Because you can't spell "Hodges" without H-O-S-E-D....
Congratulations to the Veterans Committee Class of 2015!
Not a one of the "Golden Era" nominees on this year's ballot was deemed entitled to a Hall of Fame plaque by the 16 gatekeepers placed at its front entrance. Not Dick Allen or Luis Tiant, not Minnie Minoso or Ken Boyer- but especially, not the man who's beloved by three generations of Mets fans and a still-kicking contingent of Dodger fans before them. Only three of those 16 found Gil Hodges to be worth the accolade that was given away like Cooperstown cotton candy on so many prior occasions.
It's supposed to be more flexible in the re-do's of the Veterans voting. For one thing, candidates' full resumes are supposed to be on the table, for both playing and managing. Gil's accomplishments on the field are well within what often got 75 percent vote totals in his time, but his two-year turnaround from 1968 to 1969 in the Mets' dugout should have been more than enough to put him over the top.
Just not with 13 of these 16 guys. And who are they to judge? First, we need to look at who "they," exactly, are:
Jim Bunning, Rod Carew, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith and Don Sutton; baseball executives Jim Frey, Pat Gillick, David Glass, Roland Hemond and Bob Watson; and veteran media members Steve Hirdt, Dick Kaegel, Phil Pepe and Tracy Ringolsby.
Of the seven enshrined former players on that list, none ever played with or against Hodges (Bunning and Kaline were in the AL in Gil's final LAD and NYM years), and none played under him on Senators or Mets squads in his all too brief tenure on their benches. Several of them did face his Mets in anger in 1969- most notably Jenkins, the Ace of Disgraced in Chicago that year. A little revenge for Leo, perhaps?
Of the executives, only Bob Watson's name rings a relevant bell, and it's not a good one; likewise, among the reporters, Phil Pepe is the only one I can think of as likely to have an opinion. Both have ties to the Yankees (Pepe as a beatwriter covering them for close to half a century, Watson as a former Steinbrenner GM), and I've long suspected that the Yankee-honk-heavy writers' bloc on the BBWA had it in for Gil earlier on. After all, his Bums' 1955 championship deprived the Bronx of a full-on sweep of intra-city matters for that entire cut-short 1950s decade. Now it seems to have carried over to the newfangled Veterans vote, where not even a minyan, much less a 75% supermajority, find our beloved former player and manager worthy.
A lot of this has to do with the voting format. The electorate is tilted to the old, yet none among them could have championed the causes of any of these "legends." What a contrast to the NFL Hall voting process, where each nominee is presented by a writer-voter who knows the qualifications and argues for them. (That process also ensures that a minimum and maximum of contenders make it to Canton each year, rather than sticking to the arbitrary and ridiculous 75 percent standard.)
Under the recent recast of the Veterans structure, another three years must now pass before Gil Hodges can again get a crack at the Cooperstown bat. Unless ya gotta believe there's another way....
----
I knew all too well about the Gil snubs of the past. I even got to talk about them a little with his son, at the 2012 Hofstra conference, not long after his dad's last unsuccessful go-round. (He got 9 votes in 2011.) What I didn't know, until last week, is that Gil pere is, arguably, already IN the Hall:
Hodges had enough votes to be elected by the Veterans Committee in 1993 (12 out of 16), only to have committee chair Ted Williams disallow the vote of Roy Campanella, one of Hodges' former teammates, because he did not attend the meeting in person. Campanella was hospitalized at the time. With that ballot rejected, Hodges and Leon Day were left one vote short of enshrinement, with 11 of the 15 votes leaving them at 73.3 percent, 1.7 percent shy. Campanella died three months later. Day was elected when the new committee met two years later.
Another potential conflict? Ted Williams succeeded Hodges to the Senators helm in 1969, and his relative success with the team was far overshadowed by what took place in Queens that year. Who knows what front-office or back-channel bad blood there may have been. Gil died far too soon and too suddenly to ever explain, and presumably, Ted's frozen head isn't talking, either.
Depending on what the writers do with this years' Recently Retired, MLB may again be facing an induction ceremony of Nobodies We Know, as they did in 2012. If that happens, perhaps a new commissioner might use some best-interests-of-baseball powers and correct the 1993 vote to give Number 14 the final recognition he should had long before.
