First Ballot HOF: The Biggest Deal.
You'd be surprised who didn't make it
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The Adrian Beltre discussion was fun. (That’s not him in the photo.) Beltre sailed into the Baseball Hall of Fame this week, pulling down 95.1% of the vote from the members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, the only body of media tasked with deciding the HOF stuff, for better and for worse.
Beltre was a no-brainer, and he received 366 of a possible 385 votes. Again, that’s A-plus territory. But it also means that 19 voters left Beltre off their ballots, even in a year in which there were no candidates more qualified — not by metrics or memory. That revelation opened the door to the usual kvetching and mewling about who these tortured people are and how they should have their voting rights stripped, et cetera. Happens every year.
I’m okay with the imperfections and the public discussion of them, and I always shared my decisions publicly during the 15 years that I was a HOF voter. My final few years, I’ll admit, it began to get a little less joyous, only because social media is the wild west and any bottom-feeder with a Twitter account could be insulting your family’s lineage while lurking behind a handle like MonkeyToxin7654321.
But this much is true: The HOF discussion has veered weirdly toward perfection in the vote, or at the very least 100% groupthink, which is asinine. Ghosts in the machine are part of the machine. It’s fine. Just one person in the history of the Hall, Mariano Rivera, has ever received 100% of the vote, and I think we can all agree that Mariano Rivera is not the greatest ballplayer to have ever lived. It is a flawed election system that honors amazing but flawed people, which is to say, pretty human.
Anyway, the real conversation ought to be about first-ballot selection in general. Joe Mauer achieving immortality in his first year of eligibility was stunning to me; Mauer was not exactly a sketchy candidate, but by the history of HOF votes, it was very, very surprising to see him go in on the first try.
Mauer squeaked by at 76.1%, just above the 75% threshold for election. Good on him. Todd Helton was in his sixth year, which is perhaps closer to the norm. It’s hard to go in on your first ballot, and when it happens, it’s truly something to behold with a sense of wonder.
How hard?
Joe DiMaggio: Elected in his 4th year, including a year in which he got a vote while serving in the military, which used to happen before they shored up the rules to specify post-retirement eligibility only. Literal icon of the sport, .325 career hitter, missed three seasons in the prime of his career during World War II. (That IS him in the photo up there.)
Jimmie Foxx: 7th year. No big deal, he only hit 534 home runs and finished his career with a 1.038 OPS that still ranks sixth all-time.
Rogers Hornsby: 5th year. Led the National League in all three slash-line categories — batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage — six years in a row. Hit over .400 three times. Wait your turn, kid.
Cy Young: 2nd year. This was 1937, the second year that the HOF vote existed. In the first go-round, only five players out of the sport’s history to that point received the first-ballot honor: Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Mathewson, Johnson. Anyway, they named some awards after Cy, so I guess it’s all good.
Harmon Killebrew: 4th year. Killer hit 573 home runs, back when such a number for a career was unheard of. At the time he crossed the 500 threshold in 1971, only four other players had ever done so: Aaron, Ruth, Mays and Robinson.
I could go on. Wait, I’ll do it quickly:
Yogi Berra. Whitey Ford. Tris Speaker. Nap Lajoie. Mel Ott and his 511 home runs. Eddie Mathews. Roy Campanella. Hank Greenberg (took him 9 years). Rollie Fingers.
Not a first-ballot guy among them.
We could argue about Adrian Beltre not getting 100% of the vote, as if that were something the Hall of Fame people should begin policing. (Again: no thank you.) But when the book is written and loaded onto the microchip implanted into your brain for easy access, it’ll say that both Beltre and Joe Mauer were selected for the Hall on their very first ballot. Paging back through baseball history, that’s a really big deal. It’s an honor among the honored.
Great story, but now the whole world knows my Twitter handle. Thanks alot.
Brilliant: “It is a flawed election system that honors amazing but flawed people, which is to say, pretty human.”