Each year, those who belong to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America receive a card. The lower the number on the card, the longer you have been a continuous member of the organization. Card No. 1 goes to the person who has been a BBWAA member the longest.
I started at United Press International in early April 1984, two weeks after my 20th birthday. The New York office where I worked had the No. 1 card in Steve Snider, plus two others who were in single digits — Fred Down and Milton Richman — among the hundreds and hundreds of cards distributed each year.
Snider at that time was the weekend editor and had the incredible ability to keep a lit cigarette in his mouth while staring at his terminal — and somehow never let the growing ash drop onto his keyboard. I once made him laugh. I consider it among the best achievements of my career.
Richman played in the minors for the St. Louis Browns during World War II and was elected to the writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame three years before I joined UPI.
After graduating from Fordham at age 21, Down went right on the Yankees beat for The Sun in the 1940s. To that point, he was the youngest person to cover the team regularly. He rode the trains with the Yankees, became pals with the terrific reliever Joe Page and only gave up the beat because travel began to move away from exclusively trains. Down had a deathly fear of flying.
I had been hired for a six-month paid internship that was to last from the first day of the regular season until the final out of the World Series. The job was called Summer Dictationist because this was back at a time when few folks had even the early models of a laptop. So, the UPI staffer or stringer at the ballpark would call the New York office with six outs to go in a game and begin to dictate a game story and a boxscore, with the idea that we would press the button for our clients to have both by the time the winning center fielder hit the dugout steps to retreat to the postgame clubhouse.
Before the internship expired, I rolled this chance into a full-time job. It was September 1984. I was beginning my senior year at NYU. For the next five years, that was the world. I got my strongest education on how to do the job in a universe where you could still smoke in an office, still take dictation of stories over a landline and still be surrounded by reporters with ties to the St. Louis Browns and who covered baseball by train.
I appreciate that a growing contingent of BBWAA members came of age post-“Moneyball” and with the growing influence of metrics and social media. I respect it. I am just trying to frame a picture of who my mentors were, who my influences were when it came to, among other items, Hall of Fame voting.
In 1988, for example, Down was one of what became known as the “Nefarious Nine” who sent in blank Hall of Fame ballots to the furor of folks, mainly in Philadelphia. That was because Jim Bunning appeared on 74.2 percent of the ballots and needed four more votes to reach the 75 percent threshold.
Down said something that became legend in that New York office in explaining what his approach was to voting: “I just did what they [the Hall] told me to do — select the players you think should be in the Hall of Fame, sign your ballot and mail it in.”
The point was that if you think no one on the ballot deserves to be in the Hall of Fame then your job is to vote for no one, which is as legitimate as voting for the maximum 10. If all nine of those voters had sent in a ballot with just Willie Stargell on it, there would not have been an uproar. The blank ballot triggers people because it is seen as a non-vote rather than a vote against the ballot.
Of the nine who sent in blank ballots in 1988, two were in that UPI New York office. Fred Lief was the other. I consider him one of the most important mentors in my career — someone whose thoughts on self-editing while you write run through my head nearly daily four decades later.
Another of my main mentors there was Fred McMane (yes, I had a lot of Freds in my life). McMane was one of the calmest writers under deadline stress I have ever met — and just a wonderful human also. When McMane voted for the Hall in the years when I was there, he would write down the names of the original five members inducted — Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner — and put that year’s ballot next to it and basically ask, “Who on this ballot belongs with these immortals?” The concept was that the Hall was opened to honor the no-brainers, the greatest of the greatest, and if you had to think too hard about it, the player didn’t belong with Cobb and Ruth.
This is the climate I was raised in professionally. This is what informed me from the beginning about how to view the Hall, similar perhaps to the way Jay Jaffe’s detailed work each year breaking down the candidates is the bedrock for newer voters.
The majority of the time that I have been a voter (since 1998) — informed by those who raised me in the UPI New York office — I have fallen under the umbrella of what has come to be known as believing in a small Hall.
I don’t think that I cared about the size of the Hall. But I did care about the standard, and I felt the Hall was for Ken Griffey Jr., not Harold Baines; for Greg Maddux, not Jim Kaat.
