I wonder if they'll ever consider people from "outside" the "game" who had an undeniable influence on the sport. Why Bill James doesn't have a bronze plaque is beyond comprehension. And it would also be cool to honor Sy Berger, the creator of the modern baseball card....
Sure, High Pockets Kelly may have the lowest WAR of anyone in the Hall of Fame, but I'm pretty sure neither bWAR nor fWAR account for awesomeness of a player's name. "High Pockets" is worth at least 10 wins for me.
When the Negro Leagues were made a major league recently, I'll admit I considered it as something of an unnecessary gimmick. Sure, yeah, the Negro Leagues were real, and the top players there really were some of the very best. But making them a "major league" didn't really *do* anything, I thought. And adding those stats to the major league record book doesn't fundamentally change anything: Josh Gibson being one of the very best hitters the game has ever seen doesn't mean that he would still have slugged >.900 in AL/NL ball.
So the whole thing felt like a big publicity stunt to me. A big feel-good announcement that doesn't change anything. I've started coming around on it for various reasons, but this post gave me one of the biggest. Here's Joe's quote:
"This committee voted on people who made their greatest contributions pre-integration — but only WHITE people, because Negro leaguers were not eligible. (The Hall of Fame had put together a Negro Leagues Committee back in 2006, with the intention of closing the book on the Negro leagues.)"
That is absolutely INCREDIBLE to me. I had NO IDEA that the Hall of Fame considered the book on the Negro Leagues to be completely shut. Given the still-constant trickle of AL/NL inductees from that time-period, why would there be any need at all to somehow limit future possibilities for induction. Gil Hodges didn't lose his chance just because it took him a long time. Why should John Donaldson lose his, especially given that Hodges statistical record has long been well-known, while more of Donaldson's career comes out every couple of years? If anything, there should be MORE Negro Leagues committees than AL/NL committees (I fully support another posters idea for a 2024 100th anniversary committee). In this context, it's really clear why the Negro Leagues becoming a major league matters: as recently as 9 years ago the Hall of Fame didn't consider them to be fully real.
One last twist: when the big Negro Leagues committee met in 2006, I imagine I DID know that it was meant to be a one-time thing. My opinion (and most other people's, I think) was "segregation really sucked, and it would be amazing to see what the Negro Leaguers could have done in MLB, but we'll never know, so let's just tell some cool stories about Satchel Paige and induct some Hall of Famers from the Negro Leagues, but unfortunately there's no way to consider the game they played as major, elite baseball". This isn't completely wrong, but you can see how the mentality would lead to being ok with a stunt like a one-time-only Negro League election.
I'm really thankful for how Joe and many others (Buck, of course!) have changed the narrative around the Negro Leagues. Yes, the statistical record is messy and the quality of play was inconsistent, but the accomplishments of EVERY player pre-integration is up for discussion. For many, many reasons--steroids, spitballs, juiced balls, high mounds, pitcher usage, salaries, training methods, and of course the population of potential MLB players--it's not possible to make a perfect comparison that says "these are the baseball events/players/teams that matter most". Thinking that somehow Cy Young is part of the "main story" of baseball but Satchel Paige isn't is ridiculous. The only reason to believe this is tacit acceptance of the segregation itself, which is not something I would have written a decade ago.
It makes me wonder like so much these days does: in how many other cases we as a society have assumptions borne of tradition that will one day come to feel ludicrous.
When everyone agrees that Artie Wilson in 1948 was the last major leaguer to bat .400 (he hit .435), and not Ted Williams in 1941, then you'll know that people see the Negro Leagues as major leagues. Unless that happens, the act of "recognizing" the Negro Leagues as major leagues was just PC nonsense.
Just so we're clear: would you argue that MLB, B-Ref, the Hall, etc should not recognize the Negro Leagues as a major league until everyone ("everyone"!) agrees Artie Wilson was the last .400 hitter?
Seems to me that having those leading institutions endorse the Negro Leagues as a major league is an important step to getting the general public to do the same.
