One more: again, I have no desire at all to insult Nellie Fox. But when the Veterans’ Committee elected him, my reaction was… well, I’m happy for him, but there have beeen MANY second basemen at least as good as he was.
I’m a longtime Yankees fan. I spent many years watching and rooting for Willie Randolph. As much as I like Willie, I do NOT regard him as a Hall of Famer.
But he is MUCH worthier than Nellie Fox. (And Lou Whittaker and Bobby Grich are worthier still.)
Perfect examples of why the argument can’t work. And hell, Nellie Fox isn’t even at the bottom.
The ultimate baseball example, frequently cited in these arguments, is George Kelly, who for a short time was a pretty good hitter in the 20s. Kelly isn’t one of the THOUSAND best players in baseball history; there are at least seven or eight hundred better players. Kelly wasn’t anywhere near as good a player as John Olerud. If you just put in every first baseman who was as good as George Kelly, you’d have to induct dozens of guys nobody thinks of as Hall of Famers, like Olerud and Cecil Fielder and Joe Adcock and Bob Watson and Pedro Guerrero and Wally Joyner and on and on.