A champion like Bernie Williams would be a sure Hall of Famer in football or basketball

If Baseball Hall of Fame selection worked the way the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Basketball Hall of Fame selections work, Bernie Williams would be heading for Cooperstown someday. Instead, he dropped off next year’s ballot, getting only 3 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America last week.

The most comparable NFL teams to the Bernie’s Yankees were the San Francisco 49ers of the 1980s and ’90s, the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s and the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s.

I’ll leave the 49ers out of this consideration for a couple reasons:

1. Their titles were more spread out, four titles in nine years, five titles in 14 years. With a wider spread of years, they had more turnover of players. In fact, they have two quarterbacks from that era, Joe Montana and Steve Young, in the Hall of Fame.
2. More of their players remain in Hall of Fame consideration. Charles Haley is a finalist this year. Maybe Roger Craig, John Taylor, Ken Norton or Randy Cross will make it someday, too. So it’s harder to say how many 49ers will eventually make it to Canton. (Montana, Young, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott,  and Fred Dean are already in the Hall of Fame, along with Coach Bill Walsh and three players who made most of their case for the Hall of Fame with other teams, Deion Sanders, Rickey Jackson and Richard Dent).

Instead, we’ll examine the Steelers and Packers. The Yankees won four championships in five years (and made two more World Series in the next three years). The Steelers won four championships in six years. The Packers won five championships in seven years (and played for the title the year before winning their first championship). So all three teams won at least four championships over six years. These were some of the greatest dynasties in sports history.

Here are the Steelers from that era in the Hall of Fame: Mel Blount, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene, Jack Ham, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, Mike Webster (plus Coach Chuck Noll). That’s nine players, or 41 percent of the 22 starters (with only one full-time placekicker and no full-time punters in the Hall of Fame, we don’t need to count them). That’s close to a complete list, but some people still are campaigning for L.C. Greenwood.

Here are the Packers from that era in the Hall of Fame: Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Forrest Gregg, Paul Hornung, Henry Jordan, Ray Nitschke, Jim Ringo, Bart Starr, Jim Taylor, Willie Wood, plus legendary Coach Vince Lombardi. That’s 10 of 22, and Dave Robinson is a finalist this year who could make it 50 percent of the starters. And don’t count out Jerry Kramer, a five-time All-Pro who threw maybe the most famous block in NFL history.

Let’s say that the eight daily position players, the designated hitter, the five starters and the bullpen ace are equivalent to the starters on the football team, 15 people playing roles that give you a shot at the Hall of Fame. So if the Baseball Hall of Fame selections worked the way that the Pro Football Hall of Fame does, 40 to 50 percent would mean six to eight Yankees from the 1990s would make the Hall of Fame.

Baseball Hall of Fame voting is screwed up, steroids or not

Baseball Hall of Fame voting is even more screwed up than voting in real elections.

OK, I get why Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa didn’t make the Hall of Fame. There’s the drug thing (though a jury actually acquitted Clemens of perjury when he denied use).

Jayson Stark wrote a good piece for ESPN about how baseball needs to come to terms with the steroid era and how that should be represented in the Hall of Fame. But I think yesterday’s vote showed how screwed up Hall of Fame voting is, period. Even the votes on people not tainted with drug suspicion make no sense.

The Baseball Writers Association of America and veterans committees have made the Hall of Fame selection a laughingstock for generations. The football and basketball Hall of Fame selections always make more sense (though there’s always room for argument in any such voting). But baseball voting is a head-shaker every year.

For this post, we’ll set aside Bonds, Clemens and Sosa, along with Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. Whether you agree or not, everyone understands why baseball writers vote against people who are tainted with suspicion of using performance-enhancing drugs. If the voting did make sense, you could certainly understand a few years of “no” votes for suspected cheaters (character and integrity are among the voting criteria).

And, for this post at least, we’ll mostly set aside my own usual rants about the voters’ prejudice against Yankees. Other than Clemens and the usual dissing of Don Mattingly (13 percent this year), players who played their great years for the Yankees don’t figure in this year’s voting. So I’ll note the ridiculous votes on other candidates who fell short of the 75-percent vote needed for induction (all stats from Baseball Reference):

I cross the streams, discussing Hated Yankees and journalism

“Don’t cross the streams,” we were warned in “Ghostbuster.” It can be bad.

But I crossed the streams today, mentioning this Hated Yankees blog in a journalism workshop today, then continuing the discussion later on the Twitter account I usually use for discussions of journalism and not for my opinions about the New York Yankees. That’s the topic of this blog and the related @hatedyankees Twitter account.

My Hated Yankees identity creeps into my journalism workshops occasionally for two reasons:

1. As an example of why a journalist would use a personal Twitter account separate from the account you use for work, I mention that I launched @hatedyankees because I didn’t want to annoy or bore journalists who hated the Yankees or didn’t care about baseball with my tweets about the Yankees. But I did want to tweet about the Yankees (it was October 2009 when I launched the Twitter account and this blog, chronicling and celebrating the Yankees’ drive to the World Series title that year.)
2. I mention my 2009 blog post about why Don Mattingly belongs in the Hall of Fame as an example of a bad headline for search engines. I didn’t understand SEO well then and my headline, “You be the judge: Who’s a Hall of Famer?” didn’t help people find my blog because it didn’t include the name most likely to be used in a Google search by someone who would be interested in my post.

