NO new Hall of Famers..........

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

like anyone was really going to vote in the guys who DESERVE it from 19th and early 20th century......

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=577&e=1&cid=577&u=/nm/20030226/sp_nm/mlb_hall_dc

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Posted By: Marc S.

The new system,while it admirably gets rid of much of the "old-boy network" of the old system that let in a watered-down group of Hall of Famers, unfortunately is probably so restrictive that no one has any hopes of entering under the new paradigm.

As I noted elsewhere..."However -- taking Hall of Famers from different generations, times, etc. and getting them to reach a 75% concensus on anything seems to be very difficult -- especially if many of them do not have a personal basis from which to judge their peers to players from generations before.

Do you think Kirby Puckett has any good knowledge of Gil Hodges' career vis a vis his contemporaries? Enough to make a sound judgment? How does Steve Carlton view Carl Mays' career? Does he have any freaking basis for comparison besides looking in a baseball reference book (and what is to say he would even put that amount of time in such an endeavour). Given all the intangibles -- 75% makes it very tough for anyone to get elected."

If I had to speculate -- I would say that no one will get elected in 2005 or 2007 -- and by that time, the HOF may elect to re-design the Veterans' Committee strategy again so that it may clear the way for at least a few people to enter Cooperstown's Hallowed Halls.

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Posted By: Julie

The pendulum will swing back in the other direction again.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Tore will most likely make it. Would like to Santo make it. He was the best 3B in the game between Matthews and Scmidt/Brett.

Jay

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Posted By: runscott

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Posted By: Jeff S

I know there are a handful of guys that most of us vintage collectors feel should really be in the Hall. However, I wonder if it would be more practical if there were a cut-off point, say 50 years after retirement (or even 30), when a player should no longer be eligible.

There are two reasons why I suggest this:

1. Voters have no basis for judgement (as noted above).
2. They've had enough chances already!

The veterans committee, in some form or another, has been voting in early ballplayers every couple of years for decades. At some point, you just gotta draw the line. Tony Mullane's stats aren't getting any better, and the longer it takes, the more perspective we lose on why the original voters kept him out year after year.

On a different note: I read an article which mentioned that Jim Palmer did some research and claimed to have voted for Carl Mays as a result of it. So not all of the voters are complete slackers...

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Posted By: runscott

that voters are no longer as stringent as they used to be. Check out all the big names who didn't make it the first few years of voting - the voters were much tougher. So after a few decades, when the voters got a little lax and started letting in guys like Phil Niekro, guys like Ed Reulbach and even bigger stars, didn't have a chance - no they are long forgotten.

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Posted By: Paul

I was actually a little surprised by the vote. I didn't think anyone would get voted in, but I also didn't think anyone would even come close. 75% just seemed an impossible hurdle for candidates who almost all would be marginal HOFers at best. But Gil Hodges came close, and so did Doug Harvey. (He must have been a hell of an umpire to get that much respect from the players voting for him).

In the balloting by the writers, when a player comes close one year, he tends to draw a few more votes the next year and eventually makes it in -- like Gary Carter. That may happen with the veterans committee too. The voters who didn't vote for Hodges or Harvey will probably take a closer look at them in the next election, and they may make it in. So, I'm not ready to conclude that the veterans committee is dead yet. They may let a few players (or an umpire) in. But I suspect they won't put in more than 2 or 3 before they run out of players who can gather much support.

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Posted By: Marc S.

However -- I would at least say this: I can't imagine that Doug Harvey will be fresh on anyone's mind when he is next eligible to be voted upon, in the year 2007.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

There were a number of problems with the new setup that manifested in the vote:

(1) Time. Whatever the biases of the old committee may have been, those who served on it wanted to be there and put in the time and effort to do their work. How else to explain Joss, McPhee, Davis and some of the others that got in in the last 10-15 years? I am not overly impressed with the "candlepower" of most of the current voters nor do I feel that many of them take it as seriously as the old committee members did. I mean, on the old committee we had people making efforts to vote from hospital beds and now we have some who don't even bother to return ballots???

(2) Appreciation for the history of the game. Dovetails with item #1. The issues of late 20th century bias have been addressed adequately in various news columns, but I don't think anyone really appreciated the fact that if as few as 10 HOFers were ignorant of the game's history, unwilling to do research, and/or were unconcerned with their roles, it would very likely result in no one getting in absent a nearly unanimous vote from the others.

(3) Confusing ballotting. When the names were announced, I knew Torre would get screwed. He was a good, solid ballplayer who had one world-killer season, but as a manager has racked up a record better than many already in the hall and thus is deserving of enshrinement. When they listed him as a ballplayer and then qualified it by telling the voters to take into consideration candidates' overall contributions to the game, however, I knew he'd not be elected.