2015 Golden Era Hall of Fame Ballot Results: “No Room at the Inn”

Today at 11:00a in San Diego at baseball’s Winter Meetings, Hall of Fame chairman Jane Forbes Clark took the podium in the first significant scheduled news event of the week to announce the new inductee(s) to baseball’s Hall of Fame from the “Golden Era Committee.”  Ten candidates, whose primary contributions to the game occurred between 1947 and 1972 were considered by a 16-member committee of former players, executives and veteran writers.  In order to be elected, a candidate needed to get 12 votes (75%) from the panel.

The committee pitched a shutout.  The result was zero, zip, zilch, nada.

When Clark made the announcement that no new members were inducted, the silent letdown among the assembled media was noticeable.  All you had to do was look at the long faces of the committee members on the dais (Ferguson Jenkins, Pat Gillick and Steve Hirdt) to see that they shared in that disappointment.

The silence turned into a few groans when Clark dropped the next bombshell, which was the vote totals.  Dick Allen and Tony Oliva each received 11 votes, only one shy of the 12 needed for enshrinement.  Just one lousy vote between Cooperstown immortality and the bitter pill of another three-year wait to try again.  Ouch!  This is bitterly disappointing and problem is not the intent of the 16 voters, the problem is the process (more on that later).

Jim Kaat received 10 votes, Maury Wills got 9, and Minnie Minoso received 8.  The other candidates (Gil Hodges, Luis Tiant, Ken Boyer, Billy Pierce, and Bob Howsam) each received 3 or fewer votes (the Hall does not disclose the actual vote totals if a candidate receives 3 or fewer votes, most likely to avoid embarrassing anybody who might have earned none at all).

So No Soup for You Minnie!  Do Not Enter Dick!  Tough Luck Tony!  Keep Out Kitty! Move Aside Maury!  Get Lost Gil!  Buzz off Billy, Bob and Boyer!

The 16-member Golden Era Committee consisted of 7 Hall of Fame players (Jim Bunning, Rod Carew, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith and Don Sutton), 5 former executives (Pat Gillick, who is also a Hall of Famer himself, Jim Frey, David Glass, Roland Hemond, and Bob Watson), and 4 media members (Steve Hirdt, Dick Kaegel, Phil Pepe and Tracy Ringolsby).  The committee met on Sunday to discuss the candidates and then voted in secret today.  Each voter was limited to four votes per ballot and while it’s hard to tell from the vote totals if each voter filled their ballot with a full four names, it looks like they probably did.  Ringolsby, appearing on MLB Network shortly after the vote, commented that no negatives were brought up, that there was a strong feeling and sentiment for everyone on the ballot and that it was not a matter of whether any of the members were Hall-worthy but which four each member liked best.

Fortunately, the annual induction this summer will not be devoid of players.  The 500+ members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) will consider several dozen players who played much more recently.   Two first-time candidates (Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez) will certainly be inducted and there will probably be one or two others (most likely Craig Biggio, who finished two votes shy a year ago).

Personally, as a baseball fan, I’m really bummed about today’s doughnut.  I’m from the “more the merrier” school of thought about the baseball Hall of Fame and this ballot had ten worthy and legitimate candidates.  Despite what some purists would like, the Hall is not reserved for players of the caliber of Ruth, Aaron, and Mays.   There are dozens of players already in Cooperstown (mostly from before 1940) who are inferior to all nine player candidates who were on this ballot.

Since there were no flies on the wall on Sunday, it impossible to know exactly how the discussions in the committee went, but here are some speculative takeaways, looking forward, from today’s big bummer:

The first is that the committee favored the living.  Three of the ten candidates are deceased; each received three votes or fewer.  Former Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman and New York Mets manager Gil Hodges passed away in 1973 and has, over decades, received a higher percentage of Hall of Fame votes than anybody in history who is still outside the hallowed Hall.  Former Cardinals 3^rd baseman Ken Boyer passed in 1982 and former Cards and Reds GM Bob Howsam left us in 2008.

