Hall of Fame’s Purpose: To Start Debate, Not End It

Whenever the Hall of Fame makes the news, as it did this week when the annual Veterans Committee ballot for players whose careers began after 1943 was released, there is a knee-jerk reaction on the part of some fans and commentators to dismiss the institution as irrelevant and no longer worthy of discussion.This by-now clichéd position is the pseudo-intellectual response to the lax standards adopted by the Veterans Committee during the period the panel was dominated by Frankie Frisch, with the result that seemingly every half-decent player who was a teammate of Frisch’s with the Giants and Cardinals in the 1920s and 1930s gained a plaque. There are differing opinions on just which of the Frisch-era selections represents the worst watering-down of Hall of Fame standards, but it’s safe to say that no one would dispute the 1970 selection of Cardinals pitcher Jesse “Pop” Haines as one of the committee’s bigger reaches. A three-time 20-game winner, Haines was a decent but unspectacular pitcher who never led the National League in any important category and finished his career with a record of 210-158 and an ERA just a touch above the league average.More recently, in 1984 the committee gave a golden ticket to three-decade American League catcher Rick Ferrell, a decent player to be sure, but a defense-first backstop who never played on a pennant winner. He wasn’t close to being an impact player. To add further confusion to the selection, Ferrell’s brother, pitcher Wes Ferrell, was an impact player, yet he remains on the outside.There is no disputing that many of the VC selections widened the pool of potential entrants from the indisputably great to the merely good. Yet, grousing that the inclusion of players like Travis Jackson and Freddie Lindstrom to the gallery of immortals renders the entire existence of the Hall of Fame moot represents a very narrow way of thinking about the Cooperstown edifice. The Hall of Fame is not a perfect, platonic temple of baseball greats, Mount Olympus brought down to upstate New York, but first and foremost a museum of baseball. That it has cast a wide net in choosing Hall of Famers actually enhances this function rather than diminishes it.The basic job of a museum is to educate by telling stories. By choosing to tell the story of a Haines or a Lindstrom, by provoking argument about their inclusion, the Hall remains vital through contention, through the ongoing process of defining and redefining what a Hall of Famer is. All good museums do this, largely intentionally, as one cannot judge merit without perspective. The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington contains a very impressive skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex, and also the skull of a domestic cat. Across the National Mall, the National Air and Space Museum contains the Wright Flyer, The Spirit of St. Louis, and the fuselage of a common jet airliner. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has thousands of masterpieces and a few things that would insult your refrigerator if you put them on the door. The National Portrait Gallery contains pictures of every president, even Warren Harding.It’s only when the whole continuum is available that true greatness really pops — and besides, the Harding story, and the Travis Jackson story for that matter, have value of their own, even if they don’t conform to one’s lofty notions of what connotes a true immortal. Even if the story is, as in Haines case, “You know, I really wasn’t all that good, but here’s why some people might have confused me with someone who was,” that’s a perfectly valid reason to keep his plaque on the wall.Should any of the players on the latest ballot gain entrance, they will enhance the Hall’s function as a place of remembrance and debate. This is largely because the careers of the potential inductees centered around a time of pitching dominance and low offensive totals. As such, the true abilities of these players are disguised. Dick Allen, whose exclusion has been based around overblown character issues, had career rates of .292 AVG/.378 OBA/.534 SLG — in context the equal of a Lou Gehrig. Ron Santo, one of the greatest offensive-defensive combinations at third base but whose numbers are similarly disguised, represents a long-standing oversight that needs to be corrected. Joe Torre’s career as an MVP-level hitter, offensively superb catcher, and four-time World Series-winning manager qualifies him by any standard, and his induction is not of matter of if but when.This trio represents the pinnacle of the current list, but any of the players listed, with the arguable exception of Maury Wills, would not diminish the Hall by his inclusion (those who limited the ballot did a far better job here than they did on the previously announced ballot of pre-war players). History is always a debate. Those that dismiss the Hall for its imperfections are missing the point. It exists to start arguments, not finish them. Through argument, the past lives.Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.

Hall of Fame’s Purpose: To Start Debate, Not End It

Hall of Fame’s Purpose: To Start Debate, Not End It

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