As starting points go, the criteria for election to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame provide little guidance or orientation. As we are often reminded, the rules to electors state: "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which he played."
Perhaps it would be fascinating to examine the various standards by which the criteria cashes out votes. Space doesn't permit so many dry pronouncements, however, and, in any case, it's more fun to debate the relative merits and demerits of the players. That system works well enough.
The star of this year's ballot is Ozzie Smith, whose acrobatics idealized shortstop to an extent that had only been imagined. You pulled for him the moment you saw him because his expression of the game conveyed awe and suspense, as if he were a great home run hitter.
Unlike a great home run hitter, though, Smith once batted 3,008 times left-handed without hitting a home run. Then, as if he were a great home run hitter, he broke that streak during the bottom of the ninth in Game Five of the 1985 National League Championship series with the game and the series tied.
Defensively, Smith was thrilling style and measurable substance. From the beginning, he gave new meaning to highlight reels and he holds every record for defensive proficiency. Going through his thirties, he proved his attention to craft by finding talents for getting on base, running the bases, hitting doubles and driving in runners. As a baseball player, he made the most of what he was and the game is a better place for it. Smith was born great, made himself great and almost certainly will have greatness bestowed upon him with the present Hall of Fame election.
Electors, who were required to submit their ballots by Dec. 31, appreciate a no-brainer like Smith. With so many other players, the electors are consoled by the notion that Hall of Fame entry is supposed to be difficult, and it is. Any player who is in the Hall of Fame deserves it. The player's reputation must satisfy the reflective equilibrium of a supermajority, as he's denied induction so long as his name isn't marked on 75 percent of the ballots.
Ultimately, a player enters the Hall of Fame because a lot of people want him in there. It's not quite the same as fame, but it's better in a lot of ways. It's really a hall of esteem.
The most estimable players are champions of sustained excellence. A champion is a player who has won the World Series. "Sustained excellence" is a lot more blurry. Without building a case, let's say "excellence" is being the best one at what he does or the best player in his league at his position while he plays. "Sustained" will mean seven years, following common law tradition and the fact that every human cell outside the brain is replaced in seven years.
Find a player who won the championship and was the best in his league at his position for seven years, and you've found a sure Hall of Famer. On this year's ballot that standard is pretty easily met by three players: Smith, Bruce Sutter and Gary Carter.
Several others -- Bert Blyleven, Dave Concepcion, Andre Dawson, Steve Garvey, Rich Gossage, Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly, Jack Morris, Dave Parker and Jim Rice -- are problematic. Most have won championships but pull at the heartstrings of sustained excellence. The others, particularly Dawson, Rice and Mattingly, were great hitters without titles.
Great hitters without world championships, like Ernie Banks and Carl Yastzremski, can go to the Hall of Fame, but only if there's nothing else to keep them out. The three top outfielders on this ballot -- Dawson, Rice and Parker -- are worthy, if on the line. Dawson (437 homers, 314 steals, .805 OPS) and Rice (.298 batting, 398 homers, .854 OPS) have the better numbers, but Parker (.290 batting, 339 homers, .810 OPS) won a championship. The inclination here is to vote Dawson, lean toward Rice and consider Parker for another year.
As a reliever, Sutter won the Cy Young Award in 1979 and received votes in four other years. Six times, he finished in the top 10 of the NL MVP voting. From this year's ballot, only Rice and Parker, both with longer careers, showed as often in the MVP voting. That's a pretty good measure of how a player is perceived in his time. A lot of the greats can't match six.
But Sutter's contribution wasn't merely his own achievements, which included five save titles, four Fireman of the Year awards and the 1982 World Championship. He also pioneered the split-fingered fastball with an effectiveness that set the tone in the National League through the 1980s. He's worth a vote. And Gossage might be worth one, too, but not before Sutter.
Now that Carlton Fisk is in the Hall of Fame, one has to seriously consider Carter, who took the mantle as the National League's best catcher after Johnny Bench. He holds the Major League career records for putouts and chances accepted by a catcher, he hit 324 home runs, was largely responsible for Montreal's emergence as a contender around 1980 and roused the 1986 New York Mets to the World Championship.
