The JoeBlogs Hall of Fame

Here’s a Hall of Fame thing I had never really thought about before: The Hall of Fame is shaped the way it is in large part because it was founded in 1936.

If the Hall had been founded in 1986 or 1901 or 2022, it would look very different. The thing that made me start thinking about this is the Gallery of Renown, which is available over at Bill James Online. The Gallery was invented by the late Bob Gregory, and the conceit is that the Hall of Fame was founded in 1885.

I’ve been studying The Gallery as I prepare to bring you, yes, The JoeBlogs Hall of Fame! (trumpets play).

I’ve been thinking for a very long time about creating my own Hall of Fame — those of you who have been around for a while might remember that I’ve walked down that road a bit a few times before. I think what was holding me back was simply this: What new could I offer? I mean, sure, I could have a Hall of Fame without Jim Bottomley and High Pockets Kelly and Candy Cummings and Bowie Kuhn and Tom Yawkey. That would be nice. And I could have a Hall of Fame with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson. And I could make room for some players I’d like to see in the Hall, like Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans and Dale Murphy and, obviously, Duane Kuiper.

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But, again, back to the question: What is such a Hall of Fame really offering? I mean, everybody knows there are a lot of suspect players in the Hall. Everybody knows that some of the greatest players ever are not in the Hall of Fame because of various ways they screwed up. And while everybody doesn’t know that Duane Kuiper is my all-time hero, everybody HERE certainly knows that.

So what’s there to offer here?

The Gallery has given me a few ideas of what we can offer. I’ve done a fairly deep dive on them both as I’ve looked for ideas, so let me give you a little breakdown.

The Gallery has 309 people in it.
The Hall of Fame has 342.

Two hundred fifty-one people are in both the Gallery and the Hall.

OK, now to get to the differences. There are 59 people in the Gallery who are not in the Hall of Fame. I’d break them down like so:

19th and Early 20th Century Players

Because the whole point of the Gallery is that it started 50 years before the Hall, there are a LOT of old-timey players in there who are not and never will be in the Hall of Fame. Like, really, a LOT.

The 19th Century Gallery includes: Doc Adams (who should, and I assume will, get elected soon); Ross Barnes; Charlie Bennett; Tommy Bond; Pete Browning; Bob Caruthers; Jim Creighton; Bob Ferguson, Eric Stangel’s favorite player Jack Glasscock; George Gore; Paul Hines; Dick McBride (who I kept calling Duck McBride for some reason); Jim McCormick; Cal McVey; Jim Mutrie (manager); Dickie Pearce; Jimmy Ryan; Charley Smith (I cannot find a Charley Smith who played in the 19th century —maybe they mean Charley JONES, who led the National League in home runs in 1879?); Joe Start; Harry Stovey; George Van Haltren and Ned Williamson.

That’s 22 players from the 19th century who are in the Gallery and not in the Hall. Whew.

You can add 11 more who played in the early 20th century but still well before the Hall of Fame was founded. In MLB, you have: Bill Dahlen (who does have some Hall support); Larry Doyle (who does not); Heinie Groh (there really should be more Heinies in the Hall); Tommy Leach; Sherry Magee (another player I’ve heard people support); Wally Schang; Jimmy Sheckard; Roy Thomas (who led the league in walks seven times in eight years) and Bobby Veach.

Add in a couple of pre-Negro leagues players — Bill Monroe and Spottswood Poles.

So that’s 33 — more than half the differences.

A guy this cool probably deserves to be in my Hall of Fame. (Eric Bakke/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

The Players Who Shall Not Be Named

The Gallery includes most of the players who have sparked most of the Hall of Fame conversation over the last half century: Barry Bonds is in, so is Roger Clemens, so are Shoeless Joe, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and Pete Rose.

Curt Schilling is a slightly different category — he’s his own category, really — and he’s also in the Gallery.

So that’s seven more. We’re up to 40 out of the 59 differences. What about the other 19?

The Borderline Cases

We’ll have A LOT to say about all of the players as we go forward with the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame, I’m sure. But for now, I’ll just list them in alphabetical order.

Dick Allen is in the Gallery, as is Kenny Boyer, Will the Thrill Clark, Darrell Evans (!), Wes Ferrell (so much better a Hall of Fame candidate than his brother Rick), Bobby Grich, Stan Hack, I’m Keith Hernandez, Roger Maris, Graig Nettles, Lefty O’Doul, Luis Tiant and Sweet Lou Whitaker.

