Unless you've been sleeping on Antarctica the past week, you know that the Hall of Fame will welcome Ichiro Suzuki (RF), CC Sabathia (SP), and Billy Wagner (RP) next July. That's the descending vote-percentage order in which the Baseball Writers Association of America elected that trio last Tuesday. Marry them to the Golden Era Committee's two picks from December, the late Dick Allen (3B-1B-OF) and the still-alive-but-ailing Dave Parker (OF-1B), and that'll be five players at the Cooperstown podium.
That's really a solid Class of 2025. Even if I still believe (and always will) that Allen deserved the honor long before cancer took his life.
Unfortunately, you can't have a Hall of Fame class selected without inspiring about ten rounds or more of Hall of Fame bellyaching over The Biggest Snubs. I'd like to think that writing about things such as that here would put an end to all that jazz, but I know better. In the immortal malaprop of Archie Bunker, que seroo seroo.
The M & M & M Boys Dept. — This time around, I saw two of the usual snub suspects plus one: Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, and Roger Maris. About whom you can say without provoking a noisy debate or a turf war that if all you required for a plaque in Cooperstown is character, the M & M & M Boys would have gone in in a walk a long time ago. All three of those players had their Hall cases throttled by injuries. All three of them get written over-hyperbolically by their partisans.
No three of them are in the top 25 of players at their field positions. (It took several years for the Braves to figure out just where in the outfield Murphy really belonged . . . and the run prevention numbers actually hold him playing better at the one where he spent less than half his defensive time.) Murphy comes the closest to that top 25 percent among center fielders. Mattingly is 39th among the first basemen. Maris is 60th among the right-fielders.
I saw all three play enough to know this: a) Maris was a terrific defender, as well as hitter, before his injuries began sapping his long-ball power. b) Mattingly was an above average first baseman whose bat was more valuable than his glove (and no first baseman was better with the glove than his contemporary Keith Hernandez) until his back began to sell him out. c) Murphy was one of the National League's top 10 players before his knees did to him what Mattingly's back did to him.
Everyone still with me? Now hear this: if their cases are to be reviewed again, Maris would be reviewed by the Golden Era Committee (covering pre-1980 baseball) with Mattingly and Murphy going to the Contemporary Era Committee (1980 forward). And I admit it: I'd have the least objection if Murphy gets the prize. He wasn't just the closest of the three to the top 25 at their positions, but even by the character issue Murphy's ahead by at least two miles.
Nothing against Rodge or Donnie Baseball. They were both class acts. (Maris's class almost got him buried for keeps in the press: he'd skipped a Baltimore interview date with New York writer Milt Gross, and Gross gave him hell for it in print. It turned out that Maris was visiting with the cancer-stricken child of a former teammate and the visit ran overtime.)
But if you don't believe me regarding the Murph, consider the things for which he's stood publicly: being reasonable about the Sacred Unwritten Rules, declaring emotional celebrations don't equal disrespect for the game, and his stand against racism and police excess in the wake of the George Floyd death and protests (during which one of his own sons was injured).
We Still Want Pete! Dept. — No Hall of Fame voting period is safe from Rose's partisans. No Hall of Fame ceremony is safe from them. Sometimes it seems as though no mere mention of the Hall of Fame is safe.
Rose's death at 83 last October didn't change that. Many of his partisans began pleading, too, that his death thus ended his life sentence out of baseball and the Hall of Fame. Not so fast, unfortunately. The clause of Rule 21(d) under which Rose was banished mandates a permanent, not "lifetime" banishment. The Hall of Fame, which isn't governed by MLB even though its commissioner sits on the Hall's board of directors, enacted its own rule blocking the permanently banished from appearing on any Hall ballot.
Now, ponder. For a very long time, Rose habitually appeared in Cooperstown. Since 2002, it was usually at Safe at Home Ballpark Collectibles, greeting fans, and peddling his whatevers. The place was all but built for Rose in the first place. Is it now possible that one or a group of his partisans might do likewise come next July and set up shop in his memory?
Dewey or Don't We Dept. — While rummaging around looking at Maris and Murphy's outfield defense numbers, I bumped into Red Sox legend Dwight (Dewey) Evans. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth exhuming: Evans had one of the most odd careers for a two-decade outfielder.
The first half of his career, he was a defensive whip with a modest (though not unserviceable) bat who manhandled one of baseball's trickiest right fields (Fenway Park) and wasn't easy to challenge elsewhere around the league's parks. He also had one of the better throwing arms in the American League; you may still remember his running catch off a drive by Hall of Famer Joe Morgan and throwing in to double up Ken Griffey, Sr., in the top of the 11th, Game 6, 1975 World Series.
Now, the second half of his career: Evans's defensive skills began to fade but his bat came alive. He was a genuine late-blooming hitter who was one of the keys (however underrated) to any Red Sox success in the 1980s, particularly the ill-fated 1986 World Series.
I don't know whether the Golden Era or the Contemporary Era Committee is prepared to take his case up (his career spreads almost evenly over the time frames covered by each), but Evans was a terrific player.
Don't Drop a Stitch Dept. — Just in case you wondered, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum as we know it was created in 1939 by Stephen Carlton Clark . . . an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. Considering consistency issues of the past few years, it seems a shame Singer never took a whack at making baseballs.
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