FanPost

Another Take On The Veteran's Committee

These are Mike's comments to me via e-mail about the issue -- I hope to start a discussion here in the diaries about it.

All these player-by-player arguments have been made ad nauseum.  You and I have read them all.  I can't add anything to them.  I'd prefer to go after the root problem, a needed change in the secondary voting method.

It is generally conceded, and I agree, that the BBWAA does a very good job with its selections.  Nearly all the shoddy choices, and complaints with same, are due to the work of the previous Veterans Committee.

A secondary voting system is necessary, as the BBWAA sometimes lets worthies slip their attention; and because, occasionally, the value of a career, especially a pioneering one, needs more than fifteen years to become apparent. There are also a fair number of 19th century and Negro League players of high merit, who are known now almost exclusively to scholars of the game. Any secondary voting body should be composed in a manner to give due consideration to such candidates; and here the HOF has manifestly failed, failed badly, and for decades.

The old VC, especially under the presidencies of two strong-willed ex-players, Frank Frisch and Ted Williams, engaged in rank cronyism for years.  Most of the recent bad choices came under their watches.  The complaints became such that, for a run of a couple years, the VC was so  spooked it elected no one, and there were yet more complaints.  In the few years before its dissolution, it was actually beginning to get the hang of it, choosing such as Fox, McPhee, Willis, George Davis, Hilton Smith; in short, exactly the sort of great and neglected players such a body should be choosing.  But by then it was too late,
they'd worn out their welcome.

The new VC was a huge mistake, I could not  imagine what they were thinking when they announced it.  No scholarship, except perhaps in the selection body that compiles the list of candidates.  That, incidentally, is a pretty good list. But those voting on it have very apparent weaknesses in knowledge and intent. It should be very difficult to enter the HOF.  It is also absurd to proclaim, as this body does by its actions, that all worthy players whose careers
ended more than twenty-five years ago have been chosen, and none remain.

Scrap the current method.  As to its replacement, I have my ideas, but I betray my own leanings in so doing, and its value, in this context,  is almost nil.

I'd propose a commitee composed mostly of  scholars, authors, and historians.  The input of ex-players and front office personnel would be diluted, and this would raise a howl; but we have seen the quality of their selections, howls are wasted.  This would be a large body, perhaps in the mid-hundreds, about as large as the BBWAA.  It would help if they met in person, and hashed out their ideas and choices, but this may not be possible. In this Internet and e-mail age, an actual meeting is not essential. Assume that worthies exist, and take multiple ballots, if necessary, to elect at least one or two per year.  An informed and reasoned consensus should be the goal.

I've said enough.  There are well-established and well-respected organizations from which to pool such a group.  Do it.  And remember, given a modest rate of annual inductions, someone's darling will always be left behind, and sometimes jusifiably.  Partisanship is more than  occasionally wrong.


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