If we go with "least-deserving" instead of "worst", Candy Cummings has a case for the baseball HOF. Just 6 years in the bigs and a probably-not-true story of inventing the curveball are his creds. He was pretty good for 5 of his 6 years, hence the "not worst" but still...6 years.

I heard a story somewhere that when Rixey got the call telling him he had been inducted, he said "Me? They must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel!"

He was elected as a Pioneer, not as a player.

I always thought Bobby Cox was another poor choice as a manager. The guy managed forever, sure, but he only won 1 World Series.

I can't speak to any other HOF as I don't follow other sports. As far as baseball I have always thought Lloyd Waner. Yet Rick Ferrell apparently may have been elected by mistake and his vote caused some controversy at the time according to Jack O'Connell, the secretary-treasurer of the Baseball Writers Association of America:

Quote:

There were a couple of people that the Veterans Committee put in that… and I don’t want to pick on this guy, because he’s a wonderful person, but the election of Rick Ferrell—who wasn’t even the best player in his family—really irritated people. The Veterans Committee was putting people in left and right, and then Rick Ferrell, who was only on our ballot for three years and got three total votes, got in. He was a popular guy, and he was the farm director for the Tigers for many, many years, and the story I heard was that Jim Campbell had called a few of the Veterans Committee members and said, “Look, just don’t let him get shut out. Throw him a vote.” Well, the guy ended up getting nine votes, so he got elected.

- from http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...rticleid=12754

Relevant article I stumbled across:

http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/list...r1xw44ezkh7u7e

Doesn't really change the fact that he's not deserving.

I don't know about that. If he really did invent the curveball that innovation is still in practice today.

I've actually had an interesting exercise sorting my APBA all time greats set into two decade teams 1900-1920, 1920-1940, 1940-1960 and 1960-1980. It works amazingly well...i've only found a couple of folks who straddled those lines...certain Mays and Aaron did, but with DiMaggio, Mantle, Snider, Musial and Williams already in the 1940-1960 out pasture, moving them to the 1960s was easy. Greenberg was a hard call, but with Foxx and Gehrig (and Sister as a reserve option) already at first in the 1920-40 team, i moved him to the 1940-1960 team.

I think there are several pre1900 and deadball players who got the benefit of the doubt. Elmer Flick and Harry Hooper were pretty normal in the context of their times. Lloyd Warner reported was elected after the veterans committee errantly received the statistics of his brother Paul. Maranville, Bancroft, and a whole slew of 1920-1940 pitchers can have a compelling case. Odd as it sounds, if anything the 1960s seem very underrepresented. Allen, Oliva and Freehan are better than a lot of guys in the hall.

I disagree with the description of Elmer Flick as "pretty normal". His career numbers are fairly low because his career was shortened by illness but when healthy he was one of the very best hitters in baseball.