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RIP Sid Hartman

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Moderator1, Oct 18, 2020.

  1. Della9250

    Della9250 Well-Known Member

    So of course now the question is: Who's No. 3?
     
  2. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    I was told the list is somewhere on BBWAA.com, but you have to dig for it. I spent 10 minutes and gave up.
     
  3. Andy Messerupsmith

    Andy Messerupsmith New Member

    Murray Chass
     
    ChrisLong likes this.
  4. swingline

    swingline Well-Known Member

    OK, I never met Sid — and never even read him — but I'm pretty sure there was a thread on here a couple of years ago describing Sid as someone who needed his ass beat because he was such a dick.

    Anyway, 100 years and 80 working is a damn good long run.
     
  5. DSzymborski

    DSzymborski Member

    The list is in the Forums if you're a BBWAA member.

    There's no posted 2020 list -- Jeff Fletcher appears to have missed a year in the COVID-19 stuff -- but 2019 is probably just as good for this sort of thing.

    After Newhan, by seniority, it goes Murray Chass, Mike Waldner, Hal Bodley, Hal McCoy, Pat Reusse, Bill Madden, and Steve Hirdt.

    It actually looks like Gammons gave up his card before 2016, which is the first list on the site, as he's on none of the badge lists.

    There seems to be about a 7-10% attrition rate or so. As of the 2019 badge list, the median member (in the upper 370s) was in the class of 2011.
     
  6. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Wasn't one of the Sid stories that he'd always cram down something like 8 hot dogs in the press box?
     
  7. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    I started in 1981. By 1999 I was No. 146. I kept the card so I could vote for the HOF. For 2000 I stopped and got a (free) Honorary Membership because it included voting rights. Then they change that rule and I lost my vote. I'm sure there are others around here who experienced the same thing.
     
  8. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Do you miss voting?
     
  9. justgladtobehere

    justgladtobehere Well-Known Member

    What is the policy these days for membership? I recall Tony Mazz saying he was out of BBWAA because he wasn't covering a beat, but that it was a new rule.
     
  10. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    I liked it. I took it seriously. I sometimes asked a few friends in baseball for their opinions. I didn't get caught up in "first ballot" or whatever. In my determination, if the guy was a HOFer, I voted for him. If I thought a guy was an HOFer before steroids, I voted for him. If steroids made him an HOFer, I didn't. I thought relief pitchers deserved votes. I did not make it too complicated.
     
  11. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    I'm sorry they took back voting rights for the honorary members. BBWAA would be better off a) with more votes, and b) if they took the rules and the Hall a little less seriously.

    I have a vote for a different hall. Not as serious, really, but I try my best to do it right, and to honor the careers of those under consideration. It's fun in the way you describe. The annual routine - the notemaking; the calling up of memory; the thought experiments; the arguments in your own head; the lyric versus the metric.

    Baseball would be better off with more old heads voting rather than fewer.
     
    ChrisLong likes this.
  12. Andy Messerupsmith

    Andy Messerupsmith New Member

    The operative term being “old head” and not the newbies who think everyone deserves to be in the Hall of Pretty Good Players. How anyone could fill up 10 spots is amazing.
     
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