The final study I would like to conduct into the history of the Hall of Fame is to go through each election, year by year, for the writers and the veterans and evaluate their acts of commission (i.e., inductees) and omission (i.e., how many George Davises slip through the cracks). Do the writers always select the best candidates available? Do the vets? How do they compare against each other?

I am still going to use Win Shares as the basis of the evaluation. I know that Win Shares overvalues early pitchers and oddly values relievers (some higher than expected and some lower), but as I said earlier, I feel that it does the best job of laying all of the players out in continuum from Babe Ruth to Jim Rutherford. I want to evaluate the selections, so without some basis Ross Youngs is as qualified a candidate as Cy Young. If there are five players elected in a given year, are the best five players elected? Maybe it's just 4 of the best 5, or 80%. Or maybe just one of the top five gets selected, 10%. I will grade each election based on that percentage, and compare them over time.

However, I am not going to be so draconian as to assume that just because one candidate is a few Win Shares better than another that is elected that the first candidate is not the only qualified candidate (or indeed that he may be an inferior candidate to the other). Therefore, I will be assigning letter grades to each candidate based on their Win Shares. They will be based on rough cutoff percentages of all players with at least 150 Win Shares (e.g. top 5%) that are translated into round numbers in Win Shares (400 WS):

Grade     %    Win Share Min  # Players (Total)

A     Top 5%        400          44

B     Next 10%      300         172

C     Next 25%      225         421

D     Next 60%      150         940

If the writers select one A candidate and pass up another that has slightly more Win Shares, it won't count against them. For example, in 1936 the writers selected Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson, both of whom place lower than Cy Young, who was selected in 1937, in Win Shares (560, 426, and 634 respectively). However, each of those players was a Grade-A candidate—and many would argue that both Johnson and Mathewson were superior pitchers to Young. Therefore, in the letter grade evaluation, the writers will not be penalized.

However, if, for example, the veterans select Tommy McCarthy (Grade D, 170 Win Shares), when the likes of Kid Nichols (Grade A, 478 Win Shares), Sam Crawford (Grade A, 446 Win Shares), and Tim Keefe (Grade A, 413 Win Shares), among others, are available, then the veterans will be deservedly excoriated. For McCarthy they would be penalized one point per letter grade difference, or three points.

In all of these analysis, the electing body will be graded on who they selected against who was available as well as who was bypassed against who was selected. In this way, the McCarthy selection, which bypassed many superior players, will be seen as a much more glaring blunder than selecting the inferior of two players.

So here are the elections per year and group:

Top eligible with voting results:

Number selected: 5
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 60%
Percentage based on bypassed: 41.67%
[Note, this is based on the number of players elected divided by the number elected plus number bypassed before "worst" electee.]
Percentage by Grade: 100%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 100%
[Note, this is based on the numeral representation of players elected (A=3, B=2, C=1, D=0) divided by the sum based on grade of those elected plus sum for those bypassed before "worst" electee.]
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 100%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall? N/A
[Note this tests the inductees against the average HoF Win Share total. Given that there were no players yet in the Hall in 1936, this could not be determined.]

Number selected: 3
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 66.67%
Percentage based on bypassed: 60.00%
Percentage by Grade: 100%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 100%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 100%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (623.80 WS avg)? 66.67%

Number selected: 1
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 0.00%
Percentage based on bypassed: 25.00%
Percentage by Grade: 100%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 100%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 100%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (609.88 WS avg)? 0.00%

BBWAA:
Number selected: 4 (including Gehrig by "Special Election")
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 50.00%
Percentage based on bypassed: 7.69%
Percentage by Grade: 50.00%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 8.26%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 75.00%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (595.00 WS avg)? 0.00 [Note that there were no eligible players were over 595 WS.]

Old Timers:
Number selected: 3
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 0.00% (That would have been Tim Keefe, John Ward, and Pud Galvin)
Percentage based on bypassed: 2.59%
Percentage by Grade: 0.00%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 3.03%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 66.67%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (595.00 WS avg)? 0.00

This was sort of a defining moment for the Hall. The "worst" player to be inducted in the first three years of voting, according to Win Shares, was Christy Mathewson (426 WS), arguably one of the greatest pitchers of all time. The average Hall of Famer's Win Share total was just under 600, a total that has been reached by fewer than 10 players all time.

This is the Hall of Fame that everyone today seems to be harping for. There were no poor clinkers. Everyone was truly famous. However, the Hall was at a crossroads.

