Let The National Baseball Hall Of Fame Debates Begin

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

On Monday, the National Baseball Hall of Fame released the ballot of players who are eligible to be voted into the Hall of Fame this year. Today’s newsletter is a primer of sorts for baseball fans who didn’t know about, learn about, or engage in the Hall of Fame wars that raged in baseball circles over the last 20+ years.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame is located in Cooperstown, New York because that is where Abner Doubleday was born. At the time of Cooperstown’s selection in the late 1930’s, Doubleday was believed to have invented baseball. In fact, a commission of baseball executives looked into the matter for three years and concluded in the early 1900’s that Doubleday invested baseball.

But Doubleday didn’t invent baseball, as baseball historian John Thorn explained in his 2011 book Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game. Some version of a game like baseball was played in Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia in the 1700’s. The game we understand as baseball today grew out of the New York game.  

It could not be more fitting that the National Baseball Hall of Fame is located in a place based on the work of a commission that studied an issue and reached the wrong conclusion.

I’m a big Hall proponent.

The Hall of Fame is a museum that documents and brings to life the history of baseball. It serves an important role in not only preserving the game but in growing interest in baseball. To attract visitors now and into the future, the Hall should be inclusive and expansive in recognizing greatness.

The Hall of Fame sees it differently. It proudly promotes its extreme exclusivity as a reason to visit. From the Hall’s website describing the Plaque Gallery:

The Plaque Gallery is sacred ground for baseball fans, where the bronze plaques of the Hall of Famers line the oak walls and visitors speak in hushed, reverential tones. The dramatic arched entryway and marble columns let you know you are somewhere special. Of the more than 19,000 men who have played Major League Baseball, just 1 percent have been enshrined in Cooperstown.

It’s a sports museum! Why should baseball fans speak in hushed tones when looking at plaques? Fans should be able visit with family and friends, see a plaque, and reminisce about watching that player do amazing things on a baseball field year after year. And not to just one or two players. The best players of their generation. The best hitters. The defensive wizards. The most successful baserunners. The consistently dominant starters. The overpowering relievers.

The Hall’s taken several steps over the years to maintain its exclusivity. The first was in 1945, when the Hall added a player’s “character” as an element voters should consider when voting on whether a player should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. (The full rule reads: “Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”)

The character clause is what’s kept Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro out of the Hall of the Fame. All four players are believed to have used performance-enhancing drugs at some point during their career. Alex Rodriguez, who served a one-year suspension for using PEDs, and Manny Ramirez, are likely to suffer the same fate.

My views on Bonds and Clemens are well-known. I think they should be in the Hall of Fame because they were the greatest hitter and greatest pitcher of their generation. In 2016, I was part of a New York Times roundtable on the issue. I wrote:

Maybe performance-enhancing drugs helped Bonds and Clemens perform better on the field, or recover from injury off of it. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe Bonds and Clemens competed on an even playing field, because so many other players used P.E.D.'s, too. Maybe they didn’t. We don’t know. What we do know is what they did on the field, the records they set, and their importance to the game for more than two decades. That should be more than enough to enshrine them in the Hall of Fame.

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The hall features plenty of players who wouldn’t meet today’s voting criteria. Ty Cobb has been accused of espousing racist views, intentionally tried to hurt opposing players on the field, and was prone to violent attacks off it, but was elected in 1936. Same for Babe Ruth, who reportedly injected himself with hormones from sheep’s testicles to increase strength. Tris Speaker was elected in 1937, despite his ties to a game-fixing scandal and the Ku Klux Klan. Even after the character clause was added in 1945, the Hall sought fit to enshrine Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle, all of whom reportedly used amphetamines throughout their careers.

The best players should be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Tell their stories, the good and the bad, and let history be the final judge.

A lot of baseball writers agree with me. A lot don’t. Broadly speaking, younger and more statistically-minded baseball writers tend to favor a big Hall of Fame that includes the alleged PED users because leaving them out of the Hall creates a gaping hole in the history of baseball in the 1990’s and 2000’s. We all watched them do incredible things on a baseball field. That should be recognized and remembered.

That leads to the second step the Hall took to keep Bonds and Clemens out of the Hall.

To be eligible as a Hall of Fame voter, a baseball writer must be a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America for 10 consecutive years. For a long time, the BBWAA admitted only beat writers and columnists who worked for a print publication. That started to change in 2007, when the BBWAA opened up membership to "full-time baseball writers who work for websites that are credentialed by MLB for post-season coverage."

That change opened the door to ESPN and FoxSports writers. ESPN and Fox are, after all, rights holders that broadcast postseason games. But writers at Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, and other stats-focused websites weren’t allowed into the BBWAA until the early 2010’s.

With 10 consecutive years of writing about baseball as a BBWAA member, these younger and stat-savvy web writers would become eligible to vote on the Hall of Fame. By the mid-2020’s, then, the Hall of Fame voters, as a group, would look different and have different views and perspectives.

Bonds and Clemens stopped playing after the 2007 season. They became eligible for the Hall of Fame ballot in 2012. Under the rules in place at the time, Bonds and Clemens would remain on the ballot for 15 years—or until 2026.

But in 2014, the Hall amended its rules so that players remained on the Hall of Fame ballot for 10 years, not 15. Bonds and Clemens last appeared on the ballot in late 2021. Bonds received 66% of the votes. Clemens received 65.2%. A player must receive at least 75% of votes to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Both players had been steadily inching toward that 75% threshold and very well may have reached it had they appeared on the ballot for another five years.

Baseball fan Ryan Thibodaux created a Hall of Fame ballot tracker about 10 years ago. Ryan, now with the help of some friends, keeps track of ballots as they become publicly available. BBWAA writers are permitted—but not required—to make their ballots public. Then they do all sorts of statistical analysis to predict who will be elected, based on the public ballots for each year and compared to historical trends of how public ballots differ from private ballots.

Follow Ryan’s tracker here.

Ryan posted the below ballot after the Hall made its announcement yesterday.

As you can see, the new players on the ballot are José Bautista, Adrián Beltré, Bartolo Colon, Adrián González, Matt Holliday, Victor Martinez, Brandon Phillips, José Reyes, James Shields, Chase Utley, and David Wright,

Here are the vote totals for the players appearing on the 2023 ballot who also appeared on the 2022 ballot. (Scott Rolen was elected to the Hall and inducted last July).

A player must receive at least 10% of all votes to stay on the ballot for the next year.

My friend Jay Jaffe is the preeminent writer on the Hall of Fame. His 2017 book, Cooperstown Casebook, is an in-depth analysis of the players in the Hall, those that should be, and those that should be kicked out. Jay is a staff writer at FanGraphs. He will analyze the Hall of Fame case for the top players between now and the end of the year. (Ballots must be postmarked by December 31, 2023).

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