Just when we thought we’d said goodbye to Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for a while thanks to the Baseball Writers Association last January, they’re coming around again as two of the eight candidates on the Contemporary Era Hall of Fame ballot which will be voted on Sunday as the kickoff to the winter meetings in San Diego.
When Bonds, Clemens and Curt Schilling all fell off the writers’ ballot after failing to achieve the necessary 75% for election in their 10th and final year of eligibility, they automatically were consigned to the Hall of Fame’s veterans committee “court of second resort” — and as fate would have it, their Contemporary Era’s cycle just happened to be this year.
There had been discussion among the Hall’s board of directors that players falling off the writers’ ballot should have to wait through at least one cycle (or three years) to be eligible again. That may eventually be the case but for this year the Hall was apparently sensitive to the appearance of prejudice against steroid cheats if they didn’t allow Bonds and Clemens to go right onto the Contemporary Era ballot.
What has resulted is one of the most diverse ballots one could ever imagine — with five acknowledged scoundrels of variation — Bonds, Clemens, Curt Schilling, Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Belle — on one side, and three genuine class acts — Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff and Dale Murphy — on the other.
The deliberations of the 16-member voting committee in the room Sunday figure to be fascinating. Which way will they go? Based on the committee makeup, I would think McGriff, perhaps the most notable victim of the steroid era who played the game clean, only to watch Bonds, Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, et al., fly by his one-time Hall of Fame worthy 493 career homers, has the best chance of being elected. Two of his former Braves teammates, Chipper Jones and Greg Maddux, along with Paul Beeston, the president of the Blue Jays when he played there, are all on the committee to speak on his behalf.
Also, based solely on comments and sentiments they’ve expressed in the past about steroid cheats, unless they’ve had a change of heart, I can count at least five committee no votes on Bonds, Clemens and Palmeiro, which would knock them out. Belle had three to four Hall of Fame-caliber seasons, hit .295 lifetime with 381 homers, but was otherwise a horrible human being. In 1996, he was hit with a record $50,000 fine by Commissioner Bud Selig for his abusive behavior toward NBC reporter Hannah Storm during the 1995 World Series, and he has since had two or three rather egregious off-the-field indiscretions, so I can’t see anyone voting for him.
Which brings us to Schilling, a polarizing figure if there ever was one, who probably would already be in the Hall of Fame if he had only kept his extreme right-wing politics and his disdain for the baseball writers to himself. But like his idol, Donald Trump, Schilling just could not resist the propensity to shoot himself in the foot, the final straw for a lot of writers (myself included) was when, after just missing election with 71% in 2021, he wrote a letter to the Hall of Fame asking to be removed from the ballot.
With an 11-2 record, a 2.23 ERA, Schilling is unquestionably one of the greatest postseason pitchers ever. Will that be enough for the seven Hall of Fame players on the committee to look past his political rantings and welcome him to the fraternity anyway? He’ll need all of their votes.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the committee is how to assess the careers of Mattingly and Murphy, both of which were cut short by injuries. Both hold the distinction of being acclaimed “best player in the game” — Murphy twice for his back-to-back MVP seasons in 1982-83 and Mattingly for four seasons, from 1984-87, during which he won one MVP and was second, fifth and seventh in voting, led the league in hits twice, doubles three times, RBI once, won a batting title and four Gold Gloves at first base. A debilitating back injury ended his career prematurely but his last hurrah — .417 with six RBI in the 1995 division series against the Mariners (his only postseason) — cemented his legacy as one of the greatest Yankees in history.
One other interesting Hall of Fame factoid about Mattingly, who hit a lifetime .307 to Murphy’s .265: In 2015, when the board of directors reduced the years of eligibility on the writers’ ballot from 15 to 10, three players on the ballot were grandfathered in and wound up staying on all 15 years — Mattingly, Alan Trammell and Lee Smith. Trammell and Smith were later elected by the veterans committee and are on this committee. I don’t know if the voting committee is conscious of this, but they have a chance to make a real statement for character here by voting in McGriff along with either Mattingly, Murphy or both.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Tony Clark had his contract extended as head of the Players Association for another five years last week and, citing the recent $900 million windfall the owners just reaped from the sale of BAMTech to Walt Disney plus the millions of dollars of additional new revenue MLB will be getting from allowing advertising patches on their uniforms, he said: “I’ll say this, the industry is doing well. With the game having rebounded already from a financial standpoint, we remain optimistic that things will continue to progress positively.”
Indeed, when you think of how much money the owners and players alike are hauling in (thanks to all the TV contracts, the Astros’ winning World Series share was a record $516,347 per player from a record pool of $107.5 million), it seems unconscionable that so little has been done about taking care of the 525 pre-1980 players who were screwed out of their pensions through no fault of their own.
In a nutshell, in 1980 the players union and MLB agreed upon a change in the vesting requirements for the major league pension from four years to just one day of service time, and just 43 days of service to receive a retirement allowance. However, it was not retroactive.
Marvin Miller, the players union chief who negotiated that agreement later said on a number of occasions his biggest regret was not going back in subsequent labor negotiations and taking care of the pre-1980 players. It wasn’t until 2011 when Michael Weiner, the late executive director of the Players Association, and then Deputy Commissioner Rob Manfred worked out a “stipend package” in which the pre-1980 players would still not be included in the pension plan but would receive benefit allowances up to a max of $10,000 a year (before taxes).
In the latest CBA negotiated last March, the payments to these players was increased 15%, from $625 a month for every 43 days of service time to $718, again to a max of $10,000 (which most fall far short of), which is paid out of the competitive balance tax. And because these players are not technically included in the pension plan, the benefits do not carry over to their spouses when they die.
At the same time, however, in 1997, MLB on its own agreed to award annual pensions of $10,000 to Negro League players who played on teams prior to 1947. Most of those players are now deceased, but the point is MLB found the money to take care of them. For $5 million a year, or the equivalent of about what the Yankees will pay Harrison Bader next year, baseball could provide blanket $10,000 payments to all the remaining 525 pre-1980 players. Why can’t they figure this out?
Winter meetings free agent predictions: Aaron Judge re-signs with the Yankees for eight years north of $300M. … Justin Verlander goes to the Dodgers for two years, $80M. … Xander Bogaerts re-ups with the Red Sox. … The Phillies fill their shortstop need with Trea Turner. … After missing out on Judge, the Giants, with money to spare, pivot and overpay for Brandon Nimmo and also sign Carlos Correa for shortstop.
