Sports fans are about to be subjected to the logic of membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is to say no logic. The 2025 members will be announced next week and the most pressing questions are whether Ichiro Suzuki will be unanimous, and if CC Sabathia will become the 54th first-year-eligible pick.
For this, baseball history is haunting.
Only one player has ever been a unanimous choice. His name is not Willie Mays nor Joe DiMaggio nor Derek Jeter nor Hank Aaron nor Nolan Ryan nor Mickey Mantle. If you said Mariano Rivera, go to the head of the class. The players closest to being 100-per-centers were Jeter (99.7), Ken Griffey Jr. (99.3), Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver (both 98.8).
Hank Aaron, with more home runs than anybody who didn’t inject steroids (allegedly), was a first-ballot Hall of Famer even though he was MIA on nine ballots. Six voters thought seven no-hitters wasn’t enough to make Nolan Ryan unanimous, and 23 voters regarded Willie Mays — regarded by many as the greatest all-round player ever — from the same status.
“How,” Duke Snider once asked during an interview where the questions were mine,“do you become a better player after you’ve retired?”
Originally a cross-town rival of Mays in New York, Snider was enshrined in 1980…his 11th year of eligibility. He was on 86.5 per cent of the ballots, having risen from his “rookie” season in the voting, when 83.3 per cent of the voters ignored him! In those 11 years, the only time he picked up a bat was to teach young hitters what to do with it. By today’s rules, Snider wouldn’t have made it in the conventional voting, because in 2017 the maximum years of eligibility was reduced from 15 to 10.
Voting for a winning a post-career trip to upstate New York (that would be Cooperstown) is fraught with controversy and inequities. Mickey Mantle — the other member of New York’s “Willie, Mickey and The Duke” — made it with just 88.2 per cent of the votes and was ignored by 43 voters who must have been in diapers when he played. Joe DiMaggio, who preceded all of them as The Big Apple’s greatest centre fielder, needed four years of retirement to become good enough for Cooperstown. Further down the ladder of fame was Larry Walker, perhaps Canada’s best major leaguer. Walker spent his entire post-career “career” on the list before making it in Year Ten, when 76.6 per cent of the voters liked him, up from 20.3 per cent in Year One.
To be even more distant than my memory, Dizzy Dean was on the ballot nine times before becoming a Hall of Famer. Jackie Robinson, whose skin colour changed the game forever, was 36 voters short of unanimity. Cy Young, whose award is the annual standard for pitching excellence, was a second-year choice when his “ability” improved by 30 points, 49.1 per cent to 76.1.
Even the inaugural class wasn’t automatic. Of the five players first elected, Ty Cobb led the way with 98.2 per cent of the votes, four shy of perfection. Ranked third in that class was a player ignored by 11 voters.
His name was Babe Ruth.