As Ken Smith said in Baseball's Hall of Fame (as quoted by Bill James in The Politics of Glory), "For several years the consensus of complaint centered about the old favorites who were left out." In 1939, Commissioner Landis and the president of the baseball writers' association, Tom Swope, struck a deal: the writers would be given permanent authority over the twentieth-century players and could run their elections as they saw fit.

The Centennial Commission, which until now had just selected non-players for the Hall, was re-commissioned the Old Timers Committee and would have sovereignty over all nineteenth-century players. I have included their candidate pool and their voting together above because the line was never completely drawn between the two factions. You'll notice that Buck Ewing was selected by the Old Timers, but also had received a couple votes, probably as many as he deserved, from the writers even though his career ended in 1897 (he also managed until 1900, so maybe the writers claimed him due to this). The line between the two groups became even more blurred in 1945 when a majority of players who were selected by the Old Timers had retired after 1900 (as late as 1918). The system was changed in 1946 to give the Old Timers all players who had been retired for 25 or more years. (The line was still being stepped on though. The Old Timers selected Johnny Evers that year even though he had played one game in 1922 and another in 1929. The writers threw one vote to John Clarkson, who retired in 1899, in 1946 and one to Bill Lange of all people, who also retired in 1899, in the 1953 election.)

Anyway, back in 1939, the writers had given up a pool of players they had no interest in to begin with—through 1939, only 7 baseball writer votes had gone to nineteenth-century players and of those, one went to Connie Mack, who certainly was being considered more for his non-playing contributions, and four over three elections went to Marty "Who?" Bergen, who had played just four seasons and started only one, for the 1898 Boston Beaneaters. In exchange, the writers could do whatever they wished with the highest honor in baseballdom. And to quote Bill James, "They immediately did something stupid."

Actually, they did a couple of stupid things. They first voted to hold elections every three years, meaning that there would be fewer inductees and fewer induction ceremonies, much to the irritation of the Hall's administrators. The writers obviously wanted to keep those enshrined in the Hall to a minimum. By holding the vote less frequently, the assumption was the talent pool would have a chance to replenish itself. If you want the Hall to be for Ruth and Gehrig and Mathewson alone, this made sense. However, it seemed that the fans and (especially) the keepers of the Hall did not want this. This caused the tension that led to the poor decisions and two paths, the writers and the veterans, that we are still living with today. The writers saw their job as almost complete and the Hall executives would start to see this an abducation of their duties, leading to more and more power being ceded to the veterans' committee.

The next stupid thing they did had to deal with their selections for 1939. The writers had been picking the best of the best until this point and then we get Wee Willie Keeler and George Sisler. Don't get me wrong, though Sisler was highly overrated (James has him listed 24th among all first baseman, right above Mark Grace), Keeler is a decent Hall of Fame choice today. However, in 1939 Keeler was a bad pick and Sisler was a horrific one. Not only was Rogers Hornsby, arguably the greatest second baseman of all time, available (with 169 Win Shares more than Keeler and 210 more than Sisler) but so were dozens of other better candidates. For all of you who feel that the Hall should be for Ruth and Cy Young and Willie Mays–types only, this is the turning point. It was not the veterans who tainted the Hall first. It was the writers. Keeler and especially Sisler made it possible for people to bandy about Jim Rice and Dick Allen and Jack Morris and Dale Murphy, and to make decent cases for them.

Number selected: 1
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 100.00%
Percentage based on bypassed: 100.00%
Percentage by Grade: 100.00%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 100.00%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 100.00%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (503.50 WS avg)? 0.00% [But Hornsby was the best available and he was a hair under the avg (at 502).]

The 1942 election was the end of the last of the old elections. The writers selected the best player, a player that would not lower the Hall's standards. Self-satisfied, they went back into their self-imposed seclusion for another three years.

The Permanent Committee that oversaw the Hall, however, was not pleased. The 1942 election was, apparently, the last straw. Many things would change in the next election.

BBWAA:
Number selected: 0
Percentage by Top Win Shares: N/A
Percentage based on bypassed: N/A
Percentage by Grade: N/A
Percentage by Grade bypassed: N/A
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? N/A
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (503.41 WS avg)? 0.00 [Note that there were no eligible players were over 503.41 WS.]

Old Timers:
Number selected: 9
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 11.11%
Percentage based on bypassed: 5.08%
Percentage by Grade: 22.22%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 6.22%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 44.44%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (503.41 WS avg)? 0.00

Now they really did. Pandemonium. Cats and dogs sleeping together.

