One and Done: HOF Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Elects Only Fred McGriff
SAN DIEGO — The Crime Dog is going to Cooperstown. On Sunday, the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee unanimously elected Fred McGriff to the Hall of Fame, bypassing far more statistically impressive candidates — namely Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro — due to their connections to performance-enhancing drugs. On a panel that included two former teammates (Greg Maddux and Kenny Williams, with Chipper Jones appointed but replaced at the last moment due to illness) as well as former Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston, McGriff was the only candidate from among the eight to reach the necessary 75% of the vote.
Curt Schilling — who like Bonds and Clemens fell off of the BBWAA ballot after 10 years this past January having bled voter support after a seemingly endless string of noxious public comments that culminated with supporting the January 6, 2021 insurrection and comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi — also fell short, though he fared better than the Gruesome Twosome. Indeed it’s not hard to see the results as a rebuke of PED-linked candidates, whether or not they actually tested positive and were penalized by Major League Baseball, by a committee seemingly engineered to keep them out.
Here are the final vote results:
| Player | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|
| Fred McGriff | 16 | 100% |
| Don Mattingly | 8 | 50.0% |
| Curt Schilling | 7 | 43.8% |
| Dale Murphy | 6 | 37.5% |
| Albert Belle | <4 | <25% |
| Barry Bonds | <4 | <25% |
| Roger Clemens | <4 | <25% |
| Rafael Palmeiro | <4 | <25% |
And the full committee of voters:
- Hall of Famers:
Jones, Maddux, Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Frank Thomas, and Alan Trammell - Executives: Williams, Paul Beeston, Theo Epstein, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Dave St. Peter, and Derrick Hall (replacing Jones)
- Media members/historians: Steve Hirdt, LaVelle Neal, and Susan Slusser.
This was the first year of the Contemporary Baseball ballot, open to players who made their greatest impact from 1980 to the present day. After six candidates were elected last year via the Early Baseball and Golden Days Era Committees, the Hall of Fame announced a restructuring of the process in April, one that reduced the number of committees from four to three, the number of eras under consideration from three to two, the number of candidates per ballot from 10 to eight, and the number of slots each individual voter could fill from four to three. Those reductions seemed designed to slow the flow of honorees, as Dan Szymborski helped me show via some Monte Carlo simulation modeling in July. Without a clear favorite and with a fair amount of ballast in the form of candidates who appeared chosen for the purpose of being easily bypassed, the odds of a shutout appeared high.
Even before the 16-member committee was named on Monday, one could see Sunday’s top-line result as a likelihood. McGriff was a five-time All-Star who helped the Braves to back-to-back pennants and a championship in the mid-1990s and became the first player to lead each league in home runs since the Dead Ball Era. He racked up 10 30-homer seasons and eight 100-RBI ones, finishing his career with 493 home runs. But he received tepid support on a crowded ballot as BBWAA voters turned to more well-rounded candidates as measured by WAR and JAWS, debuting with just 21.5% in 2010 and surpassing that share (barely) just once in the next six years. He dipped as low as 11.7% and didn’t break 25% until his final year, when he surged to 39.8. While nowhere close to election, that figure stood as the fifth-highest among unelected candidates who weren’t on the 2022 BBWAA ballot:
| Player | Highest % | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Curt Schilling | 71.1% | 2022 |
| Barry Bonds | 66.0% | 2022 |
| Roger Clemens | 65.2% | 2022 |
| Scott Rolen* | 63.2% | 2022 |
| Omar Vizquel* | 52.6% | 2020 |
| Todd Helton* | 52.0% | 2022 |
| Billy Wagner* | 51.0% | 2022 |
| Roger Maris | 43.1% | 1988 |
| Steve Garvey | 42.6% | 1995 |
| Andruw Jones* | 41.4% | 2022 |
| Maury Wills | 40.6% | 1981 |
| Gary Sheffield* | 40.6% | 2022 |
| Marty Marion | 40.0% | 1970 |
| Fred McGriff+ | 39.8% | 2019 |
Between McGriff’s finish and the 2019 Today’s Game election of Harold Baines, you could read the handwriting on the wall regarding the Crime Dog’s candidacy. In front of a sympathetic panel stacked in his favor via White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, former White Sox manager Tony La Russa, and former Orioles executive Pat Gillick, Baines received the benefit of the doubt for missing out on a major milestone; his 2,866 hits might — might — have been 3,000 or more had he not missed time due to the 1981 and ’94 player strikes. Likewise, when combined with his PED-free reputation, the presumption that McGriff would have gotten to 500 without the 1994 strike — thereby virtually guaranteeing him entry regardless of the strength of his full resumé — made for an attractive elevator pitch to a voting body more likely inclined toward old-school stats than new-school ones.
