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Sunday, January 01, 2012
Rebooted Hall Of Fame
If you follow sci-fi or comic book movies, you know what I’m talking about here. Sometimes, the weight of history is too much for the mythology to survive into the next generation. Bad decisions don’t need to be propogated or respected. Do we need to follow Batman’s Clooney, Schwarzenengger, and Schumacher, or can we just start over with the Frank Miller inspired version, with Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan?
You get a reboot.
My rules for the Hall of Fame is that it’s based on birth year, when the player turns 45 (and if he’s still active, then so be it… worked fine for Gordie Howe, Mario Lemieux and Guy Lafleur… an active-playing Hall of Famer), and he remains on the ballot for at most ten years. Each year, you have ten new players nominated (that is, the ten best players of the new birth year), and the top ten players of the previous ballot carrying over (so we always have twenty players on the ballot, except for the inaugural year). Every ballot is an ordered ballot, and must have ten names. The top two each ballot gets elected the Hall Of Fame. It’s an elect-2 system.
There’s going to be two groups, one that starts with birth year 1931, and then we’ll have another one for pre-1931. Why 1931? Well, it’s the first year where you have an over-abundance of qualified players, following a dearth of under-qualified players. (It also gives us some breathing room with the Negro League stars.) I’ve studied it, and it’s going to work. I’ll show it next time.
Anyway, we start with imagining this is the end of 1976, and players born in 1931, and here are the ten players on the 1977 ballot:
Willie Mays
Mickey Mantle
Eddie Mathews
Ernie Banks
Ken Boyer *
Ed Bailey * +
Joe Cunningham *
Bill Virdon
Jim Bunning *
Larry Jackson * + - /
This becomes an easy selection. I don’t think we need to do any kind of mock balloting, or trying to use past ballots to try to simulate this ballot. (It might be fun in other years, and maybe we’ll do that, but not here.)
So, our first two Hall of Famers are Willie and Mickey.
That’s how you reboot something.
(Don’t pay attention to the symbols after their names. It’ll be explained in a few minutes.)
Now we go to players born in 1932. It’s a pretty weak year:
Maury Wills * + - /
Woodie Held * +
Eddie Broussard *
Don Blasimgame
Jim King
Eddie Kasko
Johnny Podres * +
Ron Kline *
Billy Hoeft
Hal Woodeshick
The next two members are carry-overs: Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks.
Only ten can carry-over onto the next ballot, and they’ve been marked by *.
Now it’s on to 1933:
Rocky Colavito + - /
Norm Sieburn +
John Roseboro +
Ed Charles
Jim Davenport
Jerry Lumpe
Tito Francona
Billy O’Dell +
Ken Johnson +
Bob Shaw
The next two members in the rebooted Hall of Fame: Jim Bunning, Ken Boyer.
The ten carryovers have been marked with a +.
Now it’s 1934 birth year players, and we’ve got a great set of players:
Hank Aaron
Al Kaline
Roberto Clemente - /
Norm Cash - /
Luis Aparicio - /
Roger Maris - /
Bob Allison - /
Bill White -
Camilio Pascual -
Turk Farrell
Our two new members are Hank Aaron and Al Kaline.
The carryovers are marked with -.
It’s the 1935 birth year players, and we’ve got a whole mess of pitchers to contend with:
Frank Robinson
Felipe Alou /
Earl Battey
Bob Gibson
Sandy Koufax /
Jim Perry
Bob Veale
Lindy McDaniel
Pedro Ramos
Don Cardwell
Our two new members are Frank Robinson and Bob Gibson. Hard to believe, but Roberto Clemente has to carryover yet another year.
The carryovers are marked with /.
We’ll do one more, then we’ll stop for now. The 1936 birth year players on the ballot:
Harmon Killebrew
Frank Howard
Bill Mazeroski
Tony Gonzalez
Floyd Robinson
Clay Dalrymple
Don Drysdale
Stan Williams
Bill Monbouquette
Ron Perranonski
Finally, we get to clear out some carryovers: Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax.
After six elections, we have these as our twelve players in the rebooted Hall of Fame:
1977: Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.
1978: Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks.
1979: Jim Bunning, Ken Boyer.
1980: Hank Aaron and Al Kaline.
1981: Frank Robinson and Bob Gibson.
1982: Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax.
And our ten players that carryover to the next ballot:
Harmon Killebrew (b. 1936)
Norm Cash (b. 1934)
Luis Aparicis (b. 1934)
Rocky Colavito (b. 1933)
Roger Maris (b. 1934)
Felipe Alou (b. 1935)
Frank Howard (b. 1936)
Maury Wills (b. 1932)
Don Drysdale (b. 1936)
Larry Jackson (b. 1931)
Next time, I’ll do players born 1937-1942.