Oh NO! A Hall of Fame thread

See I thought the Black Sox didn't become officially ineligible for the Hall of Fame until the Rose ruling came down in 1990 or so. That ruling — which obviously was designed to keep writers from voting for Rose — made anyone on the "permanently ineligible" list also ineligible for the Hall of Fame.

I'll have to dig up my copy of Bill James' "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame" and see ...

 

From Pages 353-354 of "Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame" (the beginning of Chapter 27, entitled "Charlie Hustle and Shoeless Joe"):

"Pete Rose ... was banned from baseball, for life, on August 23, 1989, at the conclusion of a six-month investigation into allegations that he had bet on baseball.

"At the time Rose's banishment from the game did not preclude his election to the Hall of Fame. There had always been a de facto ban against the election of ineligible players, but it had never been written into the rules.

"It had never before been necessary to write it into the rules. It was unnecessary to write such a rule, in the beginning, because it was considered self-evident. The sportswriters of the 1930s were as likely to elect Joe Jackson to the Hall of Fame as they were to vote to hold their annual conventions in the nude. The whole idea of putting the crooks of the 1919 World Series in the Hall of Fame would have seemed blasphemous to them, in the main, and in any case if they had done so Judge Landis would have immediately overruled them, and would probably have taken the vote away.

"In time, of course, the feelings of revulsion that sportswriters felt toward Jackson, Cicotte, et al., were replaced by tolerance and then a kind of pathetic revisionism. By then, however, their eligibility had passed from the BBWAA to the Old-Timers and Veterans Committees, where the feeling against the jackals was still stronger, and a long-standing tradition of not voting them in had been established. There was little chance that the aging veterans would break with tradition and and induct one of baseball's lepers.

"Then came the Rose case ... "

 

There are plenty of guys who were miserable to the media who soared in. Steve Carlton jumps to mind, but let's be honest, who in their right mind if going to argue that Carlton is unworthy?

If you're on the fence, I think it could impact whether you get in or not or how long you have to wait. There's no way Jim Rice should have had to wait that long.

I wonder what it will do to Jeff Kent.

 

Jackson actually received votes in two different years...1936 and 1946.