Here it should be noted that McGriff was a much stronger candidate than Baines, both according to traditional and advanced statistics. He has a 100–67 edge in the Hall of Fame Monitor, a good summary of the traditional accomplishments that WAR doesn’t capture, such as awards, black ink, and postseason participation. He’s only 32nd in JAWS among first basemen, with 52.6 career WAR, 36.0 peak WAR, and 44.3 JAWS (8.5 points below the standard), but those numbers tower over Baines, who’s 76th among right fielders (38.8/21.4/30.1, the last of those 26.6 points below the standard). Only one non-Negro Leagues right fielder in the Hall ranks lower than Baines in JAWS; McGriff outdoes five enshrined first basemen, including Orlando Cepeda, who was elected by the Veterans Committee on the 1999 ballot, and Gil Hodges, who was elected by the Golden Days committee last year. McGriff is also within a point of David Ortiz, the lone BBWAA honoree from the 2022 ballot, as well as Tony Perez. There’s ample precedent for electing a candidate of his ilk, and the fact that the biggest scandal he’s connected to is an admission that he’s never seen the Tom Emanski “Defensive Drills” instructional video whose ads made him a staple of late-night television is something of a relief, particularly given the possibility that he could be the only candidate elected this year unless the writers give Scott Rolen a healthy bump to put him past 75%.
Fred McGriff says that he's never actually seen the Tom Emanski defensive drills video (the instructional video that he said "gets results" in the commercial). pic.twitter.com/Of1iVCM5yM
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 25, 2021
As to whether this ballot’s results represent some triumph of the so-called character clause (“Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team[s] on which the player played”) that has generally been used as an excuse to bypass otherwise qualified candidates, the Hall might wish it to be read that way. Indeed, the placement of Bonds, Clemens, and Palmeiro opposite McGriff, Mattingly, and Murphy set this up to be something of a referendum on PED-linked candidates versus purportedly clean ones, particularly with the likes of Thomas, Sandberg, and Morris — all of whom were vocal about PED-linked players long before being tabbed for this committee — among the voters.
In that light, the Hall must be overjoyed that Murphy and Mattingly, generally regarded by the public in a positive light and without a whiff of scandal, received more support than the PED guys. Both candidates previously had two finishes of “fewer than X” votes on the 2018 and ’20 Modern Baseball ballots, but notably, the BBWAA Historical Overview Committee that builds the ballot brought them back for another vote, and likewise Belle, who fell below the threshold on the 2017 and ’19 Today’s Game ballots. They have not done so to date for the PED-linked Mark McGwire, who also fell below the threshold in the first of those years. Given the close-but-no-cigar shares of the vote Bonds and Clemens received from the writers before falling off, their presence should be a constant on these ballots; there’s no precedent for excluding such well-supported candidates, particularly given that past BBWAA support trumped past Era Committee support in building this ballot (hence the absence of one-and-done Lou Whitaker and three-and-out Dwight Evans). Even so, I wouldn’t put it past the HOC to shy away from Bonds and Clemens in building the 2026 Contemporary ballot, and I expect it for Palmeiro.
As for Schilling, I’ve kept the receipts and won’t clutter this space with them except to note that they also included his social media sharing of a t-shirt advocating the lynching of journalists, and his losing his ESPN booth job over repeated expressions of bigotry via his platform. That he tried to get himself taken off the 2022 BBWAA ballot after some number of voters publicly indicated either a desire to rescind their 2021 votes based on his January 6 support, or to drop him from their 2022 ballots, only to fall far short here…
Curt Schilling in letter to the Hall of Fame: "I will not participate in the final year of voting. I am requesting to be removed from the ballot. I’ll defer to the veterans committee and men whose opinions actually matter and who are in a position to actually judge a player.''
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) January 26, 2021
…well, you can’t say he didn’t set himself up for this kind of comeuppance. Maybe this will spur a bit of self-reflection that would pave the way toward his election, but then again, maybe not.
As I’ve spent the past two decades documenting, small committees are responsible for some of the Hall’s most egregious mistakes and most frustrating outcomes. By no means would I put the election of McGriff in the first of those categories; though I myself would not have voted for him, the Hall has honored many players of his type, and one more isn’t going to be the downfall of the institution. And hey, let’s be happy for the Crime Dog, who’s never done anything to deserve otherwise in this context. But as for the frustration, the particular ups and downs of this outcome suggests years of it ahead, because even if Bonds and Clemens are included on the 2026 ballot and every three years thereafter, they’re likely to get the same runaround as they received this year while lesser candidates are elected. So it goes.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
So this was all some kind of morality play to make the Bob Costas generation feel good one last time. It’s really hard to care. Make room for Ray Lankford I guess.
It was the right call. Get over yourself.
Love me some Ray Lankford
I doubt all the anti-Bonds, Schilling, Clemens Palmeiro vitriol in these comments is from the Costas generation
There are so many players with less War in the hall. I’m ok with it! I’m super thrilled that the scumbags did not get elected as well!
He was better than Tommy McCarthy and George Kelly!
You don’t have to set the bar that low to say that McGriff isn’t some kind of horrible mistake in the Hall of Fame. Compare him to any First Baseman who was more good than great but is still in the Hall of Fame and nobody bats an eye about it — say, Bill Terry. McGriff doesn’t have the flashy .400 BA season, but on balance he’s every bit as good as Bill Terry. McGriff has a significantly lower peak but more career value than George Sisler, and nobody has ever argued that Sizzler doesn’t belong in the Hall.
Bill Terry = John Olerud. McGriff and Olerud roughly had the same value but dingers allowed McGriff to make the HOF while Olerud fell off the ballot. Such is life of the marginal HOF candidates.
I would absolutely get behind an Olerud-for-the-Hall campaign.
Now is the time! McGriff has cracked the door open for the man who replaced him at 1B in Toronto and had a superior career. I am fully on the Olerud hype train.