They also have Bruce Bochy in there — he’ll get elected to the Hall soon enough.

So that’s 14 more. We’re down to five. Who could those five be?

Ah, this is where it gets fun!

The Contributors!

The Gallery of Renown takes a couple of steps down a path that I find super interesting: They have five contributors who are not in the Hall of Fame. Four of them are broadcasters: Mel Allen, Harry Caray, Joe Garagiola and Vin Scully.

The Hall of Fame gives broadcasters the Ford Frick Award and puts them in a different wing. There is some debate about whether Ford Frick winners are REALLY Hall of Famers or NOT REALLY Hall of Famers or whatever. I would not have a different wing for broadcasters and writers. I’d put them all in together.

This, I think, is one area where the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame can, in fact, offer something.

The fifth contributor in the Gallery is Dr. Frank Jobe, who devised Tommy John surgery.

You can probably see my mind buzzing. There will be many, many contributors in the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame.

On the other side, there are 92 people in the Hall of Fame who are not in the Gallery. I’m not going to go through them all, but I will tell you how they break down because it shows that you can have a whole different philosophy about Halls of Fame.

Players: There are 62 players in the Hall of Fame who are not in the Gallery. Many of these are people who, unless you are a nutcase Hall of Fame fan like I am, you will not know at all. Others you only know because they are often discussed as being the worst players in the Hall of Fame. Still others are borderline picks. We’ll eventually get to them all.

Umpires: There are eight umpires in the Hall who are not in the Gallery. Best I can tell, there is only one umpire — the famed Bill Klem — in the Gallery. I do have to wonder: Do we want umpires in the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame? How many?

Commissioners: There is one commissioner in the Gallery, the original commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Meanwhile, there are FIVE commissioners in the Baseball Hall of Fame — add in Happy Chandler, Ford Frick, Bowie Kuhn (yuck) and Bud Selig. I do find myself leaning toward the Gallery argument here; why do we need to put any commissioners in the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame unless they were somehow extraordinary?

Executives: There are FOURTEEN executives in the Hall of Fame who are not in the Gallery, including both Larry and Lee McPhail and various owners like Tom Yawkey (yuck), Charlie Comiskey and Barney Dreyfuss. Again, have to ask: What kind of executives, if any, should be in the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame? I think someone who builds great teams certainly is worthy; I can tell you that my pal Theo Epstein will be in the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame. But a lot of these others? Eh.

Contributors: There are three contributors in the Hall who are not in the Gallery. Alexander Cartwright, it is now believed, got WAY too much credit for his role in baseball’s creation. Candy Cummings is in the Hall because he claimed to invent the curveball and people liked his story, though it might be a myth. Sol White, who played in the 19th century and then made his mark as a sportswriter who wrote the first history of Black baseball, is not yet in the Gallery.

Managers: The Gallery and Hall each have the same number of managers, but, as mentioned, Bruce Bochy is already in the Gallery and Bucky Harris, who managed the 1924 Washington Senators and 1947 New York Yankees to World Series titles, is in the Hall.

All of this has given me some very interesting (at least to me) ideas about how to construct the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame. Here’s what I think I’m going to do:

I’m going to have classes of 13 players, at least at the start. Each class will include:

One complete team in the field. That’s eight players; no DHs.

Three pitchers. That’s 11 total.

Two wild-card picks. What are wild-card picks? Well, they could be anybody. They might be a player I think should go in with the class even though he played a position already filled. It might be another pitcher. It might be a contributor, a manager, a writer, a broadcaster, something wild.

We’re going to have TEN classes like that — that will give us 130 players, and form more or less the core of our Hall of Fame.

And then, we’re going to start doing it just a little bit differently — we’re going to have 10 more 13-player classes, but this time we’re simply going to pick the 13 most deserving candidates, regardless of position or anything else.

That gets us to 260 players.

And then … well, you’ll see. Then we’re really going to start having some fun.

So this is how we’re going to spend the next few months, leading up to WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL, which I will remind you comes out on Sept. 5. We’re beginning to plan some cool things around the book, too, and I’ll fill you in as we go forward. For now, think about who should be in the first class of the JoeBlogs Hall of Fame, because we’re about to begin. If you’re not already a subscriber, I hope you’ll sign up and come along for the ride!