Baseball Hall of Fame ballot out - does anybody deserve it?

[ElvisL1ves]

@RickJay

Cobb was also not nearly as hated or as disliked as people think today. It’s worth noting that when he was suspended in 1912, his teammates refused to play without him. Would they have done that for someone they disliked, someone who didn’t like playing for the team?

His teammates weren’t all churchgoers themselves, either.

[Duke]

@RickJay

1. Ty Cobb did not “refuse to hit home runs.” He didn’t take uppercut swings, like almost everyone else at the time, not because he thought it was less exciting but because like most people in baseball at the time he felt it was a sucker’s game to hit fly balls. That was not something unique to Ty Cobb, it was the accepted wisdom throughout baseball. the story about his 5-homer performance being a response to that challenge is probably apocryphal; I have never found a primary source for it.

The Greatest All-Time Baseball Teams by the Acocella brothers claims that Cobb did once have a three-homer, three-single game after such a challenge. They list a date for this alleged performance; when I get back from work I’ll post that date. Not a primary source, but it may help in proving or disproving it.

It certainly wasn’t a five-homer game though: I’ve never even heard of an MLBer doing it in an exhibition game.

[RealityChuck]

1. Five homers in two games. The source for the comment is Cobb’s autobiography. The games themselves are still in the record books – the record has been tied, but never beaten. For the record, the games were played on May 5-6, 1925. It’s also clear from the record that Cobb has a reason to want to hit those home runs – he had only 12 that entire year.

2. Cobb’s teammates stood behind him not because they liked him, but because they felt he was justified in beating the man up. Judging by their comments, the man most likely made comments to the effect that Cobb’s mother slept with or was descended from a Black man. Cobb, a bigoted man from the Deep South who idolized his mother, went berserk. But his teammates comments at the time indicated they felt Cobb was justified in attacking the man. Essentially, they said, “No southern man would stand having someone say that about his mother.”

As far as the list is concerned, I was under the assumption that everyone knew how the list of new eligibles is made up: All players who played at least ten seasons and who have been retired for five years are automatically put on the ballot. Thus, plenty of journeyman players get onto the list, but have no real chance of staying on it past the first year, since you need to get at least 5% of the votes cast to be on it the next year.

Looking at this year’s NY Mets, that means Steve Traschel, Todd Zeile, Al Leiter, Cliff Floyd, Karim Garcia, Scott Erickson, Mike Stanton, Dave Weathers, Ricky Bottalico, James Baldwin, and Mike Cameron will be on the ballot some day. None deserve to be in the HOF, and no one expects them to get in, but they’ll get a little egoboo five years after they retire. (Piazza will, of course, get in, and Glavine and Franco will generate enough votes to carry over after the first year, but are iffy).

[rackensack]

@RealityChuck

As far as the list is concerned, I was under the assumption that everyone knew how the list of new eligibles is made up: All players who played at least ten seasons and who have been retired for five years are automatically put on the ballot. Thus, plenty of journeyman players get onto the list, but have no real chance of staying on it past the first year, since you need to get at least 5% of the votes cast to be on it the next year.

I believe that used to be the case, but it’s no longer automatic. According to the Hall of Fame’s web site page on the rules for election:

**4. Method of Election **

BBWAA Screening Committee — A Screening Committee consisting of baseball writers will be appointed by the BBWAA. This Screening Committee shall consist of six members, with two members to be elected at each Annual Meeting for a three-year term. The duty of the Screening Committee shall be to prepare a ballot listing in alphabetical order eligible candidates who (1) received a vote on a minimum of five percent (5%) of the ballots cast in the preceding election or (2) are eligible for the first time and are nominated by any two of the six members of the BBWAA Screening Committee.

So at least two of the six writers on the Screening Committee have to think you’re worthy of being on the ballot. Which makes the inclusion of Nixon and Candiotti even harder to fathom – though there is a difference between thinking a guy’s good enough to be in the Hall and thinking he’s good enough to be on the ballot, even though there’s no way he’ll be elected.

[RickJay]

@RealityChuck

1. Five homers in two games. The source for the comment is Cobb’s autobiography. The games themselves are still in the record books – the record has been tied, but never beaten. For the record, the games were played on May 5-6, 1925. It’s also clear from the record that Cobb has a reason to want to hit those home runs – he had only 12 that entire year.

Freddie Patek once hit three homers in a game in a season in which, IIRC, he hit a total of 5. Darnell Coles once had a three-homer game in a season in which he hit 4. Pat Seerey hit 4 homers in one game, and I challenge anyone to tell me anything else about Pat Seerey. Cobb did hit five homers in two games, but the fact that he did it doesn’t prove that the story of him just deciding to be a home run hitter is true. My guess is that he just had a flukey couple of days and, as often happens with people as they get old, the memory of unusual occurrences grow in importance and coincidence.

[QUOTE]
As far as the list is concerned, I was under the assumption that everyone knew how the list of new eligibles is made up: All players who played at least ten seasons and who have been retired for five years are automatically put on the ballot. Thus, plenty of journeyman players get onto the list, but have no real chance of staying on it past the first year…/QUOTE]
Actually, there IS an initial screening process. Players who played ten years but were not reasonably good regulars for at least several seasons are excluded from the ballot. Rafael Belliard, for instance, played 17 seasons but was not listed on the ballot.

[BrotherCadfael]

@RickJay

Otis Nixon
The ugliest player in the history of baseball

Yeah, Nixon was he original FLK (funny looking kid).

[iampunha]

@RickJay

Pat Seerey hit 4 homers in one game, and I challenge anyone to tell me anything else about Pat Seerey.

He played for the Chicago White Sox in the 1940s (4 homer game came in 1948)

[Lorenzo]

It might be tricky to keep a 3,000 hit player out of the HOF, fair or not.

[Typo_Negative]

@RealityChuck

2. Cobb’s teammates stood behind him not because they liked him, but because they felt he was justified in beating the man up. Judging by their comments, the man most likely made comments to the effect that Cobb’s mother slept with or was descended from a Black man. Cobb, a bigoted man from the Deep South who idolized his mother, went berserk. But his teammates comments at the time indicated they felt Cobb was justified in attacking the man. Essentially, they said, “No southern man would stand having someone say that about his mother.”

.

This was covered in Ken Burn’s Baseball. The insult was that the heckler called Cobb “half a nigger”. His teammates, though they hated Cobb, considered the insult “too great for any white man to bear”. They stood for the principle (albeit an insane, twisted principle).