I’ve supported the Crime Dog’s candidacy which, as Jay touched on, is a borderline case that goes beyond mere WAR totals and requires some contextual understanding of his era. As to Schilling, I must respectfully disagree with Jay.
I won’t get into an extensive debate, except to say that the politicization of all facets of human experience is not a positive aspect of modern life. I understand that this view is distasteful and even repugnant to many FanGraphs readers, but I have an extremely high bar for disqualifying any player due to issues of character. IMO, his career is clearly worthy of HOF inclusion.
Or low bar, as it were. 😉
The interesting thing here is that it is you and this line of argument that is actually “politicizing” the Curt Schilling non-election. He is a bigoted, raving lunatic and despite what he and some others thought, the “people in baseball,” as opposed to writers, that he thought would welcome his dumbass with open arms, actually rejected him more so than the media did.
It turns out that people connected with the HOF and inside of baseball also wanted nothing to do with him or the likely spectacle his election would bring to Cooperstown in July. I don’t blame them one bit. Personally I’m thrilled as I plan to go up and watch my favorite childhood player get inducted and there is a remarkably lower chance that I’ll run into any Nazis while I’m there.
The problem is that everyone agrees that being “a Keith Olbermann style political asshole” isn’t considered a genuine reason a man from hall of fame consideration so people twist themselves a bit into knots to avoid acknowledging that’s what they’re doing.
Take this line – “culminated with supporting the January 6, 2021 insurrection and comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi.” [Schilling called, in his words, “forced vaccinations” a war crime analogous to stuff at Nuremberg].
These are obviously not the same thing? The latter is unhinged but it’s how political wig nut punditry goes. If Schilling were a hard left wingnut in 2006 he’d had said substantially similarly unhinged things but would that be seen as disqualifying? (Using 2006 because that’s history at this point: I don’t think people are ready to talk about unhinged invocations of jim crow – partisans like unhinged political analogies and people like talk radio hosts cater to that unhinged rhetoric)
I mean, just look at Jay’s whining about Schilling removing himself from the ballot as a way to avoid “accountability.” If this was needed accountability, why would it take the hall of fame voting hook for writers to care about it? I’d love an answer to that question.
When people like Jaffe implicitly continuously tell me that it’s about partisan assholery instead of some sort of objective red lines (as one could argue Jan 6 endorsements are) I’ll believe them. If you just read people’s pieces over time, that’s always predominated. I don’t like the idea of a pretextual “crossing universally agreed upon red lines” argument. I just never see a care to accurately describe things or classify various types of misdeeds beyond crowdsourcing a way to justify dislike over normal political dickishness.
I really don’t like that these conversations have been a way for me to lose respect for everyone involved but they have been.
Honestly, Veterans committee silent up/down vote is a much better way to deal with it. Making a public spectacle of one’s own unreasonable political arguments is never a good look and there’s not been anything to publicly talk about in years.
Yep. Great comment.
Jesus Christ – Jay had Schilling on his Virtual Ballot in freaking 2020, despite being years of batshittery.
This literally couldn’t be a more clear-cut case of Schilling violating clear-cut red lines, as opposed to run-of-the-mill partisan assholery.
But, uh, hey! Feel free to keep “losing respect for people” based on imagined bullshit that you had to make up in your head because of reality’s consistent refusal to match your opinions.
Spot. On. The hypocrisy over political partisanship is deafening. If Schilling had denied the results of the 2016 election, and if he were an outspoken Trump-deranged lunatic screeching about Russian collusion, and if he were an outspoken supporter of Fauci and all of the anti-science ham-fisted totalitarian COVIDian lunacy advocated by Saint Fauci, he would be a Hall of Famer, and Jaffe would be praising him for his outspoken honesty.
If Schilling were a deranged, raving lunatic that aligned himself somewhat with Democrats instead of Republicans he would 100% be treated the same or worse, but there would be far fewer people trying to defend him.
You can choose what to believe or not believe whatever you want. That’s your right. You’re allowed to be misguided. Jaffe’s descriptions are dead-on accurate.
You may want to take a second and consider why you get so emotional and are so quick to defend an avowed bigot. Is that really the hill you want to die on?
Agree that Schilling is a dumb hill to die on, but this:
“ If Schilling were a deranged, raving lunatic that aligned himself somewhat with Democrats instead of Republicans he would 100% be treated the same or worse”
Couldn’t disagree more. The issue is that the people currently arguing bright red lines would immediately discover nuance. If Schilling had tweeted “so much awesome” to a t shirt that joked about hanging police officers, suggested violence be used against anti-Roe Supreme Court justices, or said prior to Biden’s election that Trump’s push for a vaccine rollout was politically motivated and Nazi-esque experimentation on humans (all of which would have been plausible tweets from our speculative leftist twit) we would hear that he obviously didn’t mean it literally, that it was “speaking his truth”, etc, etc. Sure, said individual would be blasted by right wing sources, but importantly, he would absolutely not be blasted by many of the people criticizing Schilling right now. Importantly, Jaffe is an exception because he did vote for Schilling prior to Jan 6, but the vast majority of the resistance to his candidacy had coalesced well before then. And that’s why while Schilling is not a hill to die on, many of us are uncomfortable with what is going on here
The big difference is that pretty much all of the raving lunatics on the left have already been marginalized. They call them “tankies” for a reason.
As they should be, haha!