I know that would lead some to offer a version of: “Then no one would get in.” To which, I would reply that the Hall should be judged by who isn’t in as much as who is. Because if, for example, Steve Garvey and Luis Tiant aren’t in, think about what you are saying about how great the guys who make it are. I never saw it as my job to make sure the Hall had a good ceremony, only that I voted for those I thought should be enshrined.
But over the past few years, I began to wonder whether I was defending a beachhead that no longer exists. I came to think that the first wave of voters for the Hall generally were looking for a reason not to put people in and generally newer voters over the past decade in particular were looking for reasons to elect candidates.
I have wondered whether I was holding an ideology that was too strict and tied to a dying past.
Ultimately, when you are voting for the Hall, you are establishing what your borderline is and whether a player falls on the side that merits induction or not. There are voters with much more liberal borderlines than others.
I had generally thought of my borderline as the 1 percent — the top 1 percent of players should get in. I would be able to feel comfortable with anyone on my ballot getting a plaque in the same room as that original class of 1936.
But over the years, I have evolved to take in all types of new information. And over the past 5-10 years, I have been slowly ebbing away from a hardened voting position.
Have I gotten softer with age? Have I become more open-minded? Have I felt the duress of internet harassment (I really hope not)?
What I think I have tried to find is the middle ground between generations that were looking for reasons not to elect people and a generation more willing to open the doors in Cooperstown to a wider group.
Thus, I have migrated to what I think of as the 1.5 percent. It is problematic for me. Because if I always thought this way, I would have voted for players I didn’t in their time on the ballot, including Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly and Dave Parker. Ultimately, my single vote would not have gotten them in, and there is nothing I can do any longer about it. They all left the writers’ ballot long ago.
If I were sticking to my old way of voting, I would have sent back a ballot this year with two checkmarks — for Adrian Beltre and Carlos Beltran. Period.
But in addition to them, I cast votes for Joe Mauer, Gary Sheffield and Chase Utley.
And I really don’t know if I have done the right thing. I wish I could be like the cable TV screamers or talk-radio superheroes who are so sure about every utterance.
But one of my favorite sayings is by Voltaire: “Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
I don’t see clarity when I look at the Hall ballot. I see lots of borderline cases that can be argued strongly each way.
So, I have learned over time that the only Hall ballot anyone thinks is perfect is their own — whether they are an actual voter or just playing the home version. It is why I have come to not be critical of how anyone votes. There is no definitive standard. I will harken back to Fred Down — “select the players you think should be in the Hall of Fame, sign your ballot and mail it in.”
That any two voters are going to value the same ingredients for what makes a Hall of Famer is unlikely. The voting process on any issue just tends to make people who disagree with you irritable (or worse), whether the election is for president, best picture or class clown — or Andruw Jones.
I know there is an annual diatribe that the writers shouldn’t vote. Fine. I assume one day we won’t. That a different group will step in. But it is folly if you think you are going to find any group that will agree with your views completely.
Here is what I would say about the current voting bloc: I think the vast majority are putting in a lot of time, study and effort with their ballots. This all felt easier before steroids and Twitter, WAR and diminished counting numbers.
And, as opposed to many items that are voted upon, there is a great deal of transparency with this bloc — at a much greater level, for example, than for the Hall of Fame in the other three major team sports. More than 80 percent of us make our ballots public each year, and a large majority of that group explain our thinking annually (do you know who voted for the Oscars, for example, and how they voted or why?).
I do think if you vote for something that means so much to so many, you should make the ballot public and you should explain your thinking.
I recognize the cruelty of social media has made some voters shy. But, again, by the time this process is over, eight out of 10 of us are going to tell you who we voted for regardless of the blowback. And if the blowback is too much, then just stop voting.
In my quarter-century-plus of voting, I have made a little database for anyone who was ever on the ballot. To simply appear on the ballot means you played with distinction in the majors for at least 10 years, which is an incredible accomplishment. Therefore, each person on that ballot should receive a thorough review.
