, which is a valid one, but it’s important in examining Maris’s credentials.
Maris hit 61 home runs and that’s a hell of a lot of home runs, but hitting home runs was all he did. He had a hell of a year, but it wasn’t “one of the greatest non-steroid seasons” in history by any stretch of the term. He wasn’t even the best hitter on his own team. It was about as good a season as Jose Bautista had last year. Meaningly no disrespect to Maris, his 1961 was, in my honest opinion, probably not one of the 300 best seasons in MLB history among hitters.
Maris was a really good player, but he wasn’t really great aside from a few years and he had a really short career by HoF standards.
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Did he ever get any votes?
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Rule 5 says nothing about the length of the criteria used. In fact, frankly, it’s useless. All I have to do is say “I was voting on his integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions.” and what are they gonna do? Rule 6 is weird since there isn’t a mechanism for “automatic elections” for anybody. So, the exclusion for one season achievements is…odd. Are you saying that if, in 1988, Maris had gotten 76.1% of the votes, the rules would have kept him out? If so, why was he allowed on the ballot?
Obviously, it’s arguable about whether or not Maris should be in. It is, however, uncontestable that the rules allow him to be in if he receives the requisite votes.
