The Future of Negro League Players in the Hall

[Jason19th]

Originally Posted by Scocs

I don't know. A decade has past since the last committee convened. At that time they had whittled a list of 39 names down to the final 17 (and five of those people never even PLAYED baseball).

If the HOF could ultimately induct Ron Santo after all those rejections, slights, and overlooking, perhaps Cooperstown will at least revisit those other 22 Negro Leaguers who almost made the final cut, like Dick Lundy, Oliver Marcelle, Alejendro Oms, Dobie Moore, John Donaldson, John Beckwith, Grant (Home Run) Johnson, etc.

To some extent this is how the hall gets in trouble with the idea that you can only let so many people in for a particular year. If Dick Lundy isn't a hofer in 2006 how does he become one in 2017. The hall has to stop being afraid. To just put in a ton of people if such is warranted. I understand that this is done in part because they want market the induction weekends but all it really does is lead to arguments about who should be in. I also wonder to what extent we should apply new sabrrmetrics to old players. It's the hall of fame and I think there is an argument that we should recognize those who were reconginzed at their time.
If we look back we now can say that players like Maxie bishop who drew huge Numbers of walks before we valued them were really good players, but does that make them a Hofer. Does that mean we should take out the players who we can now look at and say that hey were actually pretty average players i.e. Fred Linstrom