Let's Discuss a Monumental 2024 Election

The stakes aren't as high, but getting these ballots right still matters.

In case you didn’t know, there’s an election in late 2024 with major repercussions on an American institution.

Well, yes, there’s that one happening right now. Do your part, if you haven’t already. But the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Classic Era ballot was released Monday and will be voted on during MLB’s Winter Meetings. It is loaded, and there are some — sadly, not all — wrongs that can finally be made right by the committee.

Dick Allen, Dave Parker, Luis Tiant, Ken Boyer, Tommy John, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris and John Donaldson. Six of these guys have slam dunk or at minimum very good cases, while the other two aren’t unreasonable.

I’ve championed Dick Allen and Dave Parker for years, on Bronx to Bushville and at Outside Pitch (RIP). Like Ron Santo and Buck O’Neil, it’s embarrassing that Allen (and Tiant, who just passed away a month ago) wasn’t inducted while he was alive. He should have been elected by the writers years ago, but the prehistoric writers voting in the BBWAA then couldn’t get past the counting stats (due to injury and the pitching-advantaged era) or, perhaps, the Philly racism that stained the early part of his career.

Dave Parker also should have been elected years ago, but was scapegoated in MLB’s cocaine scandal and wasn’t the same electric player after 1985.

Luis Tiant was essentially the same pitcher before and after the mound was lowered in 1969, but only pitched in one World Series (1975, you might have heard of that one) and never won awards. Despite pitching on more than a few middling teams, he finished with a +57 W-L record and more bWAR than Roy Halladay, Bob Feller, CC Sabathia and three other guys on this ballot.

Ken Boyer was the mainstay at third base for the St. Louis Cardinals for 11 seasons, winning five Gold Gloves and an MVP in 1964. He crested in 1988 with just over 25% of the writers’ vote and was replaced in their collective memory by Mike Schmidt.

Tommy John was essentially Bert Blyleven with a surgery named after him, instead of having a picture taken wearing one of the all-time great t-shirts. Baseball Reference even notes as much. 288 wins and 2245 strikeouts, only Roger Clemens has more of both and isn’t in the Hall for, ummm, reasons.

John Donaldson is the greatest pitcher you’ve never heard of. A semi-pro, pro and barnstorming legend on the Great Plains, he was equal parts Walter Johnson and Satchel Paige pitching in obscurity, save for two seasons in the Negro Leagues with the Kansas City Monarchs.

Steve Garvey is here with 2599 hits, a 117 OPS+ and despite having 200 hits in six seasons and over 100 RBI in five, he still ended his career with a 38(!) bWAR and inexplicably (welllllll…perhaps there is an explanation…) outpolled both Allen and Parker with the BBWAA. (There’s also that fool’s errand Senate run he’s on; my guess is that he loses out on two elections this year.)

Vic Harris was a name I was unfamiliar with before yesterday, but his career seems much like O’Neil’s: a reputable player-manager in the Negro Leagues. Unlike Buck, he didn’t make the jump to the Majors after integration, and having passed away in 1978, Harris didn’t get a chance to help preserve the Negro Leagues’ legacy, either. But everything I see is that he was to the Homestead Grays what Buck was to the Monarchs. That’s good enough for me.

These committee votes are important in that the writers historically find ways to screw this up. They’ve missed players, underrated players, excluded them, ignored them. And that’s not to say the committee process has always gotten this right, either. The old Veterans Committee was a cronyist operation for a long time. But players and executives can see what writers don’t or won’t, as they did with Fred McGriff, Ted Simmons, Minnie Miñoso and Tony Oliva, to name just a few.

Hopefully, a month from now, we can move a few names over to the good side of the ledger and keep filling in the blanks in baseball’s narrative, which is, in no small part, an American narrative.