I guess my point is that you can’t change the past. The Negro Leagues were not viewed as major leagues then, and waving a wand to declare them “major” doesn’t really to anything make up for the disgrace of the color line by one iota. No one really equates Artie Wilson with Ted Williams. As much as we want to fix our past sins we can’t. Also, I actually think that seeing Joh Gibson’s 165 home runs on baseballreference actually diminishes his legend of 800+ home runs when there were no official records.
Thanks for clarifying. To my mind, recognizing the Negro Leagues as a major league is similar to other retrospective recognitions of historical figures–artists, philosophers, whatever–that were more accomplished or important in their time than their contemporaries realized. As your namesake pilot makes clear, just because everybody else accepts something as normal doesn't mean that it isn't actually insane. Maybe mainstream society didn't think of the Negro Leagues as a major league at the time, but players, witnesses, and historians have since made a strong case that the level of competition was equal to that of the AL or NL (particularly considering the circumstances).
I see your point about Gibson. Sticking with the documented stats does is kind of deflating. I wonder if B-Ref, FanGraphs or some other database might publish shadow lines for Negro Leaguers that projected the stats out across the full number of games that we think they would have played in a given year. I don't know the state of the records to know if that's even possible, though.
Someone mentioned Chick Hafey below as a bad VC pick. Dead right. There are so many -- Lloyd Waner, Tommy McCarthy, Ray Schalk, George Kelly, Bill Mazeroski, Rick Ferrell, Rabbit Maranville, Jim Bottomley, Red Schoendienst, Edd Roush, Jesse Haines, Rube Marquard, Hack Wilson, Joe Tinker, Fred Lindstrom, Earl Combs -- there are so many bad Veteran's Committee selections due to cronyism, especially from the 1940s and 1970s, that Rice, Baines and Morris don't actually look that bad. The problem with the HOF is that the difference between the BBWAA picks and the VC picks is so stark that you can't really point to a standard of what a Hall-of-Famer is. You say Willie Mays, I say Tommy McCarthy.
"This is the price of being the one sports Hall of Fame that people really care about."
Just to clarify, some of us stopped really caring after they elected Jack Morris and Jim Rice and Harold Baines. If I want to know how good a player was, then I will probably go to Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract, for the rankings and more.
We all know that there are dozens of players just outside, with similar levels of competing claims. It really doesn't matter to me if the "Hall of Fame" decides to elevate one or two above all the others.
It seems like you still do care which is I think is Joe's point. Rice is not the worst LFer in the HOF. That would be Chick Hafey. Somebody has to be close to the bottom and that is Rice. I have also have him ahead of Brock (who was elected first ballot), O'Rourke, Manush and maybe Kelley. Baines may be the worst RF in the HOF other than McCarthy who is also credited with hit and run and trapping (others were managers, etc.). Morris is one if the worst as well but did you stop paying attention when they let in Catfish Hunter who is worse that Morris as are some other pitchers. I do not think letting in lower players is what is going to kill the HOF. It is not letting in some of the greatest players. Or basically ignoring a whole era of players. As a GenXer, I do not have much interest in going to the HOF as they have done a poor job of looking at players I grew up watching who are way under-represented against other eras.
I VERY MUCH beg to differ on Jim "Catfish" Hunter. One has to keep in mind that it's the Hall of FAME, and not the "Hall of Players Who Surpass Some Arbitrary Statistical Qualification". He was the FIRST superstar free agent, heralding all the "bidding wars" we see today. And at his peak (1971-1975), he was arguably one of the best pitchers in the game. Over that five year span - when pitchers were expected to finish what they started and wins mattered, he compiled a record of 111-49 (that's an average of 22-10 a year).
The other years he pitched also count. Morris was also famous (maybe not as famous as Hunter but pretty close). I do not think either pitcher belongs. Morris pitched for 3 more years and gave 30 more winners (even on per year basis, it is less than a win per year difference). Morris wins in ERA + 105-104 (bad for both but Morris was pitching as a 39 year old while Hunter was done at 33). They both only led the league in CGs once. They both led in wins twice. Hunter did lead in ERA once. To me, they are basically the same guy. Solid durable starters who played in front of good teams (with Hunter having a slightly higher consecutive peak). The only HOF pitcher with a worse ERA+ is Rube Marquad. Even under your CGs metric, Hunter only has 6 more than Morris. IMO, you cannot complain about Morris without complaining about Hunter.
