Whatever Happened to the Hall of FameAuthor: James, BillGenre: Sports Publisher: Simon & Schulster Released: 2000 |
A Review by John Nesbit
02/10/2002
Above all, I am a confirmed baseball fan.
So I was primed to read up on the Hall of Fame, and Bill James’ Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame (formerly titled The Politics of Glory) is the most through study of the Hall’s history and politics ever published.
If you’re not familiar with Bill James, you probably don’t follow baseball too closely. While all true baseball fans have to become numbers people to some degree, Bill James is the ultimate numbers guy. Ever since the 1970’s James has been publishing annual baseball stats books; these are compiled in his Stats All-Time Major League Handbook. Basically, Bill James is a baseball geek, unsurpassed in crunching the statistics that baseball fans religiously devour. He also has written The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. With Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame James combines both statistics and history to satisfy the discriminating baseball geek.
Before reading James’ 452-page book I was only vaguely familiar with the idea that the baseball writers elected a handful of modern players yearly while an old timer’s committee elected a handful of players who had been overlooked by the writers. I had no idea how many times the rules and procedures had changed since the first Hall of Fame inductions in 1936. The way James describes it, “over the next twenty years the rules would be changed more often than a hooker’s underwear.”
James isn’t always so colorful with metaphor here, but this consummate baseball man tosses a few impassioned baseball stories throughout the book. However, the emphasis is on reporting the facts and presenting large volumes of statistical studies to demonstrate that there are no clear-cut criteria for election into the Hall of Fame. This is fascinating material for baseball geeks.
No book traces the history of the Hall of Fame in more detail; James has done extensive research to share some gems. Although no one can deny the qualifications of the original five members elected in 1936 (Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson), subsequent elections have often proved controversial. James makes a case for the ignorance of young writers electing players they hadn’t seen during the 1940’s; otherwise, there is no way to explain the election of Tinker, Evers, and Chance in 1946. He also chronicles circumstantially questionable selections of numerous Cardinal and Giant teammates of Veterans Committee members Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry during the 1970’s. Not all is critical though, as James praises the responsible work of the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues.
I was glad to see that James didn’t dwell on the Pete Rose situation, which could develop (and has) into a whole book by itself. He doesn’t avoid the issue, however, and gives a reasoned “purist” argument that it’s illogical to admit Rose to the Hall while he’s still banned from baseball and offers the hope that Rose will soon be allowed to come back to the game. As far as the parallel case often cited for admission, James states “. . . the people who want to put Joe Jackson in the Hall of Fame are baseball’s answer to those women who show up at murder trials wanting to marry the cute murderer.”
Most of James’ book seeks patterns for Hall of Fame selection. As in any honor, there will always be arguments for and against various players. James discusses these at length and shows how the standard arguments can all be questioned, as statistics can always be manipulated to make a “reasoned” case—ask any lawyer—and baseball fans are statistical junkies with their favorite preconceptions and cases to support.
Some of the most interesting chapters discuss various ways of finding Hall of Fame standards. Not surprisingly for this stats fanatic, James has developed five different methods for examining candidates: Similarity scores, Hall of Fame standards list, Black Ink test, Hall of Fame Career monitor, and Fibonacci Win scores. James details how each of these works and uses them to evaluate candidates, focussing especially on the cases of Don Drysdale and Phil Rizzuto.
If you’re a confirmed baseball addict, you’ll find Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame a good read. More casual fans will find their minds spinning through all the numbers, and you may have to skim long lists of stats in various categories to get through the epic tome. How many pages of batting averages do you really want to read?
I was very pleased to see that my boyhood hero, Stan Musial, survived the rigors of James’ Hall of Fame standards test to be named as the all time left-fielder (so I know James speaks the truth). That personal prejudice may have raised my impression of Bill James a bit, but he certainly has written a historically important work for obsessive baseball fans, who will reference James’ criteria for years to come. Let the baseball debates begin!
© Copyright ToxicUniverse.com 02/10/2002
