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 BABE RUTH ...despite his carousing lifestyle, he was a cinch for the Hall of Fame |
Voting a Hall of Fame ballot
must be taken seriously
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
This is my favorite time of the year. I get to be part of the electoral college.
This isn’t the electoral college that
put George W. Bush into the White House by a whisker in two separate
elections in 2000 and 2004. In a little more than three more
years they will put somebody else in there for four years. Good
luck to him or her.
I put my candidates in for life. Only a President can do that
on the Supreme Court.
This is the month for the Baseball Hall of Fame election, the
most exalted honor in professional sports.
The two baseball outcasts, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose,
will probably get more attention for not getting in than any
player might for being given the honor.
Jackson never really had a chance after his lifetime ban and
Rose’s chances diminish this year after he falls off the
ballot of sportswriters into a veterans category. His ban, now
being appealed, keeps his name from the voting list. Some hard
core voters write him in.
The ballots are circulated to over 500 sportswriters in the month
of December, announced in early January and acted on with induction
in late July at the game’s emotional center in Cooperstown,
New York.
I have been contributing to the immortality of baseball players
this way for almost 40 years.
After 10 years on the beat as a traveling baseball writer, the
honor is awarded in this voting privilege. Most baseball writers,
myself included, give this more thought and more respect than
any national election.
It is no small thing to contribute to a baseball player’s
immortality. I have walked the corridors of the Cooperstown Hall
of Fame library, staring at the plaques on the wall immortalizing
Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson,
Tom Seaver, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron.
There is a fuss made every year about Rose, the leading hit maker
of all time, not being in there. There will be a greater fuss
made some five or six or seven years from now for the name and
bust of Barry Bonds, soon to be the greatest home run maker,
for being in there.
Bonds had help from steroids and purists will shout his election
down. I am not among them. He may have gotten bigger, stronger
and wider through chemical means but he still had to hit the
damn ball.
The Hall of Fame includes names that lived immoral lives. Babe
Ruth drank excessively. Ty Cobb gambled excessively. Newly elected
Wade Boggs cheated on his wife. Recent literary works indicated
Ted Williams denied the Mexican heritage of his mother.
Where does immorality start and where does it end in Hall of
Fame elections? Rose violated the basic rule of the game, betting
on baseball as an active participant, admittedly now as a manager,
suggestively before as a player.
When the ballot arrives at my home in some few days, I will study
the numbers carefully, weigh the candidate’s contribution
to the game and consider the impact on the American sports scene
of that name being regarded on an equal basis with the other
256 members.
There have been some names in recent years that have come close
to election but for one reason or another, usually the prejudice
of the voter, they have failed to gain admission.
Jim Rice, an abrasive personality in his playing days despite
impressive numbers, is one.
Voters deny Tommy John and Jim Kaat the
honors for induction by demeaning their stats by suggesting longevity
was their only true skill. Not that there is anything wrong with
that.
There are houses of honor in every sport--a football Hall of
Fame, a basketball Hall of Fame, a golf, tennis, soccer and even
lacrosse place of worship for fans of that particular sport.
But nothing seems to gain the glory, the emotion, the standing,
the permanence of performance as does the Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, New York.
Some argue rightfully now that baseball has lost its glow, that
it no longer can lay claim to being the National Pastime.
All of this may be so. What cannot be equally argued is that
the legends of baseball, enshrined forever in that exalted position
on a golden wall in a Cooperstown Museum, remain significant
figures in the American cultural scene.
The ballot will soon arrive. I will treat it with the reverence
it deserves. My vote will be well thought out.
It is not without deep consideration that I move a man forever
into a neighborhood inhabited by Ruth, Johnson, Mays, Mathewson
and all the other giants of the great game.
©2005 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Babe Ruth
is courtesy of the official Babe Ruth web site. This column first
posted on Dec. 5, 2005.
You
can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an
email, click here and don't forget to mention Maury's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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