Of the questionable cases, Dave Concepcion should be easy to resolve, but many won't agree. He wouldn't make it on his offensive numbers, but shortstops in his day didn't need to hit, and he hit anyway. He played shortstop, the most important defensive position, on four pennant winners and then some, piling up nine All-Star Games and five Gold Gloves along the way. Concepcion was a cut better than his closest rival, Philadelphia's Larry Bowa, and clearly was the best shortstop in National League for a long time. He's not Ozzie Smith, but he would be worth a vote.
Bert Blyleven is a tough case, a 287-game winner on a lot of poor clubs. During his early years with the Minnesota Twins, he often was too good for his own good. His three-to-nine curve broke so sharply that the Twins thought umpires missed it going through the strike zone.
Blyleven took the rap for pitching just well enough to lose. He lost so many 2-1 games that Twins fans began to think he was somehow responsible. In truth, the Twins would have contended now and then if they supported Blyleven like an ordinary pitcher. Later, he bounced to Texas, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, the Twins again and California. He's fourth all-time with 3,701 strikeouts, and his 3.31 career ERA is a good measure of his value.
But if one votes for Blyleven, should he also vote for Morris? On first glance, Morris was the best starting pitcher in baseball through the 1980s, during which he led all pitchers with 162 wins, 133 complete games, 332 starts and 2,443 innings. At one point in his career, he took 515 consecutive starts. He anchored the pitching staffs of three World Champions: Detroit in 1984, Minnesota in 1991 and Toronto in 1992.
But Morris never won a Cy Young, though he received votes seven times. For all his starts, he won 254 games. Due to a lot of lackluster, workmanlike seasons, his numbers just don't stack up with the Hall of Fame, even though no other American League pitcher would have been tabbed for a big game in the 1980s.
Steve Garvey always seemed like a lot of hype. He wasn't especially prodigious until he showed up at the postseason or the All-Star Game, when he became the greatest player of all time. Yet he also won the NL Most Valuable Player Award in 1974 and finished in the top 10 four other times. Between Tommy Lasorda's hot air and the suggestions of baseball narrative, Garvey was promoted as baseball's cultural revolt of the 1970s, an exemplar for clean-cut good guys who were slightly better than average.
Finally, out came a notorious interview with Garvey and his wife concerning the state of their marriage, then Garvey was called out in a paternity suit. While the episodes restored his plausibility as a human being, they didn't improve his playing record. Total Baseball, recognized by Major League Baseball as its official encyclopaedia, keeps a statistic called "Total Baseball Rating," which measures a player's production relative to his position, the years of his career and the parks in which he played. By that measure, Garvey scores -4.9, meaning he was worse than the average player in his position would have been.
Would you vote in Garvey ahead of Mattingly? To understand the impact of Mattingly's career, consider this: The Yankees went 14 years, 1982 through 1995, without appearing in the World Series, and those were exactly the years of Mattingly's career. There's something incongruous, indeed, about a Yankee great who never played in the World Series. During his prime, 1984-87, Mattingly was superb. But his prime didn't last long.
Neither Garvey nor Mattingly is as good of a first base candidate as Keith Hernandez, a .296 career hitter known for club leadership and incredible defense around first base. But his case isn't compelling enough to make the cut.
Officially, the cut is 10 players, the maximum allowed on the ballot. However, the strategy here is much more restrictive. Instead of picking 10 players, it's useful to break the players into seven categories: starting pitchers, relief pitchers, catchers, corner infielders, middle infielders, corner outfielders and centerfielders. Then, pick the best player from each category and lop off the weakest player, just in case some category isn't well represented.
From those requirements, one man's votes would go to Blyleven, Sutter, Carter, Smith, Rice and Dawson. It's a little bit of a fudge, as Dawson is counted a centerfielder after playing the first half of his career there.
Hernandez would be the odd man out, but he's on the burner with Parker, Morris and Concepcion. There's always next year.