Don Mattingly outperformed most Hall of Famers of his era

Twenty hitters who played with Don Mattingly have made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was better than most of them. It’s past time for the baseball writers to recognize that Mattingly belongs in the Hall of Fame.

When I’m making the case for Yankees who belong in the Hall of Fame, I don’t compare them to marginal Hall of Famers. Wherever you draw the line for who belongs in the Hall of Fame, some players who belong in will be very close to the line, as will some who don’t belong in. The differences between the players on opposite sides of the line will be small. And reasonable people can disagree over who belongs on which side of the line. So when you start comparing someone who’s not in the Hall with the people close to the line, you have a losing argument. You have to compare your overlooked candidate to the clear Hall of Famers who are nowhere near he line.

A few years ago, I noted that Mattingly’s career statistics and achievements were nearly identical to Kirby Puckett’s. That’s a pretty compelling argument, since Puckett was a first-ballot Hall of Famer whose achievements are universally regarded as worthy of Cooperstown.

But maybe you would argue that the Puckett comparison is an oddity, a coincidence that somehow doesn’t capture Kirby’s greatness. So I compared Mattingly to all his contemporaries in the Hall of Fame. And he still holds up well. By every measure except longevity, he’s better than most of them. And even with a shorter career than most, his career statistics are comparable to several Hall of Famers from his era.

Baseball writers continue blocking Roger Maris from the Hall of Fame

I addressed this matter on my other blog, The Buttry Diary, because it’s about journalism as well as baseball:

If journalists were objective, Roger Maris would be in the Baseball Hall of Fame

Jorge Posada has been better than most Hall of Fame catchers

The opening night of the World Series seems like a good time to consider Jorge Posada‘s case for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Posada, starting catcher for four World Series champions, belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I don’t think he will get there. As Yankee catchers go, he doesn’t have as strong a case as Thurman Munson. Just as the baseball writers kept Munson out, they will keep Posada out.

Of the “core four” Yankees from Posada’s time, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter are automatic Hall of Famers whose credentials are so strong they overcome the anti-Yankee bias. Posada is more like Andy Pettitte, worthy of the Hall of Fame, but likely to fall short.

Posada has not retired yet, but it’s likely we’ve seen most, if not all, of his outstanding years, so I think we can evaluate him as a Hall of Fame contender.

For catchers, you have to throw out the milestones that play into consideration for players at other positions. No catcher has hit 500 homers or 3,000 hits. (You can’t count Craig Biggio, who moved to second base before he had 500 hits). So it’s more an assessment of the total package that matters. You really have to measure a catcher against his contemporaries and/or against other Hall of Famers.

Roger Maris is one of baseball’s most famous players ever; who needs the Hall of Fame?

The Hall of Fame needs Roger Maris more than Maris needs the Hall of Fame.

Maris died of cancer in 1985, his place in baseball history secure. Just like the asterisk that failed to diminish his most remarkable accomplishment, the continuing arrogance and ignorance of Hall of Fame voters only add to Maris’s luster.

He broke the record baseball’s commissioner and press didn’t want him to break, and the baseball establishment has never forgiven him. He didn’t chat up reporters when he was baseball’s biggest story, and the baseball writers, who held the keys to Cooperstown, stubbornly made him pay.

Yankees, though easily baseball’s best team, are 3rd in Hall of Famers

I love it when a Yankee hater inadvertently makes my case for me. A blogger attempting to diminish the achievements of the Yankees cited a statistic that absolutely proves the anti-Yankee bias in Hall of Fame voting.

Someone named Chris, blogging as Carrot League Baseball Today, dropped a link to a blog post in the comments on my post about why Graig Nettles belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Andy Pettitte: a borderline Hall of Fame candidate (so he won’t get in)

Andy Pettitte’s retirement announcement came with the predictable speculation and debate: Will he be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame? Should he be elected?

He probably should but he probably won’t. Yankees who should be automatic Hall of Famers (see Ron Guidry, Roger Maris, Thurman Munson and Don Mattingly) get rejected from Cooperstown, so a borderline candidate like Pettitte has little chance.

Beyond whatever achievements he had in his career, Pettitte will face two strong biases that influence the baseball writers who hold the keys to the Hall of Fame. He is a Yankee, and Hall of Fame voters consistently vote against borderline Yankees (see Graig Nettles and Tommy John). And he used performance-enhancing drugs. We don’t have much history of how the drug scandals of his generation will influence Hall of Fame voting. But clearly the drug issue is keeping out Mark McGwire, who would be a lock otherwise. It has to hurt a borderline player.

Ron Guidry elevated the great teams he played on

After my friend Jim Brady tweeted that he was pleased about Bert Blyleven’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, I tweeted back, yes, but … with a link to yesterday’s post, explaining why Ron Guidry belonged in the Hall of Fame ahead of Blyleven. Brady initially dismissed the importance of wins:

Too much focus on wins. He calls a season Blyleven had an ERA a run lower a tossup? Can’t use Ws as centrally as he did, IMHO.

I replied:

Isn’t the pitcher’s job to win the game?

And Jim responded:

Sure, but they only have limited control over that. Its a lot easier with Reggie Jackson and an all-star lineup.

Brady’s a Mets fan, so you know he didn’t grow up with any love for the Yankees. I did, so we both come at this with huge biases. So let’s look at the facts: