In the Hall?

The Baseball Hall of Fame has been undergoing a steady devaluation over the last twenty years, though the signs date back to the fateful moment they let Rabbit Maranville in. Part of this devaluation has been the lowest common denominator effect: whoever is the weakest member sets a new (low) standard for admission on the reasoning that "well, we let Phil Niekro in" so we have to let Don Sutton in," or vice versa. Part of it is the longetivity effect. In the search for objective indices of greatness, people gravitate to talsimanic numbers like 500 homers or 300 hits or 300 wins. As players are able to extend their careers, thanks to watered down competition brought on by expansion, increased role playing, the DH, steriods, greenies and other performance enhancing substances, and better conditioning, those same numbers signify excellence less securely than ever and yet are relied upon no less staunchly. So we have Robin Yount and Eddie Murray and Phil Niekro and Don Sutton and Tony Perez and we would have had Rafael Palmiero (thank god he got caught). Finally there is the sympathy effect for well-beloved but hardly transcendent ballplayers like Kirby Puckett, who no more deserves to be in the Hall dead than he did when alive.

The first question shouldn't be who we let in, but who we should take out. There should be a buyer's remorse clause on Hall passes, so when we make an error based on longetivity (Paul Molitor) or popularity (Phil Rizzuto) or temporary insanity (Mazeroski), we can correct. Sorry, buddy, it's not that you are no longer one of the all-time greats, but that you never really were. The key to letting new people in should be utter dominance over a five year span or utter dominance over a 2-3 year span with near dominance over another 8-12 years. Would you pay eagerly to see a player at his height is far more important than whether that player would inevitably be there if you showed up at the ballpark during a given 20 year period. Ichiro Suzuki is already a hall of fame ballplayer to my mind if he retires tomorrow and Eddie Murray will never be, even if he straps it on and plays another ten tedious years. Numbers should be focused on in single season doses; career aggregates should be regarded with suspicion. Bert Blyleven is upset because they won't let him in the Hall, even though he only fell 13 wins short of the three hundred that would certainly have punched his ticket. For my money, he could have gone 310-320 and still not deserved admission. Who cares how many games he won over an overly long career? Did any team that needed a win feel utterly demoralized that they had to face him? Of course not. Pedro Martinez and his 198 wins deserves the Hall far more even if his toe, as seems increasingly likely, puts an end to his career this season. Sandy Koufax was the greatest pitcher in baseball history over a five year span, and as a result, he was the greatest pitcher in baseball history (with the possible exceptions of Lefty Grove and Christy Mathewson). Warren Spahn was great over a much longer span than Koufax and was certainly one of the greatest ever, but he didn't have the meridian Koufax did and so he simply doesn't live on in collective memory with quite the same lustre. The Hall is about collective memory and memory eternalizes the peaks of a career, making them all, in effect, that matters.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is the ultimate icon factory and so it is important to address its general conditions of operation before looking at why Joe Torre, the ultimate false icon, shoud be kept out. We will take up slow-Joe's disqualifications for glory next time.