Second, this vote shows the increased awareness of the importance of OPS (On-Base % + Slugging %) as an important statistic.  I’m speaking specifically about Dick Allen, one of the top 20 hitters in MLB history in the category OPS+.   The “plus” in OPS+ is a sabermetric statistic that takes a players OPS and adjusts it for ballpark effects and the overall ease or difficulty of the era in which the player hit.  It helps Allen’s case because he put up huge on-base and slugging numbers in a pitcher’s era, the late 1960’s.  Allen clearly suffered in past ballots where voters likely focused on his totals of Home Runs (351) RBI (1,119), and Hits (1,848), which are comparatively low because he had a relatively short career.   One would assume that Steve Hirdt of the Elias Sports Bureau was in Allen’s corner.

Finally, and this has always been true in the small committees, is that it’s important to have an advocate: Allen never received more than 20% of the writers’ vote and got scant attention with three previous versions of the Veterans’ Committee, in which all living Hall of Famers (between 60 and 84) voted but not in a 16-person group that discussed the candidates.  Without knowing exactly how the various members of this committee voted (the Hall doesn’t reveal each members’ selections), it’s notable that the 16 men included three former teammates (Bunning, Sutton and Jenkins), three others who played against him (Kaline, Carew and Morgan), and his former GM (Hemond).

Allen was always considered a bad apple and his playing career is marked by multiple disciplinary problems.  It was notable that Ringolsby commented that members of the committee came to Allen’s defense, indicating that there were many misconceptions and that in some of the incidents in Allen’s past, he was the victim, not the instigator. Former teammate Bunning went on record after the results were announced that he was “completely disappointed” with the outcome.  So at least we know that this cerebral man, a former U.S. Senator from Kentucky, a man who witnessed Allen’s first four years in Philadelphia firsthand, was in his corner.

Tony Oliva has always had support (more than Allen ever did) but never came as close to induction as he did this year.  I can’t help but think that former teammate and roommate Rod Carew made an impassioned case for his fellow Minnesota Twin.  It’s also noticeable that Hodges’ earned 9 votes on the last Golden Era vote (three years ago) but got 3 or less this time.  The 16-member panel three years ago included Mr. Dodger Blue (Tommy Lasorda), four players who played against him (Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner, Billy Williams, and Juan Marichal) and Brooks Robinson, who saw first-hand the influence that Hodges had as the manager of the 1969 Miracle Mets which beat Robinson’s heavily favored Orioles.  Not one of the players on this year’s committee played against Gil Hodges.

The “Era” committees meet every three years.  Next year’s committee will be the “Pre-Integration Era” committee, which will focus on players, managers, executives and umpires whose contributions to the game occurred before 1947.  In two years, the Expansion Era committee will consider individuals whose primary contributions were in 1973 or later.

So the players who came bitterly close this year will have to wait another three years before they and their fans can dream again.  Although I’m an advocate of his candidacy, it might be time to leave Hodges off the ballot.  A separate committee actually determines the ballot that the 16-member group votes on.  One would assume that Allen, Oliva, Kaat, Wills and Minoso (who gained 50% or more of the vote each) will get another shot.  Less clear is the fate of the five others who received 3 votes or less.  Tiant and Boyer got paltry support both this year and three years ago but perhaps three years from now the advanced statistic WAR (Wins Above Replacement) will become more mainstream.  Tiant and Boyer were #1 and #2 in this ballot on that measurement.

As for Hodges, it’s hard to say.  I think he should be in the Hall but he has considered about two dozen times, with the first try coming shortly after Richard Nixon was elected president. Maybe it’s time for his other supporters to back a different horse.  I still like Tiant, Minoso and Kaat for the Hall and, based on his close call this time, I am now on the Dick Allen band-wagon.  He certainly had personality flaws and wasn’t always the best teammate, but a committee populated with people who actually knew him nearly put him into Cooperstown and that is good enough to be.

I’ll finish with a suggestion (or maybe a plea).  If the Hall of Fame is going to go through the exercise of having these “Era” committees, they should at least elect one new member per year.  So I would advocate a run-off process.  If nobody gets 12 votes, do a second ballot where each of the 16 committee members vote for one member out of the three highest vote-getters (plus ties).  So, this year, the 16 members would have had a choice between Allen, Oliva and Kaat and whoever got the most votes from that trio would get into the Hall.  If there’s another tie after the second round of voting, let ‘em both in, the more the merrier!