I remember a 1959 article in Sports Illustrated attacking the caliber of players being elected to the Hall of Fame. The Hall had only been open for 20 years at that point. The article was written by Joe Judge, who had been a very good first baseman for the Senators in the 1920s.
The reason I remember it was 1959 is because it was published a few weeks before I made my first highly-anticipated visit to Cooperstown, and I thought Judge was raining on my parade. Didn't matter, I was in awe anyway by the things they had in there.
Judge included quotes from his former teammate Sam Rice, who stated that the Hall was becoming "a joke." This was four years before Rice himself was voted in, which no doubt caused him to change his mind.
Judge didn't hesitate to name names -- he thought Tinker, Evers and Chance had no business being there. He thought Dizzy Dean was a self-promoting loudmouth (hard to argue with that) who didn't deserve to be in (I do argue with that) and that Rabbit Maranville and Ray Schalk and Roger Bresnahan were just fan and writer favorites who didn't belong. I'm sure there were others I'm not recalling, but those stuck in my mind.
The article, which in large part was promoting Rice for entry, generated a lot of feedback, both for and against. And it was great for the Hall, because it was the first widely-disseminated debate on the election process, which is something that has kept the HOF in the forefront of public debate among baseball fans to this day. Even people who hate it -- and everybody hates something about it -- can never totally ignore it. This doesn't happen in football or basketball or hockey or any other sports HOF. It does happen with the Rock and Roll HOF, which by any standard is inferior to baseball's version.
I'm probably a minority of one on this, but I think the baseball HOF does an excellent job on two significant issues -- as a repository of baseball history and of keeping the game in the forefront of fan engagement. I've never met a serious baseball history fan who didn't give a thought to Cooperstown, even if it was negative.
I think if the Hall limited induction to only players at the Ruth-Williams-Mays-Mantle-Aaron-Schmidt-Gwynn-Johnson-Feller-Seaver etc. level, there would be maybe one or two inductions every three or four years and the public would lose interest.
Just looking at how many people visit Cooperstown every year, and how it is a staple of debate, including on this forum (and more so on its predecessor) I think the Hall has achieved its goals.
