I consider myself a pretty informed baseball fan. I love the history and the lore. I tend to be a numbers based guy when evaluating something, but am still prone to irrational fandom (which would include my love of the Cubs). One of the things that bothers me is the Hall of Fame voting. The thread about Jose Canseco got me started thinking about some of the wacky results of the voting for HOFers. Specifically, my thoughts turned to Tom Seaver.
If you were to guess who the (in terms of percentage) was, I find it hard to believe that Tom is the player that holds that title.highest vote getter.
What am I missing here? Most of his career, and certainly his prime years occured before I watched the game, but in looking at his stats, they don’t seem outstanding enough to warrant that type of support. Was he really that good? Or, is this more of a result that he was a clear candidate to vote for in a year that had a sub-standard group around him? Was he a great pitcher in spite of his teams?
I feel like I am missing something here regarding his career and abilities, but when I look at his numbers I don’t see a guy who ended up with the highest % of votes.
Well, I can’t presume to explain what the voters were thinking, but Tom Seaver’s pretty clearly a top-shelf Hall of Famer. Not only did he pitch for twenty years, but his peak period (1969-77)matches up well with almost any other pitcher in major league history. His ERA was below league ERA in eighteen of his twenty seasons, and often by a significant margin. His 1971 season is one of the greatest seasons of all time, despite the ten losses. He consistently ranked among the league leaders in strikeouts and strikeouts per nine innings. If anything, Seaver is vastly underrated today.
In fact, thanks for starting this thread, Mullinator–you made me realize that I didn’t really know just how good a pitcher Tom Seaver was.
(Now, if you want to talk wacky results of HOF voting, let’s talk Tony Perez making the Hall at all.)
The backlash has given Tony Perez a worse reputation than he deserves. He was as good, and maybe a better, choice than Jim Rice would be.
Perez played a long time, played well for one of the greatest franchises of the 1970s, has generally impressive offensive numbers and played a significant portion of his career in the low-offense 1960s. He wasn’t a great choice, but he wasn’t even CLOSE to being among the worst HoF choices, or even the worst recent choice.
As to the OP, I think you will find that the percentages of the vote for players above 95 percent or so are basically random. It’s not that anyone really thinks Tom Seaver is more “deserving” than Willie Mays or Mike Schmidt. The difference is made up by the number of writers in a given year who either
A) Are so stupid, drunk, or both that they forget to write the name on the ballot, or
B) In an effort to make waves, decide not to vote for the candidate because of the imaginary “don’t vote them in in the first year” tradition.
I seem to recall reading that a certain number of HOF voters will never cast a “yes” vote for anyone in their first year on the theory that “If Babe Ruth (or any number of others) wasn’t good enough, then neither is [whoever]”. Thus ensuring that there will be no unanimous inductees at least until this bloc of voters is gone.
Incidentally, has any sport had a unanimous inductee? I can’t think of any, but I would think Gretzky, Payton, and Wilt would have to be. Of course, Ruth, Aaron, Cobb, Mays, etc etc would have to be unanimous also, right?
Don’t take the percentage of the vote too seriously. In Seaver’s case it was probably because he was an obvious HOF pitcher and there was no serious competition the year he was first eligible. It also helped that most BBWA voters thought he was a nice guy.
In addition, the idea that a player shouldn’t get in on the first try has pretty much gone by the boards.
Well, Babe Ruth is a bad example, because he was one of the original 5 members of the Hall of Fame.
But until relatively recently, great players had to wait a while. Joe Dimaggio and Yogi Berra, for example, didn’t make it into the Hall of Fame until several years after they first became eligible. When I was a kid, it was a big deal when a player was elected in his first year of eligibility.
NOW, of course, it’s a big deal if a major star DOESN’T get elected right away. Heck,in many circles, it’s even a big deal if he doesn’t get voted in UNANIMOUSLY (witness the heat Bill Conlin took for not including Nolan Ryan on his ballot).
That said, I think it’s silly to make a player wait. If he’s deserving, I say vote for him as soon as he’s eleigible.
Bill James made an interesting comparison between Darrell Evans and Tony Perez.
Voters do wacky things. Some won’t vote for a guy because they don’t think he deserves a higher percentage than another player so to do his part, he’ll hold back, knowing he’ll get in anyway. They shouldn’t even announce hte voting percentages. Just say they re either in or out.
I’d like to ask those voters who didn’t vote for George Brett or Tom Seaver.
My big problem with who votes for the various Halls of Fame is this: why is the voting body made up entirely of reporters? Just because you sit in the stands for 30 years and write columns doesn’t make you qualified to vote on who gets into the Hall. I think the players should get to vote, with some writers getting a say as well.
It’s been fairly well documented that a number of writers have “personal grudges” against various players, so they refuse to even consider them. One voter said that he would “never vote for Eddie Murray because he refused to give me an interview.”
That goes beyond childish.
So Murray refused to give you an interview? You think you’re unique. He never gave interviews, probably because he got really bored really quickly having to answer the same 5 questions over and over and over and over.