SWING VOTES
Hall needs to reshape its ballot rules
HIDEKI MATSUI should be seriously considered for the Hall of Fame. If he were, perhaps a path can be found to defuse some of the ever-growing discord and polarization about how to treat the ballot.
I have long advocated a category should be created for “Baseball Life,” whereby the totality of someone’s time in the game is considered. Now, I am wondering if that should be the only category and once you go on the ballot you never come off, and all of those veterans committees are done away with because no one falls off the ballot once on it.
This would not impact the no-brainer Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey Jr., for example, from being elected first time on the ballot, five years after his career.
But how about Dusty Baker and Lou Piniella? Both were very good major league players and very good major league managers. Perhaps they are not Hall of Famers as one or the other. But what aabout combined? Did they have Hall of Fame baseball lives over four or five decades in the game? Shouldn’t Gil Hodges already be in the Hall for his total career?
This really already has occurred to get people into the Hall, at least subconsciously. I would dare say Richie Ashburn and Phil Rizzuto got in via the Veterans Committee and Ralph Kiner in his final year on the writers’ ballot because they but-tressed their strong playing résumés with long, conspicuous careers broadcasting baseball. Had they fallen out of sight, I believe they probably would hhave fallen out of mind for Cooperstown.
Think about Matsui’s baseball life. He hit more than 500 homers between Japan and MLB, and is viewed as among the greatest players in the history of Japan. I think his numbers overseas should be taken seriously because he came here, and though he did not homer at the same rate, he was an above-average player with his MLB career OPS-plus of 118 in more than 5,000 plate apperances — the same as, say, Pete Rose, Ted Sim- mons and Chase Utley.
The best comparison is in another sport. Arvydas Sabonis is in the Basketball Hall of Fame because he was one of the best players ever in the European league and internationally for the Soviet Union and Lithuania before being a very good NBA player in the back end of his career. Even if the European leagues was not the equivalent of the NBA, the entirety of his basketball life was Hall deserving.
Now, the Baseball Hall as an institution has generally been as flexible as cast iron when it comes to enshrinements. They further tipped their hand with Joe Morgan’s transparent email — sent out via the Hall — to voters not to elect his tortured view of steroid users.
The full name of the institution is the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Thus, its leadership can hide behind the “National” to not consider foreign leagues — though should that mean the numbers Andre Dawson produced for Montreal or Paul Molitor for Toronto be disqualified because, pssst, those cities are in Canada, which is not actually our 51st state?
The leadership can hide behind the “Museum” to say that international players, women, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, etc., are represented in the building. But no one visits the Hall for the museum portion. That is like dessert. The main course and the allure is the Plaque Gallery on the main floor.
And let’s be frank, the Hall already has stretched beyond its hard-and-fast “minimum of 10 years of MLB experience” to get people into the Hall, albeit not through the writer vote. Players from the Negro Leagues are justly enshrined. And so are contributors, including umpires. So, wait, we will consider the totality of an umpire’s career, but not that of Hideki Matsui or Dusty Baker?
Ten umpires are in the Hall of Fame and, beyond seniority and perhaps a distinctive style, what are people like Al Barlick and Billy Evans doing in the Hall? Does this mean one day Joe West gets in — lots of games, distinct personality?
So back to considering the full baseball lives of people and not just the narrow MLB playing career or just the post career.
Mark McGwire’s admitted steroid sins devalue his career accomplishments. But he has now been a coach for nearly a decade. What if he becomes a successful manager? Would that combo of playing career — whatever you think of it — plus coach/manager earn him the Hall? What if Alex Rodriguez is in the midst of a long, well-regarded career as a baseball broadcaster? What if Bonds or Roger Clemens find ways to give back to a game to which they have undoubtedly done damage?
The Hall has gone the other way to try to remove such players from consideration by reducing years of eligibility from 15 to 10, by being co-conspirators in the Morgan email, by limiting to 10 how many players can be voted upon in any year, by having players who get less than 5 percent of the vote fall off, by not releasing the ballots of all voters for transparency (I am a voter and release my ballot every year).
It is time for flexibility, to recognize that you can’t legislate this issue away, that you can’t ignore that this is a global game. Say Houston’s Yuli Gurriel, for example, is in the midst of a career similar to Matsui’s. Should we actually forget that he might have been the best hitter ever while in Cuba — forbidden to come here by his country as surely as owners once kept players of color out of the majors?
It is part of why the ballot should be widened, not contracted; the voters should gain purview over the entirety of a career and not have that shift that to an individual responsibility of veterans committees; and the Hall should allow anyone worthy of reaching the ballot to stay there for longer consideration of all that the person does — perhaps this will convince some folks who have done damage to the game to work harder to do good as a second act.
That will not solve everything, because more and more we live in a world in which folks only see black and white and no gray on complicated issues such as performance enhancers in baseball. But small, positive steps are still better than no steps at all.