Give the Hall of Fame credit. Its purpose for re-engineering the Veterans Committee was noble. It wanted to end the back-room cronyism and bring more voices into play. Now 84 members will vote: 58 Hall of Famers, 13 Frick Award winners (those in the broadcasters' wing of the Hall), 11 Spink Award winners (from the writers' wing) and two members of the old committee whose terms have not yet expired. A player must be named on at least 75 percent of the ballots to gain enshrinement. Great. But creating the ballot for the new committee proved troublesome.

First, the Hall, with help from Elias Sports Bureau, identified the more than 1,400 players who played at least 10 years in the big leagues, up to and including the 1981 season. A 10-person committee of writers and historians whittled that list to 200.

Next, a screening committee of 60 writers (two from each major league city with one team and four from those with two) was individually charged with voting for 25 players from that list of 200. I served on that committee, and it was the most difficult assignment I had all year. After weeks and weeks of research, I still struggled to differentiate between scores of ballplayers from every era of the game's history. Was Deacon Phillippe better than Ed Reulbach? Was Bobby Bonds the equal of Harry Stovey? You get the idea. The screening committee, however, apparently didn't. Here's where the process broke down.

Remember that cheesy promotion last season when fans were asked to vote for the 10 greatest moments in baseball history? The voting populace, many of whom used the Internet to cast their ballot, had no sense of history. Basically, if they didn't see it on SportsCenter, people didn't vote for it. That's why Kirk Gibson's home run made the top 10 and Bobby Thomson's didn't, among other short-sighted mistakes.

That same lack of perspective -- or worse, was it laziness? -- poisoned the screening committee results. Hey, with 200 names, the 25-slice pie could have been cut many ways. There is no "right'' outcome. But we do know more historical balance was needed. To virtually disregard the first three-quarters of a century of baseball is wrong, if not shameful.

Moreover, the Hall of Fame asked six of its former players to serve as another sort of screening committee. They were charged with picking five players from the list of 200. Four of the five players they selected were on the writers' ballot. Their fifth choice, while not identified, was added to the other 25, putting the ballot at 26.

And that's how just about everybody who retired before 1950 got hosed. Of the 26 who made the final cut:

People don't care about the game's antiquity. They don't care about Bill Dahlen (1891-1911), who Total Baseball ranked as the 31st greatest player; or Lon Warneke (1930-45), who won 192 games, posted a .613 winning percentage and is the only man to pitch and umpire in a World Series; or Pete Browning (1882-1894), a three-time batting champ whose .341 lifetime average is the fifth best of all time; or Stovey (1880-93), a five-time home run champion who also led the league four times in runs, four times in triples, three times in slugging, once in doubles and once in RBIs. He was the all-time leader in runs and homers when he retired. Bobby Bonds, who did make the cut, was no Stovey.

Such players are forgotten ghosts who have no voice. They never received much of a shake, if any, from the regular writers, who didn't start filling out ballots until 1936. They were often ignored by the old Veterans Committee, which seemed concerned with ushering in buddies and teammates the writers didn't come close to electing. And now, falling through another crack, are those old-timers who don't show up on the radar of the screening committee. And after this well-intentioned process, the fear is that they are gone for good.

The Composite Ballot

The Veterans Committee is not just considering former players. It has a second ballot with the names of 15 former managers, umpires and executives. The same process was used to create that list as was used for the players' list. And guess how that turned out, kiddies? Every one of the 15 was active in those roles in the 1960s except two -- former NL president Bill White (1989-1994) and former manager Whitey Herzog (1973-90), who were busy playing in that decade.

That's right, not a single umpire or executive whose career predated World War II or manager who was in the dugout before 1967 is being considered by the Veterans Committee.

No Billy Southworth, who won four pennants as a manager in the 1940s, posted the fifth-best winning percentage of all time and happened to hit .297 over 13 years as an outfielder; no Chris Von der Ahe, an owner who ran his St. Louis Browns (1882-1898) like Bill Veeck long before Bill Veeck; and no Bill Dinneen, who umpired for 29 years after winning 170 games as a pitcher, not including three in the first World Series ever played.

Sadly, there aren't many true veterans on either ballot for the Veterans Committee to consider. The Veterans Committee has been revamped all right. They ought to call it the Baby Boomer Committee now.

The Outcome

It's impossible to predict with any certainty whether the new committee will elect more or fewer players than it has in the past. In 41 meetings from 1961-2001, it chose 101 members. Only three times (1988, 1990 and 1993) did they elect no one.

Members can vote for up to 10 players on the 26-man ballot -- the same limit the writers have. (This year's writers' ballot included 33 candidates.) Among the most mentioned Veterans candidates are Gil Hodges, who received more votes from writers without getting elected than any other player (3,010 -- without his contributions to the game as a manager being considered, as they should now); Ron Santo, a popular candidate because of his defense, power and walks; Tony Oliva, who, along with Hodges and Santo, is one of three players on the ballot to get 200 votes from the writers in any one year; and Dick Allen, a two-time home run champion.

Perhaps, though, Carl Mays, a pitcher who was 207-126 between 1915 and 1929, will get in. After all, if he cracked the Baby Boomer bias, he must really be something special.

The most likely of all picks should be Marvin Miller. As the driving force behind the growth of the Players' Association, Miller had a greater impact on the game than any of the 41 names on either ballot. And every former player in the Hall would be remiss not to give him a vote.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.

 

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