Nice point about the era. Competition is relative - it's important to have the best players of an era represented, even if their stats aren't as impressive as those of another era. Dave Stieb was the most effective pitcher in the AL in the early 80's (I say effective, because he never won 20 games or struck out 200 batters, but he allowed few runs in a hitters park without much run support). His case should be reexamined with a fresh look including how he represented his time (as a GenXer baseball fan, the story of baseball is incomplete without him). Whitaker should be easy inductee when he's given a new look by the next committee.
The new committee rules also require an extra year of retirement for eligibility. Players have to be retired for 16 years to be considered by the committees. This ensures that we won't have an 11th consecutive January dominated by the Clemens/Bonds HOF question and seems to have been enacted specifically to make it harder for them to get in, just like the reduction of ballot time from 15 to 10 years. Based on the vote of the newer BBWAA members in the most recent election, it seems apparent that both would have been elected had they been able to remain on the ballot another 5 years. Now they won't be up for consideration until 2026. On another note, I am concerned about how this will affect some of the players from the 1970s and 80s who are deserving of election including Whitaker, Dwight Evans and Grich. Grich is in fact one of the HOFs most glaring omissions - he ranks 8th in JAWS WAR among second basemen ahead of other HOFers Sandberg, Alomar and Doerr and also Whitaker.
I don't pretend to know enough about the states, etc., but if Maz was the greatest defensive 2B ever, as he may well have been, then he belonged. Defense often has been the least crucial part of determining who's in there, and I think of Mel Allen's story of Joe McCarthy telling him when he started broadcasting that the stuff about the Yankees being a "murderers row" was wrong--McCarthy said the Yankees won with pitching and defense, and by not making mistakes, cracked the other team and beat them.
But a thought on the Veterans Committee: Larry MacPhail merely was responsible for night major league baseball, breaking the NYC ban on broadcasting, the first MLB telecast, starting the Reds and Dodgers on the road to championship teams, and then rebuilding the Yankees after WWII. He didn't get in until after he died ... AND, I believe, Warren Giles was off the committee; Giles had followed him in Cincinnati and didn't like being compared with him. Branch Rickey didn't get in until after HE died. And we're talking about Frankie Frisch being a problem? Well, he was. But this always has been a strange process, and it always will be.
Joe didn't mention the changes in the Frick selections. Over the years, they've always chosen deserving recipients (there were a few I didn't much like as broadcasters, but that's my bias). They decided to alter the process, and it probably will lead to more recent broadcasters getting in. Is that good? I'm not entirely certain.
I'm late to the party, but agreed that Thomson and Maz are no-brainers and #3 has to be "Touch 'em all Joe." Fisk and Gibson are at the top of the second tier for the iconic visuals.
I knew there was one that was just out of reach of my mind at the time, and Thomson's is it. Good call.
So Maz, Thomson, and Carter, I guess? I personally like Gibson over Carter, but that's personal bias - it's the first real baseball memory I have when I was allowed to stay up and watch that game live at six years old. Plus you can never go wrong with Vin Scully, and I think the call of the homerun plays a significant role in its status.
Yes, my 3 would be Thompson (won the pennant in the deciding game of a playoff series that came at the end of a long pennant race); Maz and Carter (won the World Series). Next tier would be Fisk and Freese, both ending WS Game 6s when it was win or go home. Freese ahead of Fisk, I think, by virtue of his team going on to win Game 7. Then Gibson, which is iconic and dramatic and has the great Scully call (and also a great Jack Buck call on radio), but still... Game 1.
As a Cardinals fan I'd have Ozzie's "Go crazy" homer in the 1985 NLCS up there, but I can't argue objectively that it belongs with the others.
I think the circumstances surrounding Gibson's homerun overcome the Game 1 drawback. The A's were huge favorites. Gibson was the heart and soul of the Dodgers but couldn't play because of injury. Eckersley was a dominant closer.
And I contend that even though it was game 1, that homerun won the Dodgers the series. If they drop a game at home and lose Gibson for the rest of the series (which they did), I think that series goes very differently. That's all speculation of course, but it's why I put the Gibson homerun up there with Carter's.