The writers can't decide on any player. The Old Timers Committee was then used to correct the writers' mistakes. Six of the nine men selected by the Old Timers had been voted on by the writers in 1945 as well. If the veterans had selected the nine best men, then maybe the writers' log jam would have been cleared and all would have been well with the world. But they seemed to select nine players almost at random (other than an Ahab-like fascination with the 1894 Baltimore Orioles). Some were strong choices (Clark, Brouthers, Delahanty), some are OK given the standards today (O'Rourke, Duffy), and some are among the worst choices in the Hall (Bresnahan and Jennings).

Hoping to reduce the log jam, the Permanent Committee that oversaw the Hall in 1946 changed the baseball writers' procedures so that there would be a two-pass election. First the writers would vote for all eligible players, and then the top 20 qualifiers would be assessed in a runoff election. They also required that the writers hold an election annually and that they concentrate only on players who had been active in the last 25 years. This was going back on Landis' deal, but they felt that changes had to be made and the writers were not making them for themselves.

Number selected: 0
Percentage by Top Win Shares: N/A
Percentage based on bypassed: N/A
Percentage by Grade: N/A
Percentage by Grade bypassed: N/A
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? N/A
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (433.27 WS avg)? N/A [Note that only Foxx qualified.]

Number selected: 11
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 9.09%
Percentage based on bypassed: 10.00%
Percentage by Grade: 18.18%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 10.28%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 18.18%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (433.27 WS avg)? 0.00% [Note that only Kid Nichols and Sam Crawford qualified.]

It's like the Wild West, right? Complete chaos. Where's Maxwell Smart when you need him?

The writers don't want to induct anyone. Frank Chance leads all candidates. The only problem is that technically, he is no longer eligible for their elections. Players like Jimmie Foxx, Paul Waner, and Lefty Grove, who would be first-ballot layups today, can't even get 50% of the voters to notice them.

In the other camp, the Old Timers are electing bushelfuls of players, some of whom weren't even mentioned in a poem. They even picked one (Evers) who technically was not eligible for the Old Timers as yet. You'll notice that the majority of their selections were picked over by the writers in their vote and were found lacking. You'll also notice that the quality of the candidates varied wildly. Jesse Burkett and Eddie Plank were pretty good choices, though not the best available. The rest weren't great and three (Frank Chance, Jack Chesbro, and Tommy McCarthy) were among the four worst men inducted to date, according to Win Shares. McCarthy still has the lowest Win Share total (170) of anyone in the Hall.

Basically, there were two different Hall of Fame worlds. The writers may have been too tight with their plaques but at least they kept their errors of commission to a minimum. The Old Timers plumbed the depths of Hall of Fame viability. Maybe the writers did not vote for the older players because given the scholarship of the day very little was known besides what had been passed down anecdotally. Maybe their restraint would have been seen as a virtue once a means to evaluate these old time players was in place (probably in the Sixties).

However, their restraint also was their undoing. If the writers had admitted the somewhat current, qualified candidates like Foxx then they wouldn't have had the ownership of the Hall taken away from them. It would have been interesting if the writers had kept electing one or two high-quality candidates a year, thereby obviating the need for the Old Timers. Where would we be now?

Number selected: 4
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 25.00%
Percentage based on bypassed: 12.50%
Percentage by Grade: 50.00%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 12.73%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 75.00%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (386.97 WS avg)? 25.00%

Number selected: 2
Percentage by Top Win Shares: 0.00%
Percentage based on bypassed: 3.45%
Percentage by Grade: 0.00%
Percentage by Grade bypassed: 2.47%
Percentage elected over 300 Win Shares? 0.00%
Percentage better than the established standards for the Hall (381.70 WS avg)? 0.00% (4 players were over)

Well, again the writers’ eccentricities will revive the specter of the veterans’ committee. The writers broadened their standards on the urging of the Old Timers’ voluminous selections in the mid-Forties. Unfortunately, they let their standards fall as well. Pie Traynor was the 32nd best player eligible according to Win Shares. Herb Pennock was 58th. There were also 20 candidates with at least 300 Win Shares. Again, the concept of Win Shares, of course, did not exist at this time, but this tells you the quality of the candidates involved.

In 1949, the Old Timers, who had laid low for two years, would be back to their old shenanigans.

To be continued…