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Posted By: Chris Counts

It is my belief that perception often trumps reality in evaluating Hall of Famers. A comparison between Minnie Minoso and Gil Hodges perfectly illustrates this point. The two played during the same era and had careers roughly equivelant in length. Minoso played 12 seasons as a regular and was a 9-time all-star; Hodges was a 6-time all-star in 14 seasons ...

At various pounts in his career, Minoso led his league in hits (once), total bases (once), doubles (once), triples (3 times), sacrifice flies (twice), stolen bases (3 times) and hit-by-pitches (an amazing 10 times!). He was also came in second place (one time each) for batting average, on-base average, OPS, slugging average, RBIs, doubles, extra base hits and three times was the runner-up in stolen bases. He also won three gold gloves.

Hodges, to the contrary, who played most of his career in a much better hitting park (Ebbets Field versus Comiskey Park), led his league in sacrifice flies (twice) and was a runner-up (one time each) in home runs and RBIs. He was also a three-time Gold Glove winner.

Although Hodges hit twice as many home runs (370 to 186), knocked in more runs (1274 to 1023), and walked more (943 to 814), Minoso was better in batting average (.298 to .273), on-base percentage (.389 to .359), runs (1136 to 1105), doubles (336 to 295), triples (83 to 48), hit-by-pitches (a remarkable 192 to 25) and stolen bases (205 to 63). Minoso did all this playing in far weaker line-ups. And by the way, he was baseball's first star who was BOTH African-American and Hispanic (alot of good that did him!). If he had been white, his career would have started a couple years earlier, giving him at least a couple years to pad his already Cooperstopwn-worthy stats.

My point is that there are far more people pushing Hodges for induction than are pushing for Minoso. And Hodges, even though he hasn't made it, annually receives more votes. Sure, leading the '69 Mets to a title was an accomplishment, but there are a lot of one-hit wonder managers in baseball history. The bottom line was that Minoso was a better player.

For anybody who doubts my perception versus reality theory, do the same comparison with Lefty Gomez (hands-down HOFer) and Lon Warnecke (his name NEVER comes up in HOF discussions). They played during the same years and had virtuallty the same stats. After looking at the numbers, I find it impossible to argue that Gomez was any better than Warnecke ...

I'd write a book on this subject, but Bill James already did it. It's a great read, by the way ...