Yeah, I think it can't all be determined just by the game/series circumstances. Gibson's is iconic, mythic. Freese's might have been more consequential, but nobody remembers that one the way they do Gibson pumping his arm as he limps around the bases.
What the Hall needs to do is have another Negro Leagues committee convene and elect another 8-12 players who deserve entry. Heck, 2006 only whetted my appetite for the Negro Leagues and deserved Hall of Famers, it should never have been viewed as a closed book. Discovering Jud Wilson, Biz Mackey and Pete Hill among the other electees was a great history lesson.
I don’t know about you but I was disappointed in the last election cycle. We all knew Buck was getting in and Bud Fowler was helped by being a Cooperstown native. But come on, John Donaldson and Cannonball Dick Redding are obvious HOF’s to me. You would have thought with the overdue recognition of identifying Negro Leagues baseball as a a major league and incorporating the statistics into engines like Baseball Reference that Negro Leagues players would get in besides Buck and Bud. No such luck.
So come on let’s have a 2024 committee exclusive for the Negro Leagues and get many more deserving players in. 2024 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1st Negro Leagues World Series so that year makes sense to me and should to the Hall as well.
And every year he doesn’t get elected, there will be an outcry."
So if they don't elect him they have to hear about it every three years but it they just elect him they only have to hear it once and it's done. That would make the decision easy, however I think they like the outcry, it helps keep them relevant.
So Joe, why isn’t there more support for Bobby Grich? If we looked at baseball when he played the way we do now he’d be in easily.
I wonder if they'll ever consider people from "outside" the "game" who had an undeniable influence on the sport. Why Bill James doesn't have a bronze plaque is beyond comprehension. And it would also be cool to honor Sy Berger, the creator of the modern baseball card....
I'm boycotting the Hall of Fame until Joe and Michael get the Paige-Williams bat...
Sure, High Pockets Kelly may have the lowest WAR of anyone in the Hall of Fame, but I'm pretty sure neither bWAR nor fWAR account for awesomeness of a player's name. "High Pockets" is worth at least 10 wins for me.
When the Negro Leagues were made a major league recently, I'll admit I considered it as something of an unnecessary gimmick. Sure, yeah, the Negro Leagues were real, and the top players there really were some of the very best. But making them a "major league" didn't really *do* anything, I thought. And adding those stats to the major league record book doesn't fundamentally change anything: Josh Gibson being one of the very best hitters the game has ever seen doesn't mean that he would still have slugged >.900 in AL/NL ball.
So the whole thing felt like a big publicity stunt to me. A big feel-good announcement that doesn't change anything. I've started coming around on it for various reasons, but this post gave me one of the biggest. Here's Joe's quote:
"This committee voted on people who made their greatest contributions pre-integration — but only WHITE people, because Negro leaguers were not eligible. (The Hall of Fame had put together a Negro Leagues Committee back in 2006, with the intention of closing the book on the Negro leagues.)"
That is absolutely INCREDIBLE to me. I had NO IDEA that the Hall of Fame considered the book on the Negro Leagues to be completely shut. Given the still-constant trickle of AL/NL inductees from that time-period, why would there be any need at all to somehow limit future possibilities for induction. Gil Hodges didn't lose his chance just because it took him a long time. Why should John Donaldson lose his, especially given that Hodges statistical record has long been well-known, while more of Donaldson's career comes out every couple of years? If anything, there should be MORE Negro Leagues committees than AL/NL committees (I fully support another posters idea for a 2024 100th anniversary committee). In this context, it's really clear why the Negro Leagues becoming a major league matters: as recently as 9 years ago the Hall of Fame didn't consider them to be fully real.
One last twist: when the big Negro Leagues committee met in 2006, I imagine I DID know that it was meant to be a one-time thing. My opinion (and most other people's, I think) was "segregation really sucked, and it would be amazing to see what the Negro Leaguers could have done in MLB, but we'll never know, so let's just tell some cool stories about Satchel Paige and induct some Hall of Famers from the Negro Leagues, but unfortunately there's no way to consider the game they played as major, elite baseball". This isn't completely wrong, but you can see how the mentality would lead to being ok with a stunt like a one-time-only Negro League election.