Who from this camp would ever argue? Certainly Not Me:)
Not a one of the "Golden Era" nominees on this year's ballot was deemed entitled to a Hall of Fame plaque by the 16 gatekeepers placed at its front entrance. Not Dick Allen or Luis Tiant, not Minnie Minoso or Ken Boyer- but especially, not the man who's beloved by three generations of Mets fans and a still-kicking contingent of Dodger fans before them. Only three of those 16 found Gil Hodges to be worth the accolade that was given away like Cooperstown cotton candy on so many prior occasions.
It's supposed to be more flexible in the re-do's of the Veterans voting. For one thing, candidates' full resumes are supposed to be on the table, for both playing and managing. Gil's accomplishments on the field are well within what often got 75 percent vote totals in his time, but his two-year turnaround from 1968 to 1969 in the Mets' dugout should have been more than enough to put him over the top.
Just not with 13 of these 16 guys. And who are they to judge? First, we need to look at who "they," exactly, are:
Jim Bunning, Rod Carew, Ferguson Jenkins, Al Kaline, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith and Don Sutton; baseball executives Jim Frey, Pat Gillick, David Glass, Roland Hemond and Bob Watson; and veteran media members Steve Hirdt, Dick Kaegel, Phil Pepe and Tracy Ringolsby.
Of the seven enshrined former players on that list, none ever played with or against Hodges (Bunning and Kaline were in the AL in Gil's final LAD and NYM years), and none played under him on Senators or Mets squads in his all too brief tenure on their benches. Several of them did face his Mets in anger in 1969- most notably Jenkins, the Ace of Disgraced in Chicago that year. A little revenge for Leo, perhaps?
Of the executives, only Bob Watson's name rings a relevant bell, and it's not a good one; likewise, among the reporters, Phil Pepe is the only one I can think of as likely to have an opinion. Both have ties to the Yankees (Pepe as a beatwriter covering them for close to half a century, Watson as a former Steinbrenner GM), and I've long suspected that the Yankee-honk-heavy writers' bloc on the BBWA had it in for Gil earlier on. After all, his Bums' 1955 championship deprived the Bronx of a full-on sweep of intra-city matters for that entire cut-short 1950s decade. Now it seems to have carried over to the newfangled Veterans vote, where not even a minyan, much less a 75% supermajority, find our beloved former player and manager worthy.
A lot of this has to do with the voting format. The electorate is tilted to the old, yet none among them could have championed the causes of any of these "legends." What a contrast to the NFL Hall voting process, where each nominee is presented by a writer-voter who knows the qualifications and argues for them. (That process also ensures that a minimum and maximum of contenders make it to Canton each year, rather than sticking to the arbitrary and ridiculous 75 percent standard.)
Under the recent recast of the Veterans structure, another three years must now pass before Gil Hodges can again get a crack at the Cooperstown bat. Unless ya gotta believe there's another way....
----
I knew all too well about the Gil snubs of the past. I even got to talk about them a little with his son, at the 2012 Hofstra conference, not long after his dad's last unsuccessful go-round. (He got 9 votes in 2011.) What I didn't know, until last week, is that Gil pere is, arguably, already IN the Hall:
Hodges had enough votes to be elected by the Veterans Committee in 1993 (12 out of 16), only to have committee chair Ted Williams disallow the vote of Roy Campanella, one of Hodges' former teammates, because he did not attend the meeting in person. Campanella was hospitalized at the time. With that ballot rejected, Hodges and Leon Day were left one vote short of enshrinement, with 11 of the 15 votes leaving them at 73.3 percent, 1.7 percent shy. Campanella died three months later. Day was elected when the new committee met two years later.
Another potential conflict? Ted Williams succeeded Hodges to the Senators helm in 1969, and his relative success with the team was far overshadowed by what took place in Queens that year. Who knows what front-office or back-channel bad blood there may have been. Gil died far too soon and too suddenly to ever explain, and presumably, Ted's frozen head isn't talking, either.
Depending on what the writers do with this years' Recently Retired, MLB may again be facing an induction ceremony of Nobodies We Know, as they did in 2012. If that happens, perhaps a new commissioner might use some best-interests-of-baseball powers and correct the 1993 vote to give Number 14 the final recognition he should had long before.
Who from this camp would ever argue? Certainly Not Me:)