For God’s sake, he’s got 133 wins and an ERA above four. He’s simply not good enough for serious consideration. Putting him on the HoF ballot for 2003 is just wrong.
A look at the baseball-reference.com Hall of Fame montor has Kile with 31 points. An average Hall of Fame pitcher has 100!
And I’m afearing that with this coming right on top of his beatification during the season and the Cardinals sentimental run in the playoffs, along with the attendent kissy-kissy media coverage gives him a real chance at it. I feel fairly certain he’s locked up the votes from Houston and St Louis.
And what about the people who are eligible for the first time this year? Suppose it takes some support from Eddie Murray, Ryne Sandberg, or Lee Smith? Suppose one of them just barely misses?
Sorry. It bugs me. I’m always self-conscious starting threads in the Pit.
Putting him on the ballot is not the same thing as giving him serious consideration. That’s like saying Ralph Nader had a serious chance at winning the 2000 election because he was on the ballot.
The fact that Kile is going on the ballot early does not mean that he’ll be elected. As the story you cite indicates, the last player for whom the waiting period was waived was Thurman Munson. Like Kile, Munson was a popular player, and a clubhouse leader, who died suddenly in the middle of the season. There was a huge wave of media coverage and public sympathy following his death.
Despite all of that, Munson still has not been elected to the Hall of Fame. The writers seem to take their responsibility too seriously to vote for a good-but-not-great player simply out of sympathy, even when the vote takes place shortly after his tragic death. So I’m not worried about Kile getting elected, or even about him draining support from more worthy inductees.
I agree that Kile does not belong in the HOF. He simply wasn’t good enough. But I have no problem with his early consideration. As your article says:
I suppose you could argue that it’s a poor policy. It really depends on why the waiting period is there (and on that I’m not sure). If it’s to give the writers a chance to get a little historical perspective on the candidates, then waiving the time period doesn’t make sense. But if it’s just there to make sure the player is really finished (so that a player doesn’t retire, get on the HOF ballot and then unretire and start playing again) then waiving the period when a player dies during their career seems reasonable. From what Idelson said, it sounds like this is an official policy of the HOF, so as long as it’s applied consistently, I have no problem with it.
The time period was waivied for Thurmon Munson, and he was never voted in, as the article notes. So perhaps Kile won’t be either. If he is voted in, that I would disagree with, and I think would be rant-worthy, but in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with early consideration.
I’m a diehard Cardinal fan and even I can tell that DK dosen’t belong in the HOF. He just didn’t have the numbers. It’s nice that he’s getting early consideration because of his death but anyone with any sense knows he doesn’t belong there.
Now if you want to talk about whether Pete ought to be in there, that’s a whole 'nother story…
My 2 cents is that there already were fully sufficient and satisfactory memorials and tributes to Kile. The 5 year wait for HOF candidates was designed specifically to eliminate sympathy candidates for HOF induction. Putting Kile on the ballot will just drain votes away from qualified HOF candidates, of which Kile was not. While Kile was certainly good, he isn’t a HOFer and he shouldn’t be put on the ballot early.
Forget whether or not he deserves to be on the ballot early, he doesn’t deserve to be on the ballot at all. In fact, I doubt he would have been deserving of being on the ballot even if he had not died and played out his career. 133-100 with a 4+ era? He would have had to have a Randy Johnson/Barry Bonds type late career resurgence couple with Nolan Ryan-esque longevity to be qualified in my book.
The waiting period was put in place to provide some perspective so I think this is just wrong. It’s a sort of bandwagon grandstand play (to torture a phrase).
And it’s just not safe to trust what the voters will do.
But at least the veteran’s committee has been changed.
I looked at the rules for election, and the eligiblity for deceased players after six months is a rule (it doesn’t say when it was made one, but I assume it was when Clemente died).
So, short of changing the rule, the HOF really had no choice. Kile is automatically eligble this year. The use of the term “waives” in the story headline is misleading, in my opinion. The HOF didn’t waive a rule in Kile’s case, they simply followed an existing one. Of course, the fact that Kile is eligible doesn’t mean he has to be on the ballot. The rule for being on the ballot is:
If Kile hadn’t been nominated by two members he wouldn’t be on the ballot, so it was possible to leave him off. But, my understanding is that just about all half-way decent first time eligible players make it onto the ballot, even if they clearly won’t be voted into the Hall of Fame. For instance, the list of first year eligible players on the 2002 ballot included Tim Walloch, Mike Henneman, Robby Thompson, and Frank Viola. Those guys were decent players, but they’re clearly not HOF material. So I don’t see that Kile is being shown any favoritism because of how his career ended. His being voted into the HOF would be wrong, but his being on the ballot isn’t, at least by the standard HOF procedures.
I thought the five year wait was so if a player came out of retirement he wouldn’t be playing and in the Hall at the same time. And if Munson didn’t go in, what makes you think they will vote Kile in?
This is a procedural thing. Anybody who meets the requirements for Hall consideration, which Kile does, and dies during the season would have gotten on the ballot early. The Munson example is a great example.
Nobody is suggesting, even remotely, that Kile belongs in the HOF.
Nanook, you are absolutely, inarguably wrong. Had Kile not died and played out his career he would be on the ballot. I guarantee it.
I think there is some misunderstanding in this thread as to what being “on the ballot” means. ANYONE who played in the majors for ten years and who was a regular for most of ten years is on the ballot. It is more or less automatic that you make the ballot if you were a regular and played ten years. It doesn’t matter if you’re obviously not going to get elected; ten years, regular player, you’re on. Chet Lemon was on the ballot. Jim Clancy was on the ballot. The only people left off the ballot are those who didn’t play ten years or were benchwarmers most of their career and never did anything noteworthy.
The purpose is to ensure the Hall of Fame VOTERS are the ones doing the eliminations to the greatest extent possible - rather than the people who make the ballots. There’s no question whatsoever Darryl Kile would be on the ballot whether he died or not; he had a ten-year career and was a regular starter. It is absolutely 100% certain he was going to be on the ballot at some point.
So the only issue, really, is whether or not he should have been put on early. And as has been pointed out, that’s a routine thing when a player dies suddenly.