I'm really thankful for how Joe and many others (Buck, of course!) have changed the narrative around the Negro Leagues. Yes, the statistical record is messy and the quality of play was inconsistent, but the accomplishments of EVERY player pre-integration is up for discussion. For many, many reasons--steroids, spitballs, juiced balls, high mounds, pitcher usage, salaries, training methods, and of course the population of potential MLB players--it's not possible to make a perfect comparison that says "these are the baseball events/players/teams that matter most". Thinking that somehow Cy Young is part of the "main story" of baseball but Satchel Paige isn't is ridiculous. The only reason to believe this is tacit acceptance of the segregation itself, which is not something I would have written a decade ago.
It makes me wonder like so much these days does: in how many other cases we as a society have assumptions borne of tradition that will one day come to feel ludicrous.
When everyone agrees that Artie Wilson in 1948 was the last major leaguer to bat .400 (he hit .435), and not Ted Williams in 1941, then you'll know that people see the Negro Leagues as major leagues. Unless that happens, the act of "recognizing" the Negro Leagues as major leagues was just PC nonsense.
Just so we're clear: would you argue that MLB, B-Ref, the Hall, etc should not recognize the Negro Leagues as a major league until everyone ("everyone"!) agrees Artie Wilson was the last .400 hitter?
Seems to me that having those leading institutions endorse the Negro Leagues as a major league is an important step to getting the general public to do the same.
I guess my point is that you can’t change the past. The Negro Leagues were not viewed as major leagues then, and waving a wand to declare them “major” doesn’t really to anything make up for the disgrace of the color line by one iota. No one really equates Artie Wilson with Ted Williams. As much as we want to fix our past sins we can’t. Also, I actually think that seeing Joh Gibson’s 165 home runs on baseballreference actually diminishes his legend of 800+ home runs when there were no official records.
Thanks for clarifying. To my mind, recognizing the Negro Leagues as a major league is similar to other retrospective recognitions of historical figures–artists, philosophers, whatever–that were more accomplished or important in their time than their contemporaries realized. As your namesake pilot makes clear, just because everybody else accepts something as normal doesn't mean that it isn't actually insane. Maybe mainstream society didn't think of the Negro Leagues as a major league at the time, but players, witnesses, and historians have since made a strong case that the level of competition was equal to that of the AL or NL (particularly considering the circumstances).
I see your point about Gibson. Sticking with the documented stats does is kind of deflating. I wonder if B-Ref, FanGraphs or some other database might publish shadow lines for Negro Leaguers that projected the stats out across the full number of games that we think they would have played in a given year. I don't know the state of the records to know if that's even possible, though.
Someone mentioned Chick Hafey below as a bad VC pick. Dead right. There are so many -- Lloyd Waner, Tommy McCarthy, Ray Schalk, George Kelly, Bill Mazeroski, Rick Ferrell, Rabbit Maranville, Jim Bottomley, Red Schoendienst, Edd Roush, Jesse Haines, Rube Marquard, Hack Wilson, Joe Tinker, Fred Lindstrom, Earl Combs -- there are so many bad Veteran's Committee selections due to cronyism, especially from the 1940s and 1970s, that Rice, Baines and Morris don't actually look that bad. The problem with the HOF is that the difference between the BBWAA picks and the VC picks is so stark that you can't really point to a standard of what a Hall-of-Famer is. You say Willie Mays, I say Tommy McCarthy.
It was a travesty that the committee did not meet virtually in 2021. Allen could have been elected when he was alive.
Hopefully regardless of COVID’s future progression, committees like this in charge of making important and timely decisions will still meet and act.
"This is the price of being the one sports Hall of Fame that people really care about."
Just to clarify, some of us stopped really caring after they elected Jack Morris and Jim Rice and Harold Baines. If I want to know how good a player was, then I will probably go to Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract, for the rankings and more.
We all know that there are dozens of players just outside, with similar levels of competing claims. It really doesn't matter to me if the "Hall of Fame" decides to elevate one or two above all the others.
