And so ends another Hall of Fame whinge-fest -- in truth, one of the worst fests ever.
There were, after all, only two stories to chase here -- how to vilify those who did not vote for Rickey Henderson (expulsion from the BBWAA beat painful death with hot pointy things, 52 percent-48 percent), and whether Jim Rice deserved to be in at all. And those were the ones that were beaten flat Monday.
Thus, there were no surprises amidst all the analysis, let alone the analysts. Then again, they were all induced to lean that way because those are the easiest stories about which to wax hysteric.
We do not speak here of the Henderson vote, which centered not on the 511 who did vote for him but the 28 who found fault, forgot, or turned in blank ballots to protest Leon Panetta. We have no compelling defense for the 28, although Corky Simpson, who was pilloried on the Web for omitting Henderson, at least had the stones to say so. The other 27 remain silent, hidden and nuts.
Rice, on the other hand, touched all the central issues about the Hall, its voters, and the subtle forces that inducted him separate from his own deeds. He was the most obvious example of the Cepeda Factor since, well, Orlando Cepeda, and the Cepeda Factor is the most fascinating one of all.
Both Cepeda and Rice are by any definition borderline Hall of Famers, which only means that their inductions came after years of consideration. There are strong cases to be made either way, and this is not the purpose of our brief ... well, brief.
They both got in as part of very small classes -- Cepeda was the Veterans Committee choice the year that Mike Schmidt was the only inductee, while Rice joined Henderson and Veterans Committee selection Joe Gordon. This matters, because borderline Hall of Famers tend to be inducted as members of small classes, implying a field of unimpressive other candidates.
And they both got in because of aggressive help from representatives of their former teams.
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| What voters honestly could turn their backs on Rickey Henderson? (Getty Images) |
Cepeda was a non-factor as his name wound through the process year after year; he started slowly, grew to a seemingly hopeless 59 percent in Year 14, and looked like one of those "best player not to make the Hall" types until the Giants, through former P.R. man Bob Rose, put up a fevered cross-country campaign with Cepeda in tow. They made an unprovable and probably grossly exaggerated case that the opposition to Cepeda was based on his marijuana conviction in Puerto Rico (a Google search shows that almost nobody made the argument that Cepeda was unworthy because of his conviction, although some voters might have considered that silently).
He didn't get in Year 15, but his share went from 59 to 73 percent in that year, and he was inducted by the Veterans Committee five years later.
They are exactly the kind of candidates that look best to one of the two kinds of voters -- inclusionists, voters who would rather vote for 10 than three. The other kind is exclusionists, who would rather vote for three than 10.
When you break voters down that way, you see why Rice's totals rose, bounced about erratically in his 15 years on the ballot. As illogical as it seems to people who cannot understand why someone can vote for a candidate one year but not the next, the fact is he was easy to exclude when there were no-brainers on the ballot, but his stock rose when the field shrank. Even exclusionists want to vote for somebody, after all.
If you look at the Hall of Fame that way, everything makes sense without falling back on the tired, old and stupid "Sportswriters suck" argument. The exclusion of Bert Blyleven, the inclusion of Don Sutton, the inconsistency of voting totals from year to year, Rice's elevation after 14 years of nothing -- all of it. Nothing nefarious, nothing ignorant -- just the ebb and flow of the market.
Everything, it turns out, except The Henderson 28. Can't help you understand that one any more than we can the fact that nobody else has been unanimous, either.
Actually, make that the Henderson 27. Corky Simpson did his time; I wonder where the others are.
