HOF ballot

In reply to the last two sentences, in Billy Joel’s song “Zanzibar”, he penned the lyrics: “Rose, he knows he’s such a credit to the game, But the Yankees steal the headlines every time”. Of late he’s taken to singing the lyrics, “Rose, he knows he’ll never make The Hall of Fame, etc.”.

I see some humor in that, and I’ve at least imagined that Joel shares my distaste for all things Pete Rose. I think I first really realized how much he offended me when he started spiking the ball after catching the ball on Philly’s old rubber infield for final outs of innings. (All while looking like a spokesman for “Dutch Boy Paints”...

Rock and Roll...Woooooo!!!

BTW, the idea of the HOF having watered down its standards is at least 60 years old (and probably much older.)

I am sadly old enough to recall an article in Sports Illustrated from 1959 in which an old ballplayer named Joe Judge (he was actually a very good player) was bemoaning what the Hall had become. I remember him quoting his Washington Senator teammate Sam Rice complaining that the Hall of Fame had become "a joke." Reading that was a shock to my young naive self, having made my first visit to the Hall a few months earlier and regarding it as something akin to Notre Dame Cathedral.

Now Sam Rice got himself elected to the Hall of Fame a few years later, at which point I am sure his view on the place had evolved.

When I lived in Syracuse in the late 80s-early 90s, I used to go there all the time, especially in winter when it was practically empty. I was doing research on a team called the Syracuse Stars, which had one year in the National League back in the 1870s. I thought it might make an interesting article for local consumption. Naturally I never followed through with writing the story, but I will always have fond memories of how the staff there gave me the run of the place, providing me with ancient files and letting me see old film clips that simply were not generally available in that pre-YouTube era.

A guy named Tom Heitz was the head librarian back then, and he was only too happy to dig out films of Three-Finger Brown and Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, players who at that time I had never actually seen in action. It was as if I were watching films of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.

That experience no doubt gave me a benign view of the Hall, at least in its capacity as a repository of baseball history. Of course that has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Thurman Munson should be enshrined there. It was just a lot of fun for me as a lover of the game, which all of us here surely are.

Simmons was a rarity as a young switch-hitting catcher who was able to bat over .300 in each of his first full-time seasons despite winning the starting catching position at the tender age of 21. He actually debuted in MLB at 19.

For all of us with concerns about Gary Sanchez and his PB tendencies, Simmons led the NL in PB at age 23 with 25, and again at age 25 with 28. He tended to allow PB in teens year after year in his youthful seasons. Yet, here he goes, into the Hall of Fame.

Simmons was not known for consistently stopping the running game. In some years he was better than league average until he passed out of his twenties. He was about league average in the category over the course of his twenty-year career.

I think he’s deserving of election...

Wholeheartedly agree.  Let’s also remember their respective ball parks.  Simmons - a batting friendly ballpark factor of 104 at Busch Stadium.  Munson -a pitching friendly ballpark factor of 97, and more so when left centerfield really was Death Valley and right centerfield and centerfield were deeper as well.  Also, Simmons played most of his away games in some very friendly parks in Atlanta (Fulton), Milwaukee (County), Chicago (Wrigley), etc.  

Not a large sample size, but Simmons had 107 plate appearances at Yankee Stadium:  two home runs.  Munson hit approximately 30% more of his home runs on the road than at Yankee Stadium.  

Munson was the better defensive catcher by far.  He really was the whole package in terms of holding and eliminating runners, pitch framing, in game pitcher management, pitch calling, blocking the plate (when it was legal to steamroll into the catcher), and leadership. And, like Simmons, if you give Munson another six to eight years at DH and first base, resting those mangled knees of his, the counting stats would be there.  Both very good hitters, but I’ll take Munson over Simmons with my life at stake.  If Simmons is a Hall of Famer, then Munson is a no doubter.  

Vizquel is the kind of player that often gets ignored in the voting, because his value was so strongly tied to an amazing glove. So is Lofton. To me the surprise is that either is getting consideration.

Lofton had a short and early prime, but faded quickly in his thirties. Vizquel never really had an offensive “prime”, but man! He was slick with the glove...

Lofton had a fine nine year stretch during which he hit .308, stole 461 bases and played as well in CF as anyone. His OPS during that stretch was 113+. Given that so many of his colleagues were on juice, and given that Lofton remained lean and fast rather than showing signs of bulking up, I’m hoping we can trust he wasn’t on race horse drugs and give him more credit than most from his era for playing clean.

Once again, as I said in defense of Vizquel, Lofton was more about speed and defense than hitting anyway. I have nothing against him, and in fact since he seemed to stay clean, that’s a real plus to me. Sort of odd that those who were strongly suspected (or worse) of using are “unofficially” banned, but the clean players don’t seem to garner extra consideration.

By the way, Vizquel had an OPS+ of 82 for his career. I did notice that he was seemingly extremely fiery for a few years. Maybe he ate some loco weed...