Ron Santo, Gil Hodges Passed Over by Baseball's Hall of Fame

In the 2008 voting, neither player was elected by the new Veterans Committee to baseball's Hall Of Fame.

The Hall of Fame Veterans Committee considers candidates not selected by the Baseball Writers Association of America during their fifteen years of eligibility on the BBWAA ballot. From 1953 through 2001, the committee met in closed door sessions, and their vote totals were not made public.

When Bill Mazeroski, who got little support from the writers, made it via a Veterans Committee chaired by his former Pirates general manager Joe L. Brown, public opinion persuaded the Hall to revise the process. Even former players agreed that entry to the HOF had become too easy.

The Veterans Committee now consists of all living HOF members. They vote every other year, and consider a short, screened list of candidates whose careers began after 1942 but were never elected by the BBWAA. All players who receive votes from 75 percent of the members are in.

"The process was not redesigned with the goal of necessarily electing someone, but to give everyone on the ballot a very fair chance of earning election through a ballot of their peers," said Hall of Fame Board Chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark. "The vote reinforces the selections of the Baseball Writers Association of America and maintains the high standards set by the BBWAA. A 75-percent threshold is extremely difficult to attain, but the highly selective process helps ensure that enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame remains the greatest honor in the game."

A smaller group of seven Hall of Fame players and five writers considers eligibles who broke in before 1943. This group elected former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon.

The Hall of Fame, I've heard often, is for great players, not just good players.

Was Joe Gordon a good second baseman? Yes. Was he great, as in Rogers Hornsby,Charlie Gehringer, Joe Morgan, his peers at his position? Not really. He had six decent, for the times, seasons, with batting averages from .279 to .322, and homer totals in the 20s and 30s. More in his favor might be appearances in five World Series and that fact that he played for the Yankees.

Was he among the two or three best players at his position, in his time? Yes. That's another qualifier. But other players who were among the top two or three at their positions during their times, for more seasons, aren't in the Hall.

When the fan who knows baseball thinks of first basemen in the years between World War II and expansion, Gil Hodges' name automatically comes to mind. He played in over two thousand games and hit 370 homers when homers were actually hard to hit. He played in seven World Series, and also on Roger Kahn's Boys Of Summer teams; men now legends immortalized in novels, non-fiction narrative, and TV documentary. He managed the miracle 1969 Mets to a world championship.

Detractors cite his .273 lifetime batting average, low for a Hall candidate. Joe Gordon hit .268 lifetime. Gil Hodges' page in the Baseball Encyclopedia has only one bold figure to indicate league leader, for strikeouts in 1951. This is the least acceptable excuse I've heard for his exclusion from Cooperstown.

Ronald Edward Santo. That full name I remember from the baseball cards of my youth. At third there were Brooks Robinson, Eddie Mathews,Tony Perez, and Santo. Fifteen years, lifetime .277 average, 342 homers. He played on nine All-Star teams and won five Gold Gloves. If you don't look it up, you'll never know that he led the National League in walks four times. He was stuck on some bad Cubs teams and never got into a World Series. Neither did Ryne Sandberg, Hall of Fame, who played three fewer seasons.

Ron Santo, a diabetic, also played in more than 150 games for eleven consecutive seasons.

In 2008, the Veterans Committee had 64 members, making 48 the vote total needed for induction. All 64 members returned ballots. Ron Santo was named on 61 percent of them and received 39 votes, nine short of induction. Gil Hodges was named on 43 percent, and received 28 votes.

The Veterans Committee, voting every other year, has not elected a post-1943 player since its reorganization in 2001.

"It's a travesty," Santo said in the Chicago Sun-Times. "When I saw nobody got in again, I go, 'Whoa, this is wrong.' They can't keep going the way they're going."

"It'll be eight years now that they've voted and not let anybody in. And personally, I feel like there's a lot of guys that should've been in, not just me," Santo said in the Chicago Tribune.

On Cubs radio, when a Cub delivers in the clutch, color man Santo will exclaim YES! or ALL RIGHT! Misplays get a "oh man . . . oh gees . . . oh NO . . . " So his HOF disappointment is understandable, and he can be forgiven. It still comes off as campaigning. That might work against him. But he's partially right. Why have a committee to vote players in that never votes anyone in? It's also not the modern guys' fault that Rabbit Maranville, a lifetime .258 hitter, got in over fifty years ago.

"It's not our job to vote someone in," Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams said. (Dick Williams, who caught lightning in a bottle with the Red Sox in 1967, was in the right place at the right time in Oakland, who hung around for 21 years and 3,023 wins thanks to the good-old-boy managers network.) It's our job to consider the candidates."

"We just didn't have them lined up, I guess," Williams said.

Apparently not.

Richie Dick Allen, that diamond curmudgeon whose opinion re artificial turf was that he wouldn't play on anything a horse couldn't eat, got seven votes. Maury Wills, who made as many headlines off the diamond as he did on (character also being a consideration for the Hall), got fifteen votes. Subtract those, redistribute them, and either Santo or Hodges might be in.

As the 2009 Veterans Committee vote stands, two of the best players at their position, in their times, will have to wait two years for another chance.