Also, does anyone think that if Kyrie keeps acting like this for another 10-15 years, the folks responsible for Springfield will have any interest in dealing with his bullshit?
Right wingers will 100% turn Kyrie into another “victim” of the Left if this happens.
I mean, it’s all a matter of perspective, right? I would define “raving lunatics” as people who have aggressive and/or fundamentally destructive stances on political issues, often disconnected to reality, and often with dangerous implications for our institutions or system of government. There are plenty on the right And left who qualify for that description who have not been marginalized – if anything our society is starting to celebrate them
I’d love some examples of people “on the left” who have engaged in a violent attempt to overthrow the government by lynching the Vice President and Speaker of the House, in the last few years.
Or who have plotted to kidnap and murder their state’s governor, for that matter.
I find Jill Stein/Sunrise folks deeply annoying, and criminals who cynically take advantage of protests in order to steal shit truly infuriating, but there really just isn’t an equivalency to be found.
Not just who have tried it–who have tried it and where something like 25% of Democratic voters actually think they didn’t get a fair shake and it was justified. You literally have to go to other national contexts to find examples of this.
You mean like the guy that actually shot and nearly killed members of Congress at practice for the Congressional baseball game? You mean like the guy that attempted to break into Justice Kavanaugh’s house with a gun? Guys like that?
Thank you for proving my point, haha.
Two nutjobs, each acting alone, neither of whom were attempting the violent overthrow of the United States government, and both of whom have been universally (and correctly!) condemned.
If any baseball player vocally defended their actions, I would fully view it as disqualifying for the Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, last night, a bunch of domestic terrorists launched a coordinated attack on a North Carolina power grid, endangering hundreds of innocent lives…in order to prevent an 18+ drag show at a local bar.
bOtH sIdEs ArE tHe SaMe!!!!!
What I love is that our friends on the right dragged the Overton window far to the right, get preferential treatment from the media via the both-sidesing of Democratic facts vs Republican lies, mistruths, and fantasies. And STILL, all of our meta narrative is about how the press is somehow unfair to the group they’ve been bending over backwards to accommodate and often lionize. There was a kooky, fringe left in this country comparable to the far right. It hasn’t had any traction since the 1970’s. Meanwhile, neo-Nazi ideology is literally coming out of the mouths of elected national Republicans on a daily basis. And the press rarely pushes back. Maybe supporting an insurrection to literally overthrow the U.S. government is enough that, while you’re alive, you don’t get honored for throwing a baseball. That’s not media bias, other than pro-American bias.
Communists have indeed been shunned and blacklisted in American society. It has worked both ways. Not at the same time of course
Well said.
You know that a majority of African Americans agree with Kyrie Irving? Just go to any black message board. I bet you would never call them bigots.
I could totally see Milton Friedman saying this, which is to say that it’s an abhorrent viewpoint
Lol – so wrong here.
Not to mention, this “miltonfriedman” account is clearly a troll to mock the political right wing.
an internet message board is not representative of any group of people. they attract the most radicalized viewpoints.
I get the strong feeling you would not be nearly as quick to conclude that the majority of White people (or White Christians, etc.) believed a certain negative viewpoint based solely on anecdotes about online message boards.
Perhaps you should take a minute and reflect on why you are so quick to be convinced that Black people would hold an abhorrent view when you would absolutely not make the same conclusion about White people given identical evidence.
Boy, you’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?
Character always matters.
Unless you’re popular
Like Jay, I was pro-Schilling until the last couple years…but I’m pretty sure that every principled conservative will be disgusted and offended at your lumping them in with Curt Schilling.
There’s almost certainly more conservatives on this Veterans Committee panel than there were in the BBWAA.
Schilling’s issue, though, has never been that he’s “conservative.”
It’s that he’s a terrible freaking person, which is why the committee had even less interest in electing him than the writers did in the two elections after the lynching “joke.”
I think you have this all backwards. He was a huge Schilling supporter up until 2016, and by 2018 I had more or less reversed myself. He’s the one who has politicized his case, not the voters. He’s turned himself into a referendum on neo-fascist politics.
I can’t speak for voters, but I don’t really have any desire to engage with someone who is daring me to turn them into a cause célèbre. He feels utterly irrelevant to me now, which is insane since I consider the Bloody Sock game to be one of the most amazing baseball moments of my lifetime. I’ve gone from outraged to completely disengaged on his candidacy. He doesn’t exist. I’ve erased him. I’m done. Put him in the hall after he’s dead, but I’m done caring. Let him rage at a world that is no longer listening.
*”I was a huge Schilling supporter”. Sorry.
Sure, Jay lasted on the “Sure he’s an asshole, but he belongs in the Hall” train longer than you did!
It’s amazing, pretty much all of us on the train of “Sure he’s an asshole, but he belongs in the Hall” knew our destination. But the train goes to a very different station than we thought it did. Anyone who says this will eventually stop supporting Schilling eventually, because eventually he will cross the line for them. At some point he’ll get arrested for funding a terrorist group that bombed polling sites or he’ll do something else so shocking it crosses the boundaries of everyone with a moral compass. So you can’t win by hoping this is as far as he will go. This train only gets deeper and deeper into crazytown, and when you realize that, that’s when you get off.
He was so damn good, too.
Shame he couldn’t manage to stay within the normal confines of assholery.
