All the votes are in and counted, and the Cooperstown Class of 2008 will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 29. While there will be considerable debate on whether the voters were correct in their judgments as to what players, managers, owners and even commissioners should be honored, there are four individuals who changed the baseball industry that do not have plaques citing their contributions to the sport.

Without Lou Perini, there is a good chance that Los Angeles and San Francisco, along with the Twin Cities in Minnesota, would have waited until the lords of baseball decided to expand beyond 16 teams to enter those cities. Because of Charles O. Finley, Major League Baseball had teams in Oakland, Kansas City, Seattle, San Diego, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Montreal. Without Roy Hofheinz, it might have taken a lot longer to change the blue-collar fan-base not only of MLB, but also the NFL, into well-heeled customers.

But the tale begins with the curious voting case of Marvin Miller, the onetime executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. It appears that current baseball executives, who dominate the committee that votes on Hall-eligible executives, can’t get over how Miller changed the economics of the industry in the 1960s and 1970s. He negotiated new deals with the owners and took their concerns to the courts, the National Labor Relations Board, and arbitrators. This eventually led to free agency. The suits refused to vote for him in December when his name came up on the Hall of Fame ballot.

Perini had owned the Boston Braves, a franchise that could not get people out to Braves Field in the early 1950s. He started looking around for greener pastures and knew that Milwaukee city officials were intending on getting an MLB franchise. Milwaukee was the first city to put up taxpayer dollars to build a facility and had talked not only to Perini, but also to the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, about relocating to the city. Perini took the offer and moved his team in the middle of spring training in 1953. The Milwaukee Braves’ franchise broke National League box office records, Perini was suddenly awash with money, and that got the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley. Because of Milwaukee’s success, O’Malley concluded Brooklyn could no longer compete with Milwaukee as long as the team played in Ebbets Field.

Perini’s move did not go unnoticed in Minneapolis either, as city leaders decided that if Milwaukee could get a team, they could too. Minneapolis went after Veeck; Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants; the owners of the Philadelphia A’s and the Cleveland Indians, and Calvin Griffith’s Washington Senators. Though private industry paid for the initial construction of the Bloomington, Minn., stadium, which opened in 1955, Minneapolis officials kicked in $9 million in 1958 to expand the stadium.

O’Malley took his Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957, after striking out in his attempt to get a stadium to his liking from New York City officials. Griffith moved his Senators to Bloomington after the 1960 season.

Perini sold his majority share in the Braves in 1962, but remained on the Braves’ board of directors and approved the Braves’ franchise move to Atlanta in 1964, a move that opened up the southeast to MLB. O’Malley was elected to the Hall of Fame in December for his contributions to the industry — but Perini changed baseball, and he should be recognized in Cooperstown.

In 1952, Harris County, Texas, Judge Roy Hofheinz came up with an idea. Why not play baseball indoors under perfect weather conditions? Hofheinz eventually became mayor of Houston and spearheaded the campaign to bring MLB to the city. Hofheinz obtained a franchise for Houston in 1960 and got city and county dollars to pay for the first indoor stadium that featured baseball: the Astrodome. That should have been enough to warrant his inclusion in Cooperstown, but Hofheinz did something else that changed baseball and sports: He introduced the skybox.

Hofheinz was charging about $20,000 annually for the boxes, and that did not go unnoticed by his fellow owners. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle said in the 1980s that the skybox was a “bane to the business,” and because of them, NFL owners needed stadium renovations or new stadiums with built-in luxury boxes. Rozelle was correct, and the 1980s and 1990s were a time of franchise shifts in the NFL because owners were looking for stadiums with luxury boxes. Hofheinz also influenced entertainment by using a scoreboard to entertain people during games.

Finley is in the same category as Marvin Miller when it comes to baseball executives. They hated him and still bear a grudge. Finley tried to move his Kansas City A’s a few times in the 1960s and eventually ended up in Oakland in 1968. He was another owner who tried to add some entertainment to baseball: Finley’s A’s experimented with orange baseballs in spring training; employed ballgirls instead of ballboys; built a zoo behind the outfield fence in Kansas City; advocated the use of the designated pinch hitter and pinch runner; World Series night games; started a trend by using multiple uniform combinations, and gave players money to grow moustaches.

His move to Oakland caused a major chain reaction in baseball that would eventually be felt in Kansas City, Seattle, Milwaukee, Montreal, San Diego, and Toronto. Kansas City did not stop Finley from moving, but a senator from Missouri, Stuart Symington, pressured MLB to get back into Kansas City as quickly as possible or he would begin to dismantle MLB’s antitrust exemption. The American League filled the gap by awarding Kansas City and Seattle franchises in 1969, and the National League sped up a possible 1971 expansion and gave teams to Montreal and San Diego. Seattle went bankrupt and, in March 1970, a group led by Bud Selig scooped up the team and transferred it to Milwaukee during spring training. Seattle, which was planning to build a domed stadium, got into a legal battle with the American League, which was finally settled in 1976 when the AL granted teams to Seattle and Toronto. Finley changed the industry by making it more flexible for team migrations, and he should be acknowledged.

Perini, Hofheinz, Finley, and Miller should have plaques in Cooperstown. They were just as responsible for the growth of baseball as anyone who received Hall of Fame honors.

evanjweiner@yahoo.com