DIAMONDS & HORSEHIDE: Fame by the Boatload

The Baseball Hall of Fame has named the last of its honorees for 2006. Last week, they gave their Ford Frick Award for a lifetime's achievement in baseball broadcasting to Gene Elston, former voice man for the Houston Astros and not one of the three nominees chosen in a fan vote. And on Monday, a special committee selected 17 Negro League players and executives for enshrinement in July. Along with the choice of the writers, Bruce Sutter, it will be the largest induction class in the Hall's history.

Oy.

Most of the clamor about this election has concerned the fact that neither of the two living candidates on the ballot -- Minnie Minoso and (especially) Buck O'Neil -- was chosen. I'm not quite as worked up about this as, say Keith Olbermann. (For the record, there are very few subjects that Keith Olbermann doesn't get move worked up over than I do.) Minoso strikes me as a worthy candidate, although it seems like he ought to be chosen by the Veterans Committee, rather than a special election for the Negro Leagues. And Buck O'Neil is certainly a legendary figure in the game, and widely acclaimed as a tireless advocate for the forgotten heroes of baseball and an extremely nice man. (My mother said so. Got his autograph.) But these things do not inherently make for a Hall of Famer. So if you want to find fault with this class of 17, I don't think that's where you start.

Where should you start? Ah, the freedom of choice...

It's a class of 17, for crying out loud.
The biggest group ever inducted at one time was in 1946, when a special Old Timers' Committee, concerned about the inability of the writers to elect anyone, and catching heat over the dearth of players from the early days of the game, swooped in and named 11 new inductees, most of whom were at the top of the ballot the writers were trying to pick from. It cleared the logjam, to be sure. But the group includes some of the Hall's most controversial honorees, like everyone mentioned in the Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance poem. Tommy McCarthy and Jack Chesbro are among those considered to be the worst picks ever. Bulk is bad.

The reason for these picks is a big secret.Much has been made of the fact that Major League Baseball gave $250,000 to the Hall to compile more accurate statistics for the Negro Leagues. It's a worthy goal, and we'll just overlook the fact that $250,000 wouldn't get you a veteran third-string defensive replacement utility fielder. We're told that these newly-compiled statistics were a crucial component in the decisions made by this committee. They say Andy Cooper is one of the best pitchers in the history of black baseball, but Dick Redding isn't quite. And the proof? Who knows? We don't have the statistics. They won't share them. It's all a big secret. Presumably, they're holding out to publish the stats and make a little money on the side. That's fine. But in the meantime, their claim to expertise has no basis, no proof. It's all smoke and mirrors.

It's supposed to be about players.
Of 39 candidates considered by the Special Committee, five of them were being singled out for their merit as owners or executives. That's nice and all, but unless they have been spectacularly influential or groundbreaking, like Branch Rickey or Bill Veeck, there's not really a lot of clamor to recognize more owners. And how did the Committee respond? They elected all five. Because what the Hall of Fame needs is to give more awards to people who never set foot on the field. Again, if the achievement is huge, I'm all for it. But they already inducted Rube Foster, so I think the biggest achievements at the executive level have been covered.

Two of those executives are white.
This killed me. You know how movies are always criticized for making a hero of some white person who helps an entire race that is being oppressed? Think Kevin Kline in Cry Freedom or even Liam Neeson in Schindler's List. Well, that must mean there'll be some movies coming down the pike about J. L. Wilkinson and Effa Manley. Because these two white people helped give the black man a place to play. I'm being a smart ass, but there's just something exceedingly strange about it. It's like they've beed deemed worthy of enshrinement simply because it's so weird and wonderful that these white people were willing to own some black baseball teams. Wasn't this election supposed to honor the men who never got a fair shake?

You're lucky my chick's here.
Without anyone alive as a story hook, most every headline about this election focused on the fact that Effa Manley -- who you will recall was neither a baseball player nor a black person -- is the first woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And that's great the we've proven once and for all that the Baseball Hall of Fame does not, technically, hate women. Unlike, say, the Augusta National Golf Club. I'm all in favor of electing women to the Hall. Hell, I'll elect anyone or anything to the Hall -- if they've earned it. I need someone to prove to me that Effa Manley did anything other than pay the bills and demand compensation for lost players. She's an owner. She's a woman owner, which is different. She's a white woman who passed for black, which is interesting. But none of this adds up to a case for enshrinement. Frankly, it looks like tokenism, which is how we got into this whole mess in the first place.

We won't be doing this again.
So having realized that there were far too many players who had not been given their due, and having all these new statistics to work with, the Hall of Fame called for a special election. One election. There are no plans to consider any more Negro League candidates. There is no future election scheduled. These players don't move on to the Veterans Committee. It's over. Which is ridiculous. We've only got one shot? No wonder they elected 17 people. They probably figured, "We'll never get another shot at this. It's do or die for everyone." I'm amazed they didn't pick all 39.

So, Bruce Sutter, right?
Because there will be so many plaques, and because they're all dead, there won't be a speech for each new member of the Hall on Induction Day. A family member will read each inscription, and Buck O'Neil might say a few words about the glory days of the Negro Leagues. And then Bruce Sutter, the lone choice of the writers, will step forward and thank everyone for recognizing relief pitching. And the whole point of this rigamarole -- to recognize those greats of the game who time, bigotry, and circumstance tried to erase from our memories -- will be completely lost. They won't get their due. They'll be lost in the shuffle. History will remember 2006 as the year of Bruce Sutter and the Negro League 17.

Any of these would be a good place to start. And then you can proceed to the rest. It's just a shame, because this was an opportunity, and it got squandered. And you feel like these problems could have easily been avoided, and you wonder why men and women with so much intelligence allowed it to go so wrong.

And then you see Jack Chesbro, and it all becomes clear.