This and sadtrombone’s comment before it are both pretty poignant, and reminders why Schilling’s spastic blurts are so damning. He was a hero in the lane where he knew best, pitching a baseball. So many heroes had deep flaws behind the scenes, but most didn’t make it a point to blurt them out ad nauseam.
Curt Schilling not being in the Hall of Fame is not because of his politics. It’s because he’s one of the worst human beings alive.
Mariano Rivera is a vocal Donald Trump supporter who appeared with Trump at campaign events and made appearances with him at the White House. He was elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously. It’s not about politics, it’s about Curt Schilling failing, over and over and over again, to meet the bare minimum floor of acceptable behavior as a member of society.
One of the worst human beings alive? Over Twitter posts? Really? You were great in the ’34 Series but I think you are a little off the rails here.
I’m willing to bet he’s NOT one of the worst human beings alive. He had done a bunch of charitable work for really good causes while he was an active player, to the extent that he had been nominated at least once for the Roberto Clemente Award. So I believe there’s a soul capable of good somewhere inside there.
The problem is that he made it a point to put out a bunch of bad personal views in the worst possible way. It’s one thing to find out that Steve Carlton had some very kooky, Kyrie Irving type opinions from a newspaper interview – this was a guy who barely communicated publicly after retirement. Schilling opened up his trap far too often, doubling down on his hot takes, and lit the fuse on his personal reputation by using incendiary language in doing so. So, not necessarily one of the worst human beings alive, just one of the most toxic.
Eh… I’m ‘big hall’ when it comes to the worst human beings alive list. If you’re on the “one of the most toxic” list, congratulations! you automatically qualify for “one of the worst human beings” list too!
Statement ballot required a statement result. MLB and the Hall achieved what they set out to achieve.
Yes and it’s probably popular with their target audience.
I wonder if Jay Jaffe would mention that a player voiced support for Antifa if they were in question.
I think you know the answer
Antifa is a made-up bullshit boogeyman. Deprogram yourself.
It’s not “made up”, but it is a typical overgeneralization of right-wing rhetoric wherein dozens of disparate groups are lumped together under one banner because they all share a common characteristic, and then are then used for fearmongering. There is no single organization that can be correctly called “Antifa”.
This is actually a pretty good historical question, and there’s actually a pretty good book on the matter that I think gets it mostly right. Antifa was the heir to the ARA (Anti-Racist Action), a group of punks who went around beating up neo-nazis. Their motto was “We go where they go”–the idea was that wherever the Nazi’s were, they would go to deny them the streets. Antifa was an outgrowth of that. It wasn’t really a “group” as much as it was a decentralized network. Much like ARA, if the Nazis were there, so was Antifa, and they would show up and fight them.
You’ll notice I used the past tense, and part of the reason why I did that is because Antifa seems to be almost entirely inactive at this point. My theory is that Antifa-oriented individuals realized it wasn’t working like before. When ARA was active, they essentially beat up the neo-nazis until they hid, and were afraid to show their faces. But it didn’t work this time, probably because far-right ideologies were so mainstreamed by this point and there were so many of them. Them getting covered in the media made it seem too “both sides”, and so my theory is that it largely went underground. It’s possible they’re out there doing something, but if so I’m guessing it’s more reactive and proactive, essentially acting as unpaid security for anti-fascist and anti-racist events rather than taking the fight directly to neo-nazi events. I haven’t seen or heard of any Antifa actions since 2018.
Aren’t we all (well, 90%) Antifa. Are people openly pro Facism?
See, this is a cool hypothetical, because it’s entirely hypothetical. Can you name a SINGLE baseball Hall of Famer with notable left-wing views? I mean genuine left-wing views, not boilerplate Democrat stuff. Bill Lee’s not sniffing the Hall of Fame, though he sniffs many things. Magglio Ordonez is a Chavista and now a mayor for Chavez’s party in Venezuela, and Carlos Delgado protested the Iraq & Afghanistan wars by sitting for the anthem in ’04, but both were really good players clearly short of the Hall and were one and dones on the ballot. Curt Flood got blackballed for establishing a labor right central to today’s game. At best, it’s the heroes of integration, Jackie Robinson et al, who integrated the sport at a time in America when pro-integration views were at least perceived to overlap significantly with Communist views if not membership. But overall, baseball’s HoF doesn’t really have anyone clear-cut in lefty views like Muhammad Ali or Arthur Ashe or Kareem.
On the other side, Schilling stands entirely alone. Tony La Russa and Albert Pujols are good buddies with Glenn Beck, Mariano Rivera is a Trump supporter enough that he hosted a fundraiser dinner for a Trump-oriented PAC in 2018. Mike Piazza’s a Trump guy, publicly endorsing Larry Elder before CA’s recall election. Glavine appeared as a speaker at a Trump/Herschel Walker campaign event. That’s never been an issue for them in their elections, pending in Pujols’ case. Don’t pretend that this is really some “liberal journalists being INTOLERANT of conservatives!!” bullshit: it’s not stopping anyone but Schilling.
He can get elected when he’s rotting in his grave.
Very, very well said.
Antifa means “anti-fascist.” I would like to think that all of us, myself and yourself included, are anti-fascist. If someone were advocating violence, repeatedly, all the time; talking about how certain categories of humans don’t deserve to be treated like human beings; and advocated for the violent overthrow of the government, they would most likely not be honored by any mainstream awards group.
