Baseball HOF: Clean out the riffraff

More of a function that those involved are part of a sport covering 150 years

 

Is Morgan's flaw his broadcasting?

 

I have long thought this might be a good idea.

Many, if not most, of the undeserving were elected by the Veterans' Committee. I think there should be a committee to assess some of the people in there and make a report on this.

Keeping some of these people in the Hall of Fame gives a loss of credibility. It also allows the, "if Player X is in, why isn't Player Y in." argument.

1 - Rabbit Maranville - He had a .258 batting average and a .658 OPS. Yeah it was the dead ball era and nobody had thought of OPS, but still. Jack Lang, who was a former president of the BBWA, said Maranville worked in a PR position with Hearst Newspapers to promote newsboys, was dying and there was a campaign to elect Maranville to the HOF. Lang admitted it was a mistake.

2 - Ray Schalk - He was the catcher on the 1919 Chicago White Sox. He wasn't one of the players who participated in the Black Sox scandal. Of course, he had a .253 batting average and a .656 OPS, so he wouldn't have been the first player gamblers would have approached to dump the series. Compared to Schalk, Maranville was a power hitter. Schalk had only 11 home runs in his career, compared to Maranville's 28 round-trippers. Home runs were rare before 1920 because of a dead ball and long fences. Maranville had 177 triples. Schalk? He had 49 triples in his career.

3 - Travis Jackson - He played SS and 2B for the New York Giants. He hit .291 over his career in an offensive era and a favorable ball park. As late as the 1960s, New York had seven daily newspapers. This meant more writers covering baseball, and the older writers retained a vote. This resulted in 20 Hall of Famers whose primary team was the New York Giants - this doesn't include Willie Mays and any Giant who began his career after 1940. He was part of four teams to reach the World Series, but he played fewer than 100 games in two of these seasons.

4 - Roger Breshnahan - One other Giant Hall of Famer whose credentials are suspect is Roger Breshnahan. The catcher had a .279 batting average and is most known for inventing shin guards. I mean, if you saw baseball and noted that catchers seemed to get hit in the shins, somebody would have figured something out. New York bias, anyone?

5 - Ted Lyons - A friend of mine once suggested there should be a "Hall of Very Good." The idea was that someone who was a really good player could get recognition without including him among the all-time greatest. Ted Lyons pitched from 1923 to 1942 for the Chicago White Sox, and came back in 1946 after serving in the US Armed Forces during World War II. He had a record of 260-230, although he pitched for the Chicago White Sox when they had some mediocre or worse teams. Give him some slack for that. However, he had more walks (1121) than strikeouts (1073) and pitched in pitcher-friendly Comiskey Park. He completed 356 of his 484 starts and pitched a long time. A pretty good pitcher but certainly not one of the all-time greats.

 

There needs to be a wing for the compilers, guys who got in only because they hit milestones such was 300 wins or 500 home runs.

Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry and Paul Molitor would be there.

 

I agree with you on Sutton, but I disagree on Molitor.

 

To be fair, there are only 244 players inducted and 21 of those are Negro League inductees, so we are really looking at just 223 players from MLB history.

The writers have done a pretty good job on their end. I don't think there's 10 guys they have put in that you could have an argument about.

From the Vet committee there are probably two dozen you could kick out. Among my top ones are High Pockets Kelley, Candy Cummings, Monte Ward. Freddie Lindstrom, Jessie Haines. Lloyd Waner. Old timey shortstops are really hard to distinguish because of what the position has turned into.

I can live with Chick Hafey but I can see why others don't.

 

Many of the questionable Veterans Committee selections played with Frankie Frisch on the Giants of the 1920s or on the Cardinals of the 1930s. Frisch was chairman of the Veterans Committee from the mid-1960s until his death in a car wreck in 1973.

Billy Terry (Frisch's Giants teammate), New York sportswriter Fred Lieb and St. Louis sports writer J. Roy Stockton were also on the committee in those days.

 

Molitor retired after the 1998 season. As late as 1996 he hit .341, led the league in hits (225) and drove in 113 runs. Even his last two years he had good numbers in a lesser role.
Hardly a compiler. Compilers don't typically get into the Hall on the first ballot.

 

Pare it down to 100 members by 2039, the 100th anniversary of the HOF.

So that means we gotta throw out about 8 people a year for the next 25 years.

 

How/who decides the top 100

 

Starman, of course.

You can tell from this thread which posters started following MLB in about the year 2000. Or later.

 

Come up with a multi tiered voter pool of:

-- Past and present players
-- active baseball media personnel
-- legitimate baseball historians
-- fans

... All of whom would have to pass a fairly challenging test on baseball history, strategy and personnel in order to vote.