My personal database includes the relevant stats, accomplishments and metrics. But I also do a lot of comparing people — thinking about who they remind me of. I ask, for instance, whose career I would rather have compared to others. Phil Niekro is a Hall of Famer. David Cone is not. Whose career would you rather have? Should the answer to such questions be given weight in voting?
For me, it helps create a better picture of candidates to go through these types of exercises.
But it does lead to inconsistency. I do not have one-size-fit-all categories in either counting stats such as homers or in advanced metrics such as Wins Above Replacement. I tend to look for greatness even in a shorter period and whether a player was a leading man or a co-star in his time.
Mauer was a leading man, for example. Jorge Posada was a brilliant co-star. And winning means a lot to me. I recognize that hurts players who might not have played on steady contenders. But the goal every day is to win and then to win the season, and rising to do so matters a great deal to me as a voter.
If we are just going to decide that if a player reaches a certain statistical benchmark then they are a Hall of Famer, why watch the games and talk to people involved in the game, etc.? The reason the writers were given the vote, in part, was that we were at the games and thinking about this constantly and had access to people involved in the sport.
I will give you a preview of two players not yet on the ballot who are going to be easy yeses for me: Yadier Molina and Buster Posey. It is not in their accumulation of stats or in their metrics (though some of it is). But it is what they meant to winning and the reverence with which people spoke about their value to winning while they were playing.
I think they are easy Hall of Famers. Many voters will not. The passion and the debate are good — though I always hope it can be civil with the understanding of just how difficult it is to get not just a majority of the vote, but 75 percent of it.
If only a majority were needed, the writers would have voted in five players last year who got more than 50 percent, so not just Scott Rolen, who was elected with 76.3 percent, but four who fell short: Todd Helton (72.2), Billy Wagner (68.1), Andruw Jones (58.1) and Gary Sheffield (55.0).
Looking at this year’s candidates, here are the players I think deserve the 75 percent:
Adrian Beltre is what Rolen would have been if he had stayed healthier — and Rolen was elected. Beltre was durable, a historically elite defender who amassed five Gold Gloves, 3,166 hits and 477 homers.
During the World Series last year, I brought up Beltre to Diamondbacks bench coach Jeff Banister, who managed Beltre with the Rangers for four years. Banister talked for five minutes uninterrupted solely about Beltre’s toughness to get on the field and what it meant to his teammates before he even got to what a great two-way performer Beltre was. To me, he is a no-brainer.
I wrote a whole column last year on why I thought Carlos Beltran was a Hall of Famer. And for those who held the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal against Beltran, I didn’t because the issue came in his 20th and final season, when he was — at best — an average player. In other words, nothing he did in 2017 for Houston when it came to stats has anything to do with his Hall case.
I believe there is a class of terrific center fielders who lived in the shadow of Griffey, and none of them have made the Hall. Of that group, I rate Beltran as the best, followed by Jim Edmonds. I think you could order 3-4-5 in a variety of ways with Jones, Kenny Lofton and Bernie Williams.
Ultimately, I think they are a grade down from Edmonds, and I think Edmonds is a bit down from Beltran, who pushes past my borderline not just for his two-way excellence over a sustained period, but as a historic base stealer (86.4 percent success rate is the best for anyone with at least 200 thefts) and a historic postseason player (1.021 OPS).
Joe Mauer and Chase Utley fall into a similar category — middle-of-the-diamond players whose two-way peaks were high, but did not sustain them due to injury. But it feels after all these years as if I am returning, in part, to where I was 25-plus years ago as a voter. I felt when I was watching Mauer and Utley that I was watching Hall of Famers.
Mauer’s overall career arc and final stats share a lot with Mattingly (who, again, I would now vote for if he were on the ballot).
Few catchers in history produced like Mauer, who won three batting titles in a four-year span (2006-09). But he does have a mark against him that brought me hesitancy. He played in 10 playoff games, and the Twins did not win one of them. Mauer hit .275 with a .641 OPS in those games. Ultimately, I believed he was a driving force and the leading man on getting those good but not great Twins teams to the playoffs, especially in his MVP season of 2006, as well as in 2009 and 2010.