As I have to keep reminding everyone: Mariano Rivera is a Trump supporter who made campaign appearances with Donald Trump. He was elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously. People don’t hate Schilling because of who Schilling wants to be President.
Can’t find any info about Mo campaigning for Trump, in fairness – just Trump giving him loads of awards.
Seems like one of those things where he’s been friends with Trump since the ‘90s rather than that he’s any sort of “true believer.”
Even if Mo is some sort of hard right-wing nutjob, he has the good sense to keep it to himself…which is why he was unanimous!
Trump and Mo playing catch on the White House lawn:
Trump and Mo together at a campaign event:
?quality=75&strip=all
Trump, Mo, and Herschel Walker at the White House:
Mo isn’t what I would call a hardcore nutjob, but he’s always made no secret of the fact that he’s extremely devout about his particular flavor of evangelical Christianity, and for whatever reason that’s a group of people who fell hard for Trump.
The one example that always sticks in my mind is when Mo was being interviewed after his last game, and he was all spacy and giddy and barely there for press interviews afterwards, just too busy smiling. Some reporter asked him if the scene felt “magical,” and he whispered “magical…” and then, like, shook himself, and said “no, I would say it’s blessed,” because believing in / describing things as “magic” is against his religious beliefs.
You seem a bit obsessed with Mo’s connection to Trump and other aspects of his beliefs.
Literally none of those photos are from campaign events, haha!
Trump invited Rivera to the White House to celebrate his unanimous HoF election, and the next two are both within Rivera’s capacity on the Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition council.
I do find all a bit icky, but every indication, including the interviews Mo’s given on the matter, is that it’s a personal relationship, not a political one.
McGriff was a very good player. Hall-worthy? Maybe big-Hall but it’s irrelevant. There’s a real difficulty in judging players like McGriff–in any other era but the PEDS one, his overall traditional stats should have made him a solid candidate. Jay is upset with the manner in which this vote was taken and the result–and I get it. But the flip side of this is what happened to McGriff before this vote. All those comparative stats, when competing against PEDS-enhanced ones, make McGriff’s (ostensibly clean) stats look mediocre. Perhaps that’s part of the message the Committee wanted to deliver.
There’s no good answer to this–either induct players that we think cheated, or elevate the ones we think are lesser candidates.
Great post..& something that I think has affected this entire generation of players.
When Whitaker & Grich played, a 2B that hit .280 with a .360 OBP & 15-20 HR & great D was an All Star..by the time they got on the ballot, you had Jeff Kent & Carlos Baerga hitting 20-30 HR a year with 100 RBI.
Same applies to Dwight Evans, Dale Murphy, Parker, etc…Trammell & McGriff have eventually gotten in after too long of a wait…but, the skewing of the raw #’s from 1994-2005 definitely effected how these other players were viewed..& then once it became clear that PED’s were an issue, the ballot was clogged, so they lost support that way, too.
Great point. Grich and Whitaker are likely in if they started their careers 20-30 years earlier. They run circles around Schoendienst, Mazeroski, Nellie Fox, etc.
Schoendienst, Fox and Mazeroski were Veterans Committee selections. They weren’t particularly impressive to writers who voted. Grich and Whitaker will likely get in the same way
While I would like to see Grich & Whitaker in the HoF, I think it’s highly unlikely, unfortunately.
McGriff and Freeman both had wOBAs of ~.380 in ATL.
McGriff had a 129 wRC+, Freeman had a 139 wRC+.
McGriff and Pham both had wOBAs of ~.370 in Tampa.
McGriff had a 119 wRC+, Pham had a 138 wRC+.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here? Downgrade Mcgriff? Point out he was in a higher offensive era? Esp, with regards to Freeman, who is playing in a totally different park,too.
I’m not sure Pham & freeman are relevant to a discussion about 1970’s-1990’s players having lower raw#’s compared to 1990’s/early 2000’s PED users.
& McGriff probably gets double penalized here- His prime was in the late 80’s/early 90’s- Where 35 HR could lead the league..but, then he held on thru the McGwire/Sosa/Caminiti years. So, his early success is downplayed because of the huge #’s that came later, but, then he also went head-to-head with PED guys in his later years.
I’m agreeing that there’s a real argument that McGriff’s stats-based HoF case is unfairly impacted by the Better Living Through Chemistry crew, and that his career stats would have been worth 65-75 WAR if he’d played from ‘72-‘89 or from ‘02-‘19.
He has the same wOBA as Miguel Cabrera, and 14 fewer HR!
This is where I fall too. wRC+ is normalized by era, and there are definitely a few people whose stats are obscured because of the PEDS taken by others. While we cannot prove McGriff was clean, he is widely thought to have been so and he probably deserves a bit of a bump because of it.
I’m very biased as he was my favorite player as a kid, but it’s hard to make the “they fixed it” argument when Chipper bowed out and he got votes from literally everyone. I have a hard time believing a committee could be contrived that wouldn’t have elected McGriff. He is as classic a committee candidate as there ever was.
It’s not necessary to elect lesser candidates nor cheaters if you don’t want to
McGriff is a good veteran’s committee caliber of candidate, just happens to be on with two of the best players of all time getting blackballed.
McGriff could have hung on one more year to get his “magical” 500th homer.
He respected the game enough to walk away when he felt he wasn’t MLB worthy, letting the chips fall where they might, numbers be damned.
Reason enough to vote him in.
I dunno, I walked away as a light-hitting, light-fielding 14-year-old knowing I too was not MLB worthy, but nobody seems to be etching my HOF plaque just yet… :-/
He might not have gotten 7 homers in one more year or even been rostered
Ah stop with the “respected the game enough to walk away”. He was 40 years old coming off a -0.6 WAR. Seems more likely he didn’t have any job offers
McGriff is not the worst selection out there, let’s be honest, most of the Committee selections have been mediocre at best. I think it would be better if we further reduced the selection powers of the Committees.
Unfortunately most of the Committee selections have left me saying “well he’s not the worst selection out there”.
I really think this whole process needs an overhaul, starting with any committee member recusing themself if they were a teammate/manager/exec of a player on the ballot
And some really are the worst selection in a very long time
LaRussa, who 100% knew about PED use on teams he managed (unless he closed his eyes every time McGwire walked past him), being a moral arbiter on this issue is a joke, just not a very funny one.
Writers who never dared mention PEDs for fear of losing their “access” until the national press started picking up on it have shown themselves to not be worthy of having their opinion taken seriously. Traditional baseball journalism is a joke, PR for teams and nothing more.
I’m sure everyone will forget about this era as quickly as possible now, but unfortunately embarrassing decisions like leaving two of the greatest players of all time out of the Hall is one of the things making sure that more and more people will forget to go to games, buy cable packages, etc.
Fans who happily cheered McGwire and Sosa in 1998 and Clemens and Bonds and Rodriguez throughout their careers, and later getting “morals” is the epitome of throwing stones in glass houses. If Bonds and Clemens don’t belong neither do Selig, Torre, LaRussa, nor eventually Baker, Cashman and Beane
Most casual fans cheering McGwire and Sosa in 1998 didn’t know they were taking illegal steroids.
Sure, there were rumors and plenty of people “knew”, but it wasn’t as obvious as it seems now with the benefit of hindsight.
Fans’ perception of PED in MLB changed quite a bit from the summer of ’98 to Bonds breaking the game of baseball in ’04.
“having bled voter support”
I see what you did there
When I reflect on all the years we patiently waited for the main electorate to become more sophisticated – which they slowly have and markedly increased the quality of their selections – I now feel it was all for nothing, as the small committees have seemingly responded to this evolution by becoming more reactionary and even less sophisticated.
Forget PEDs for a second. I have a strong view on this, which is clearly opposite the majority of voters, but at least I can understand the controversy. What I cannot understand is Harold Baines. Jack Morris. Gil Hodges. Lee Smith. And now Fred McGriff and a red carpet to Don Mattingly. This may or may not be the nadir of the 1970s, but it simply has to be close, if only because we have access to more and better information now. These choices make absolutely no sense at all.
Where is the fun in debating the relative merits of Jeff Kent, Prospective Hall of Famer, when the logic and arguments that – correctly – keep him off BBWAA ballots are meaningless in small committees? Why the hell should I care that writers uphold the standards of the insitution by saying that Kent doesn’t meet them – again, because he doesn’t, no offense to him whatsoever – when he’s so clearly a better player than people the small committees are just ushering through with seemingly no reflection whatsoever?
McGriff was a good player, the type who was always rewarded by Hall voters until recently (flush with high totals of traditional box score stats) and he never came close via the BBWAA. There’s been no paradigm shift to make him look better (unlike say, Lou Whitaker or Billy Wagner). And yet today, he’s a *unanimous selection* to make the Hall of Fame?
I used to enjoy this subject, because the errors of the past were the errors of the past and I could mentally quarantine them there. Now, it’s just painfully clear this is a silly, broken process, permanently infected by politics, that has effectively lost the capacity to honor. I’m sad to say that the Hall no longer means anything to me, and that’s a tragedy. I don’t know how you still do it, Jay.
I don’t think McGriff belongs in the same sentence as Morris or Baines or Hodges at all.
I wouldn’t have voted him in, given the clog on the ballots…but I absolutely believe there’s a good-faith case for his induction as a HoF player, based on having been unfairly penalized by the steroid-era run-environment.
But surely you see the absurdity of a guy who was never considered one of the best players of his era getting elected before multiple guys that were objectively better.
Unlike a a guy like Hodges, McGriff played recently enough where a lot of us remember him. He was good! But no one would have confused him with one of the best players in the league. He finished top 5 in MVP voting exactly once. If we create a WAR leaderboard for a (cherry picked date selection) of the 1990s, he’s 23rd among position players and behind 12 players that are not in the HOF
I mean, I certainly agree that “The 90s” is cherry-picked, haha – his two best seasons were ‘88 and ‘89!
He was a Top 5 player from ‘88 to ‘94 (a consecutive 7 Year Peak!), even with the HR explosion starting in ‘93.
If you do ‘88-‘97, he’s 8th. If you do ‘88-‘02 he’s 14th.
And that’s without giving him any points for being presumed clean.
Hodges had a lifetime contribution unlike the others you mentioned. He’s more like Kaat. He wouldn’t be deserving as purely a player nor manager but an above average contributor for 40 years or whatever is deserving of recognition in some way at least equal to say…Duke Snider or Juan Marichal.
