El Profe: My Time as a Hall of Fame Voter

Hall of Fame voter: Only a small group can claim that honor. An even smaller group, if you’re a professor.

This week’s announcement of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Class of 2018 prompted me to reflect on the one time that I cast a vote for Cooperstown immortality.

Typically, it’s the members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America with 10 or more years covering the game who vote for the players who will next be enshrined.

For other types of candidates, Hall honors depend on a select group of writers joined by Hall of Fame players and team executives who cast votes, as we have seen with various incarnations of the veterans committees over the years.

I got my chance to vote more than a decade ago, when the Hall of Fame took advantage of a grant from Major League Baseball to fund research about African-Americans in baseball. After several years of work, in 2005 the Hall’s board of directors announced its approval of a special election on Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues.

Early the following year, I was selected as one of 12 individuals named to the Special Election Committee on Negro League and pre-Negro League candidates.

My phone rang a few days later. It was a Hall of Fame representative calling to invite me to serve on the screening and voting committees for the special election. I accepted.

A Vote for the Ages

A wonderful and bittersweet day. That’s how I remember February 26, 2006.

Two days of deliberations had resulted in the Hall of Fame’s single largest class — 17 Negro League and pre-Negro League players and executives. They joined pitcher Bruce Sutter, who had been voted in by the baseball writers for a total of 18 inductees.

Yes, there was the joy of seeing the largest number of Latinos elected at one time — three Cubans — José Méndez, Cristóbal Torriente and Alejandro “Álex” Pompez, born in Key West to immigrant parents.

Their inclusion recognized the impact of Latinos on black baseball in the United States.

Méndez was an ace pitcher who, despite his slight build, had a blazing fastball and impeccable control. Nicknamed the “Black Diamond,” he was an early version of Pedro Martínez. He enjoyed three undefeated seasons in Cuba. He also made his mark as the player-manager of the Kansas City Monarchs in the mid-1920s, leading that storied franchise to the first Negro League World Series title and three championships in a row.

A slugger with speed, outfielder Torriente was a feared hitter in the Negro Leagues as well as back home — where he was called the Cuban Babe Ruth. In Cuba, he hit .352 and won six championships.

Present at the creation of the formal Negro Leagues and seeing it through its rise and fall, Pompez owned the Cuban Stars (East) and later the New York Cubans. It was he who introduced the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela to the elite Negro Leagues, years before players from those countries appeared in the major leagues.

The committee also elected the first — and only — woman to the Hall. Newark Eagles team owner Effa Manley’s impact on black baseball was profound. She transformed the culture of the league with her social activism. She insisted that her Eagles sign highly talented black players and that the ballpark also be a place to organize for the cause of civil rights, to fight against discrimination through political education, and oppose Nazism and fascism through war-bond drives during World War II.

Legacy of black baseball

Two days sequestered in a Tampa hotel culminated more than five years of work started by the Negro League Research Authors Group after MLB donated $250,000 to the Hall. Headed by the triumvirate of Negro League historians Dick Clark, Larry Lester, and Larry Hogan, our group’s findings on the history of black baseball were presented as a report and revised into the book Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball.

Discussions in the hotel conference room were sometimes heated, yet always respectful. At times, it was solemn. We were dealing with the legacy of black baseball, considering the case of previously overlooked superstars and executives who had transformed the game. All of the individuals on the ballot were dead, except for Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso, for many of us the Latino Jackie Robinson, and Buck O’Neil, a star first baseman and manager and lifelong ambassador for the Negro leagues until he died at age 95 in 2006.

We even lost one of our committee members in the lead-up to our Tampa meeting. Robert Peterson, author of Only the Ball Was White, the first history of black baseball — originally published in 1970 — died less than two weeks before we gathered in Tampa.

His book had shown us the view from the mountaintop, of the black baseball circuit filled with grand players and built by executives who came from all walks of life in the United States and the Caribbean. But Bob would not be there to share in the deliberations.

We started with 94 candidates and winnowed them down to 39, including 10 from the pre-Negro leagues era. Votes were cast after each case had been presented and discussed. Hall of Fame officials collected the ballots after each vote.

We learned the results after we reconvened for lunch on February 26.

Sadness

As in the BBWAA’s elections, candidates needed 75 percent of the votes; in this case, nine of the 12 votes. Seventeen players, executives and owners made the cut. We were all kind of surprised at the number. Elated, in fact. What a glorious result for the families of these individuals who finally got their due.

On the other hand, there was sadness.

No Minnie.

No Buck.

We deal with that disappointment then as now. Many baseball fans lamented that particular part of the results. Emails arrived in my inbox deriding me and the committee’s votes. Sportswriters and news media also let us know of their discontent about Minnie and Buck missing out.

Keith Olbermann even included the entire committee on that evening’s “Worst Person in the World” segment for his then-MSNBC Countdown show. Yup, there was my name scrolling up where so many miscreants, infamous politicians and criminals had been before.

Glorious and Bittersweet

Yet looking back, February 26 remains a glorious day for black baseball. It was another moment that shed light on the excellence that existed in a circuit built in the shadows of segregation.

It educated the baseball public, showing that along with Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella and Monte Irvin, all who got a chance to play in the major leagues, there were others who had shined in the Negro leagues. And that some of those stars were black Latinos who likewise blazed a path inspiring future generations of players from Latin America.

All but two of the committee members, along with representatives from the Hall of Fame, left Tampa that evening. The two left behind were myself and Raymond Doswell, vice president of curatorial services of the Negro League Baseball Museum.

That we were the last two still in Tampa was ironic. The two of us had been the presenters on the case for Miñoso and O’Neil. The two living candidates didn’t garner the votes to get into the Hall. That made the dinner we shared bittersweet. We had plenty of good news to share, just not about Minnie and Buck.

Featured Image: Andy Hayt / Getty Images Sport