Utley shares something with Gary Sheffield that helped me vote for both — they were avatars for elements in the game.
Even now, when someone has hellacious bat speed or an ominous bat waggle, the comp is Sheffield. And when someone plays with a not-care-about-his-body fanaticism to win, Utley is very often cited. I cannot give you an accurate number of how many executives, scouts and coaches would tell me during Utley’s career that their teams needed someone exactly like him to put their clubs over the top — and not just for his skill.
What made Utley a tough yes for me — besides having only a short prime of excellence — was that on those terrific Phillies teams, I had trouble separating him to some degree from his double-play partner, Jimmy Rollins, who also is on the ballot. And in many ways, I wanted to get to a point where I voted for Rollins. I loved watching him play. I know beyond his skill, his confidence infused those high-level Phillies teams.
In my personal database, the player I compare Rollins to is Johnny Damon — super-confident, productive, middle-of-the-diamond players who combined some power with lots of speed. If you looked simply at their numbers, you were missing the total value of the player. Damon was absolutely someone I would trust to take the biggest at-bat of a season. Rollins, too, regardless of what the stats say. I know they would be fearless.
But on that list of center fielders of the Griffey era, Damon falls behind Beltran, Edmonds, Jones, Williams and Lofton, and is more in a tier with Torii Hunter (also on this ballot) and Steve Finley. That is somewhere in the 2-4 percent, not the 1 or 1.5 percent. And that is where Rollins falls as well for me. Utley was the best player on those terrific Phillies teams.
I had not previously voted for Sheffield, but felt in his 10th and final year on the ballot and with him gaining so much support year to year, that he deserved to have me re-examine his candidacy from scratch — like a detective taking up a cold case and going over all the evidence again.
I ultimately decided to vote for Sheffield, and even now I am not sure whether that was the right way to go. I remain uncomfortable with his explanations about his involvement with illegal performance enhancers. But I am pretty sure that I have voted for PED cheats who have gained entrance to the Hall.
The era before 2004 was the Wild West, and while players knew that using PEDs was cheating, they were in a devilish game of assuming wide usage. Many thought they would fall behind and perhaps out of the league if they did not keep up with the syringes. I think, for example, there is a sense of Greek tragedy about Barry Bonds, who I believe played clean through 1998 while winning three MVP awards. But he saw who was getting the money and acclaim in the freak show, though he was the best player.
Once formalized testing went into place in Feb. 2004, no one could play dumb any more that they didn’t know the rules. I look at it differently to have failed tests after that point, which is why despite seeing Manny Ramirez as among the best handful of hitters I have ever seen and Alex Rodriguez as among the best overall players, I do not vote for them.
Was Sheffield clean in the later years of his career? I wouldn’t want to bet my life on that. But he did not fail a test beyond 2004. The other main elements held against Sheffield are that he was a polarizing player who moved from team to team and that his defense was poor.
In moving from team to team, in my database, I compare him to David Wells. Think: really talented, but able to wear out a welcome. Think: someone who always talked about telling their truth without ever recognizing their truth might not be — you know — the actual truth and certainly might not be good for the culture of the team for which they played. Still, like Wells, Sheffield played on a lot of winning teams and was a driving force on the 1997 Marlins championship club.
As for his defense, what I came to — and maybe this is a sign of my evolution to look to put some more players into the Hall rather than to keep them out — is that he mostly was playing the field.
Edgar Martinez, by comparison, got to Cooperstown mainly as a DH, so his defense was not counted against him.
And I think Sheffield was at least as good a hitter as Martinez with 509 homers and a history in which he never struck out more than 83 times in a season — walking 304 more times than he whiffed in his career.
Sheffield was a hitter who had legendary buzz when he played — pitchers feared him and were aware how many spots in the order he was away from hitting throughout a game.
I waffled. My ballot sat for weeks on my desk with four check marks, and I kept ruminating on Todd Helton and Sheffield, in particular — mainly on Sheffield because I felt the weight of this being his last appearance on the writers’ ballot. I finally gave a fifth checkmark.
And I kept thinking the same thing as I sealed the envelope and put my ballot in the mail: Fred Down would have been pissed at me.