Minnie Minoso? Jim “Kitty” Kaat? Dick Allen? Luis Tiant? Rolling Stone’s Dan Epstein thinks at least some of them do, and is pretty cheesed at baseball’s Golden Era Committee for not voting any of them in:
What the hell, guys?
You, the 16 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Golden Era Committee, were given a ballot with 10 candidates on it. All of them – nine players and one executive – have made significant contributions to the game and its history, and all of them had decent (at least) cases for enshrinement in Cooperstown. And yet, thanks to your dithering, none of them will be getting a plaque in 2015…
The Golden Era Committee’s decision ensures that these players will have to wait another three years for their cases to be heard again. Meanwhile, the backlog of worthy candidates grows longer; some of these guys who are still alive will probably die before they do get inducted and Cooperstown loses out on the additional injection of excitement and fan interest that most of these potential inductees could have provided.
Um, I dunno. I’m old enough to have seen all these players in their primes,on television , and I can’t say there’s a one whose omission from Cooperstown would be an outrage. Yes, they were all good ballplayers — but is “good” what admission to the Hall is all about? What do you think?
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