DIAMONDS & HORSEHIDE: Merit Badges

Earlier this year, I joined in a project called The Hall of Merit. The HOM was the brainchild of a baseball fan and sabermetrician named Joe Dimino, who got tired of people complaining about the questionable job the Baseball Writers Association of America and the Veterans' Committee had done in selecting members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and decided to do something about it. So he set up his own hall, and let slip the dogs of war.

The basic concept of the HOM is that we can use statistical analysis to prove who really are the best players in the history of the game. Running counter to this is the attitude of many sportswriters, who believe that statistics are the private domain of mathematicians and they ruin the beauty of the game. As is true in almost any dispute, both sides are a little bit right and a little bit wrong. (And I'm drastically over-simplifying things here. Because we don't need to spend all day on this.) But it's the writers who get to vote for the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Well, says the spirit of the Hall of Merit, we'll use cold hard facts to make our picks, and we'll see how things turn out.

Every two weeks, there's a new election. They started in a hypothetical 1898, and each election represents a new year. I waited until 1934 before I submitted my first ballot, because my knowledge about the skills of early players is severely limited. I also waited because it's kind of intimidating. There are some top baseball writers who have participated in this project, like Eric Enders and Dan Greenia. And there are only about 50 voters in any given election, so it's a lot of responsibility for a guy like me, even if nobody outside of the 50 of us knows the thing exists. But it's 1965 now, and I've voted in every year since my first. Evidently, I'm enough of a regular that I was described in the wiki as a "long-time voter." Heh.

The recently-concluded 1964 election is a good representation of how we work (and how I differ from everyone else). We elected Dodger shortstop Pee Wee Reese on the first ballot. He has a nice long career, and it was easy for me to rank him 1st on my ballot. We also elected pitcher Wes Ferrell, who had a short career with a few outstanding seasons. He did not appear on my ballot at all. So I am what you might call a career voter, and I am a dying breed in the HOM electorate. Most voters prefer a player's prime (the best seasons of a player), while a few others look at peak (the best individual season of a player). Prime has garnered more and more success in recent years, with the election of Ferrell and Hughie Jennings (a shortstop with five great years and absolutely nothign else). Meanwhile, I'm in the unusual position of stumping for a reds pitcher named Burleigh Grimes, who threw a legal spitball and had a nice long, durable career with some better-than-average seasons. In the HOM world, I'm the Grimes nut.

Since us commonfolk don't get a say in the official Hall of Fame, I'm enjoying having a voice in the unoffical Hall of Merit. For the coming election, I get to review the careers of Larry Doby, Enos Slaughter, and Mickey Vernon, among others. It keeps baseball alive even when there are no games. And there's always more to learn.

It'll be a pleasant way to spend the winter.