My issue with Hodges was that he was on like 30 different ballots and was repeatedly determined to be unworthy, until all of a sudden he was
A lot of hand-wringing by many including Jay and Dan about the newer, unfair process. If the answer is that we get one new old timer every year instead of 2 or 3, that’s not a bad answer. You don’t want the vets process to be putting in everyone.
What’s clear about the new process is that they must be allowed to discuss who they are voting for (as opposed to a hidden ballot), because 16 votes out of 16 is not likely without in the room agreement.
Congrats to the Crime Dog who was an easy choice
Same career wOBA as Freddie Freeman – and if Captain Marvel Jr keeps this up for another 4-5 years and cracks 400, he’ll be first ballot.
I think the fact that you even felt the need to list McGriff’s numbers compared to Baines sums up his candidacy
McGriff may or may not belong in the HoF (to me he’s borderline enough where I don’t care either way), but the guy does have a HoF nickname. One that as a 90s kid I still remember immediately when his name gets mentioned anywhere.
Crime Dog’s top 3 nickname for me since I’ve started watching baseball, behind Wild Thing and X-Man.
Big Hurt has to be in there.
Boogie Oogie Ugueth Urbina is probably a bridge too far
Big Unit and Randy Johnson mean the same thing
Either character matters or it doesn’t. You can’t cry for Bonds and Clemons (especially Clemons; see Mindy McCready) while dissing Schilling. All three of them had on-field accomplishments that meet Hall standards. If Bonds and Clemons go in, Schilling has to go in too. (And Pete Rose.)
Between the lines Schilling did not cheat as both Clemens and Bonds did. Schilling has taken politically unpopular stances and it has killed his candidacy with the newer generation of sportswriters. I don’t think it is valid to compare Bonds/Clemens with Schilling with regards to the character clause.
The writers were far more sympathetic to Schilling after he’d been fired by ESPN for being a raging shithead, and for years after the lynching “joke,” than the Committee was this year.
It’s almost like it was never about politics, and only ever about the fact that Schilling’s a truly terrible person!
It’s not binary. It can be a contributing factor like it was for Kaat, Hodges and O’Neill without being a vehicle to make voters feel morally superior.
“InSuRrEcTiOn!” What a clown. Thanks for reminding me to turn off my auto-renewal.
You seem angry
Hysterical, even.
A lot of these types need to just calm down. Maybe smile more.
With Ng and Slusser (and Forbes as the chairman), is this the most women ever involved in a committee selection? If so, awesome!
I won’t get too spun up over McGriff being elected; personally I think he’s borderline, and I tend to favor peak performance a little more than longevity, so i don’t think I would have voted him in, but he’s hardly a terrible choice. I’m more uncomfortable with the idea that the way to get through these smaller committees is having 1-3 buddies on the panel that work the room for you, because that’s how the the old Veteran’s Committee messed up and how we ended up with Baines (who doesn’t deserve the scorn; it’s not his fault) as the new poster child for getting a pass based on who the knew more than what they did.
I don’t exactly feel all that sorry for the PED-tainted guys (plus Schilling) who didn’t make it. You’re not entitled to enshrinement, it’s not guaranteed, and all of these guys made their own beds. Frankly, I wish they hadn’t come up again so soon; it might have been good for everyone to have a few more years distance between their candidacies on the writer’s ballots and the small committees to let the fights & debates die down a little and try and find a little more objectivity.
Murphy is a guy who i think deserves a robust debate and consideration; I think much like McGriff that he’s a borderline candidate that you can find many reasons for induction and quite a few against. If they’d figured out that he should be in CF earlier, maybe he’d already be in.
Mattingly is the one I’m tired of: he’s closer to Kent Hrbek than Fred McGriff, and even I’m not arguing that Herbie is a HoFer and I’m the biggest Twins homer you’ll find.
I can see Mattingly eventually getting in based on his 1984-87 peak and lifetime of service
If he wins a trophy, then I’m fine with it…but it’s not like he’s even David Wright.
David Wright is at least as deserving as Tony Oliva
Wright is quite a bit more deserving than Oliva…who had an almost identical career to Don Mattingly.
Wright also broke down a few years too early to be a serious candidate, IMO.
Same category as Oswalt/Johan for me.
Will Clark makes a hell of a lot more sense than Mattingly, on a similar basis to McGriff, where other players cheating probably cost him 10 WAR.
Mattingly might end up in the Phil Rizzuto / Joe Torre mold of “he might not have been Hall of Fame worthy for any one thing, but he had a decades-long career with MLB and if you give him extra credit for those other things it makes up for the shortcomings of his playing career.” I don’t necessarily know that will happen with him, but it’s at least plausible.
How is Joe Torre in that mold, haha?
Clearly a HoF-caliber playing career, and then an even better managerial one.
Yes Torre was deserving twice but he didn’t get much voter support as a player
I have a feeling that one of McGriff’s strongest supporters on the committee was Frank Thomas. Thomas has long been vocally anti-steroid and repeatedly complained that the steroid hitters watered down what Thomas accomplished through natural means, so he’s got significant sympathy for McGriff being in the same boat.
This isn’t the travesty of inducting Baines, but IMO if committees like this unanimously elect McGriff and have strong support for Mattingly, I’d favor abolishing all of them. We’re slowly adding famous and popular players instead of those who were good but overlooked or underappreciated.
Certainly many worse players in the Hall than McGriff. Also about a dozen better 1B who are not in.
And yet David Ortiz got in