Building the Ballot: The Baseball Hall of Fame’s Era Committees – Details, episodes & analysis

The calendar has changed to September. The air is cooler. The leaves are changing colors. The kids are back at school. That means it's Hall of Fame season!

This winter, the Classic Baseball Era Committee will meet to discuss candidates who made their mark on the game prior to 1980. I've been anxiously awaiting this ballot because it seems like an impossible task to distill about 140 years of baseball (players, managers, executives, umpires, and pioneers from the AL/NL, other pre-integration major leagues, the Negro Leagues, and pre-1920 Black Baseball) to an eight-person ballot.

To help wade through the candidates, I shared a ballot of 250 candidates and 312 baseball fans voted. In this episode, I discuss the results of the voting project with Dave Metter.

Follow Dave at @CooperstownDave

View the Report

Today, Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer were elected to the Hall of Fame via the BBWAA Ballot. Dave Metter (@CooperstownDave) joins me to discuss the election results and answer listener questions.

After our deep dive into the Early Baseball and Golden Days Eras (including sidebars into Negro League and Latin American Baseball) in Season 1, we finally turn our attention to the 2023 Today’s Game Era Ballot in Season 2. Today we’re joined by Graham Womack to discuss the history of this Committee, who the returning candidates are, and the incredible group of new candidates who are eligible. In all, we cover 50 players and over a dozen non-playing candidates.

Graham Womack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/grahamdude

Graham's Website: https://www.sactocontentwriter.com/

Baseball Past and Present: https://baseballpastandpresent.com/

There’s one more episode I wanted to do before moving on to the next election cycle. When researching the Negro Leagues, the Pre-Negro Leagues, and Negro League MLEs, something kept coming up—Cuban baseball. It’s hard to talk about the Negro Leagues without including Cuban baseball. Today’s guest, Gary Ashwill of the Seamheads Negro League Database, will share stories about Cuban baseball and some of the major stars who were born in Cuba. We’ll discuss Julián Castillo, Carlos Morán, Regino García, Ramón Bragaña, Lázaro Salazar, José Muñoz, Silvio García, and more.

Seamheads Negro League Database: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/

Gary’s blog Agate Type: https://agatetype.typepad.com/

Julián Castillo: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=casti01jul

Carlos Morán: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=moran01car

Regino García: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=garci01reg

Mark Armour returns for a chat that focuses on the Golden Days Era—specifically the 1955–1970 National League, which Mark calls “the best league ever.” Stars of the Negro Leagues were integrating the majors, but it was the National League that led the way. This leads to a pretty large disparity of talent between the NL and AL during the first two decades of integration. We look at some players from this era who deserve a longer look because of this.

Mark is the President of SABR’s Board of Directors, a Bob Davids Award and Henry Chadwick Award winner, the founder and longtime director of the SABR Bio Project, and an author.

Mark’s Website: http://www.mark-armour.net/

Mark Armour on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkArmour04

Today I chat with Graig Kreindler, “The Painter of the National Pastime.” We discussed how he started painting baseball and how that turned into the huge Negro Leagues project (and card set) commissioned by Jay Caldwell for the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues. Then, Graig shared some stories about intersting subjects he’s tackled over the years by constructing a lineup.

Graig’s website: https://www.graigkreindler.com/

Graig on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GraigKreindler

Graig on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graigkreindler/

Today we continue to explore the Negro Leagues and Negro League Hall of Fame candidates. We welcome Gary Gillette, Ted Knorr, and Sean Gibson to the podcast. Gillette, Knorr, and Gibson have joined together to form a new committee—named "42 for 21"—to publicize deserving Negro Leagues & Black Baseball candidates for upcoming Hall of Fame elections. We discuss their backgrounds, how the project started, the election that took place, and what comes next for the project. We specifically looked at a handful of candidates that performed very well in the election but don’t rank as highly with Eric Chalek’s Negro League MLEs: Rap Dixon, Newt Allen, Spottswood Poles, John Donaldson, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Oliver “The Ghost” Marcell, and Chet Brewer.

Gary Gillette is the founder and current chair of the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, a nonprofit that is working to restore the former Negro League ballpark near his home in Detroit. Gillette also served for a decade on the Tiger Stadium Conservancy’s board of directors. He has four decades of baseball research, writing, and editing experience, beginning with his work with Bill James and Project Scoresheet in the mid-1980s. A contributor to six editions of Total Baseball, Gillette later designed and co-edited with Pete Palmer the five editions of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia. Gillette also designed the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia and served as executive editor for both editions of that reference work. A former member of the Society for American Baseball Research’s (SABR) board of directors, Gillette is a past co-chair of two of SABR’s major research committees—the Business of Baseball Committee and the Ballparks Committee. He was the founder and president of SABR’s Detroit Chapter and is now the chair of SABR’s new Southern Michigan Chapter.

Ted Knorr has been a baseball fan since infancy, when his grandma gave him a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey. A few years later, an aunt introduced him to baseball via Ladies Nights at Forbes Field. Later still, a childhood friend—Martha—introduced him to the APBA Major League Baseball Game. Ted has been a SABR member since 1979 and, in 1998, founded and hosted the initial Jerry Malloy Negro League Research Conference.

Sean Gibson is the great-grandson of Negro Leagues legend and 1972 National Baseball Hall of Fame player Josh Gibson. Sean has dedicated his life to the preservation of Josh’s legacy and is the Executive Director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, a Pittsburgh-area non-profit organization. The Josh Gibson Foundation was established in 1994 in an effort to keep the memory of Pittsburgh’s beloved Josh Gibson and the entire Negro Leagues alive. The foundation partners with the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon University by matching up college students with elementary and middle school youth for tutoring. With a strong focus on education, the foundation currently serves roughly 300 children and plans to increase those numbers by starting new programs yearly. The foundation also sponsors the Josh Gibson Baseball Academy.

42 for 21: https://www.42for21.org/

The Josh Gibson Foundation: https://www.joshgibson.org/

The Era Committee elections may be over, but that doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about them. Since we last chatted, Eric Chalek's Negro League MLEs have been added to the Hall of Stats to power Hall Rating for Negro League candidates. Kevin Johnson of Seamheads joins the podcast to talk about the best Negro League (and Latin) candidates outside the Hall of Fame. MLE Hall Rating frames the discussion, but we're really just learning about candidate after candidate. Some you may know (like Sam Bankhead, Sam Jethroe, or Newt Allen). Some you may not (like Carlos Morán, Bill Pettus, and Leon Kellman).

Kevin Johnson on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KJOKBASEBALL

Seamheads Negro League Database: https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php

Hall of Stats MLE Hall Ratings: http://hallofstats.com/nlmle

The Hall of Fame's Early Baseball (pre-1950) and Golden Days (1950-1969) Era results are in and we have SIX new Hall of Famers. In the episode, Graham and I discuss the inductions of Minnie Miñoso, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Tony Oliva, Buck O'Neil, and Bud Fowler. We also touch upon those who didn't make it (like Dick Allen once again finishing a vote short). We answer some questions from listeners—including an early look at how the Today's Game Era ballot could look next year.

Graham Womack on Twitter: http://twitter.com/grahamdude

Baseball Past and Present: https://baseballpastandpresent.com/

After spending ten episodes figuring out who should be on the Hall of Fame's Early Baseball (pre-1950) and Golden Days (1950-1969) Era ballots, they finally came out on Friday, November 5. Graham Womack is back to discuss who made it on the ballot, who did not, how we would vote, and what we think might happen.

Graham Womack on Twitter: http://twitter.com/grahamdude

Baseball Past and Present: https://baseballpastandpresent.com/