It seems like you still do care which is I think is Joe's point. Rice is not the worst LFer in the HOF. That would be Chick Hafey. Somebody has to be close to the bottom and that is Rice. I have also have him ahead of Brock (who was elected first ballot), O'Rourke, Manush and maybe Kelley. Baines may be the worst RF in the HOF other than McCarthy who is also credited with hit and run and trapping (others were managers, etc.). Morris is one if the worst as well but did you stop paying attention when they let in Catfish Hunter who is worse that Morris as are some other pitchers. I do not think letting in lower players is what is going to kill the HOF. It is not letting in some of the greatest players. Or basically ignoring a whole era of players. As a GenXer, I do not have much interest in going to the HOF as they have done a poor job of looking at players I grew up watching who are way under-represented against other eras.
I VERY MUCH beg to differ on Jim "Catfish" Hunter. One has to keep in mind that it's the Hall of FAME, and not the "Hall of Players Who Surpass Some Arbitrary Statistical Qualification". He was the FIRST superstar free agent, heralding all the "bidding wars" we see today. And at his peak (1971-1975), he was arguably one of the best pitchers in the game. Over that five year span - when pitchers were expected to finish what they started and wins mattered, he compiled a record of 111-49 (that's an average of 22-10 a year).
The other years he pitched also count. Morris was also famous (maybe not as famous as Hunter but pretty close). I do not think either pitcher belongs. Morris pitched for 3 more years and gave 30 more winners (even on per year basis, it is less than a win per year difference). Morris wins in ERA + 105-104 (bad for both but Morris was pitching as a 39 year old while Hunter was done at 33). They both only led the league in CGs once. They both led in wins twice. Hunter did lead in ERA once. To me, they are basically the same guy. Solid durable starters who played in front of good teams (with Hunter having a slightly higher consecutive peak). The only HOF pitcher with a worse ERA+ is Rube Marquad. Even under your CGs metric, Hunter only has 6 more than Morris. IMO, you cannot complain about Morris without complaining about Hunter.
Nice point about the era. Competition is relative - it's important to have the best players of an era represented, even if their stats aren't as impressive as those of another era. Dave Stieb was the most effective pitcher in the AL in the early 80's (I say effective, because he never won 20 games or struck out 200 batters, but he allowed few runs in a hitters park without much run support). His case should be reexamined with a fresh look including how he represented his time (as a GenXer baseball fan, the story of baseball is incomplete without him). Whitaker should be easy inductee when he's given a new look by the next committee.
Buck Weaver wasn't accused of throwing the 1919 World Series. He was suspended for knowing about the fix but not saying anything.
The new committee rules also require an extra year of retirement for eligibility. Players have to be retired for 16 years to be considered by the committees. This ensures that we won't have an 11th consecutive January dominated by the Clemens/Bonds HOF question and seems to have been enacted specifically to make it harder for them to get in, just like the reduction of ballot time from 15 to 10 years. Based on the vote of the newer BBWAA members in the most recent election, it seems apparent that both would have been elected had they been able to remain on the ballot another 5 years. Now they won't be up for consideration until 2026. On another note, I am concerned about how this will affect some of the players from the 1970s and 80s who are deserving of election including Whitaker, Dwight Evans and Grich. Grich is in fact one of the HOFs most glaring omissions - he ranks 8th in JAWS WAR among second basemen ahead of other HOFers Sandberg, Alomar and Doerr and also Whitaker.
I don't pretend to know enough about the states, etc., but if Maz was the greatest defensive 2B ever, as he may well have been, then he belonged. Defense often has been the least crucial part of determining who's in there, and I think of Mel Allen's story of Joe McCarthy telling him when he started broadcasting that the stuff about the Yankees being a "murderers row" was wrong--McCarthy said the Yankees won with pitching and defense, and by not making mistakes, cracked the other team and beat them.
But a thought on the Veterans Committee: Larry MacPhail merely was responsible for night major league baseball, breaking the NYC ban on broadcasting, the first MLB telecast, starting the Reds and Dodgers on the road to championship teams, and then rebuilding the Yankees after WWII. He didn't get in until after he died ... AND, I believe, Warren Giles was off the committee; Giles had followed him in Cincinnati and didn't like being compared with him. Branch Rickey didn't get in until after HE died. And we're talking about Frankie Frisch being a problem? Well, he was. But this always has been a strange process, and it always will be.
Joe didn't mention the changes in the Frick selections. Over the years, they've always chosen deserving recipients (there were a few I didn't much like as broadcasters, but that's my bias). They decided to alter the process, and it probably will lead to more recent broadcasters getting in. Is that good? I'm not entirely certain.
Holy Trinity of Walk Off Home Runs: Maz, The Crime Dog, and Scott Hatteberg!
Maz, Thomson, and Fisk
Has to be a pennant or series winning HR so I'd go Maz, Carter (loses out to Maz because in game 6 not 7), Bobby Thomson and Travis Ishikawa
Definitely Ishikawa.
I don't know whether this is sarcastic or not, but I would go with:
Mazeroski, Gibson, Carter
Bobby Thomson has to be one of them. I'd say Thomson (won the pennant), Maz, Carter (both won WS). Gibson's was great, but that was game 1.
I'm late to the party, but agreed that Thomson and Maz are no-brainers and #3 has to be "Touch 'em all Joe." Fisk and Gibson are at the top of the second tier for the iconic visuals.
I knew there was one that was just out of reach of my mind at the time, and Thomson's is it. Good call.
So Maz, Thomson, and Carter, I guess? I personally like Gibson over Carter, but that's personal bias - it's the first real baseball memory I have when I was allowed to stay up and watch that game live at six years old. Plus you can never go wrong with Vin Scully, and I think the call of the homerun plays a significant role in its status.
Yes, my 3 would be Thompson (won the pennant in the deciding game of a playoff series that came at the end of a long pennant race); Maz and Carter (won the World Series). Next tier would be Fisk and Freese, both ending WS Game 6s when it was win or go home. Freese ahead of Fisk, I think, by virtue of his team going on to win Game 7. Then Gibson, which is iconic and dramatic and has the great Scully call (and also a great Jack Buck call on radio), but still... Game 1.
As a Cardinals fan I'd have Ozzie's "Go crazy" homer in the 1985 NLCS up there, but I can't argue objectively that it belongs with the others.
I think the circumstances surrounding Gibson's homerun overcome the Game 1 drawback. The A's were huge favorites. Gibson was the heart and soul of the Dodgers but couldn't play because of injury. Eckersley was a dominant closer.
And I contend that even though it was game 1, that homerun won the Dodgers the series. If they drop a game at home and lose Gibson for the rest of the series (which they did), I think that series goes very differently. That's all speculation of course, but it's why I put the Gibson homerun up there with Carter's.
Yeah, I think it can't all be determined just by the game/series circumstances. Gibson's is iconic, mythic. Freese's might have been more consequential, but nobody remembers that one the way they do Gibson pumping his arm as he limps around the bases.
Maybe Gibson beats out the Crime Dog. It may have been Game 1, but psychologically, the Dodgers won that series that night.
What the Hall needs to do is have another Negro Leagues committee convene and elect another 8-12 players who deserve entry. Heck, 2006 only whetted my appetite for the Negro Leagues and deserved Hall of Famers, it should never have been viewed as a closed book. Discovering Jud Wilson, Biz Mackey and Pete Hill among the other electees was a great history lesson.
I don’t know about you but I was disappointed in the last election cycle. We all knew Buck was getting in and Bud Fowler was helped by being a Cooperstown native. But come on, John Donaldson and Cannonball Dick Redding are obvious HOF’s to me. You would have thought with the overdue recognition of identifying Negro Leagues baseball as a a major league and incorporating the statistics into engines like Baseball Reference that Negro Leagues players would get in besides Buck and Bud. No such luck.
So come on let’s have a 2024 committee exclusive for the Negro Leagues and get many more deserving players in. 2024 will be the 100th anniversary of the 1st Negro Leagues World Series so that year makes sense to me and should to the Hall as well.
What happened to the Weekend Fun Read?
"Consider Barry Bonds.
If he ever gets elected, there will be an outcry.
And every year he doesn’t get elected, there will be an outcry."
So if they don't elect him they have to hear about it every three years but it they just elect him they only have to hear it once and it's done. That would make the decision easy, however I think they like the outcry, it helps keep them relevant.
Ask poor Harold Baines if it’s ever “one and done”.
This is great stuff. I love these HoF history lessons. Just amazingly kooky, like a group of sitcom characters are running the HoF.