2024 Hall of Fame Season, Part 5

The First Seven Returning BBWAA Candidates

Yesterday, the Hall of Fame announced the results of the Classic Baseball Era Committee’s voting. Congratulations to Dick Allen and Dave Parker on being the latest members of the Hall. They are both worthy members.

As I noted last week, I felt that everyone one this year’s ballot other than Steve Garvey would be perfectly fine additions to the Hall. I would have cast my three votes for Vic Harris, Luis Tiant, and Ken Boyer (in a very close call over Allen), and my only reservation about those three was that none of them are alive to enjoy the honor. Well, the committee decided on a bit of a compromise. They finally elected Allen, sadly four years and one day after his death, but also elected the still-living Parker, which is a step in the right direction I guess.

The distribution of the votes is interesting in that only Parker (14), Allen (13), and Tommy John (7) got enough votes among the 16 voters to have their results reported. Everyone else got fewer than five votes. Since each voter was limited to 3 votes, that leaves 14 unreported, and I suppose it speaks to the relatively strong ballot that they must have been split pretty evenly over the remaining five candidates if none of them got more than four. I suppose it’s possible some of the committee members didn’t use all three of their votes, but if that’s the case on a ballot this deep it would be a travesty.

An additional travesty is the Hall’s continued failure to elect Vic Harris or any other manager from the Negro Leagues. I’ve cited Harris’ overwhelming Hall qualifications before, but they bear repeating. He guided his teams to seven pennants and a .663 combined winning percentage. Now consider:

• Every Hall-eligible manager in the history of the sport who has won four or more pennants has already been elected, other than Harris.

• Every Hall-eligible manager in the history of the sport who had at least a .600 winning percentage in 10 or more years of managing has also already been elected, other than Harris.

This has been pointed out by people like me, and I’m sure committee members and Negro Leagues experts Larry Lester and Leslie Heaphy as well, to the point where it’s impossible the other committee members aren’t aware of it. And yet at least 12 of the 16 members continue to ignore their own precedents and exclude Harris. If the Hall’s leadership isn’t embarrassed by that result, they should be.

Alright, I’m sure that result is going to be revisited here, so that’s enough dissection of that ballot for now. Let’s talk about the returning candidates to this year’s BBWAA ballot. We’ll cover half of them today, the other half tomorrow.