Sunday, December 8, 2024

Hall of Fame Veterans Committee: They Heard Me

 This is the second time that the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee has done a vote recently where it feels like they've just listened to how I would have voted. It happened in 2023, when I begged them to consider Fred McGriff and they finally did, and it happened this year, when they righted two wrongs from the representation of pure athletes of the 1960s and 1970s.

Dick Allen's case I didn't always get. I only knew him from his later years with the White Sox and his victory lap in Philly. But then growing up I learned how he was a dominant hitter with the Phils in the 60s, and was a groundbreaking black athlete in this market. I like to ask the question with HOF voting 'can you tell the story of baseball without this player. And honestly, with Allen, you really can't. From 1964 to 1974, Allen is one of the best players in baseball. Considering that Aaron, Banks, Mays, Robinson, Williams, Stargell and McCovey also played during that period, I sort of get why he was overlooked, but the sheer power Allen was capable of [350 career homers, 1119 career RBIs] speaks for itself.

I think Allen's eventual downturn with Philly, and his disagreements with ownership, dulled his overall appeal. Like, if his late 30s don't fall off, he'd be in already. And that bit was what held people back for a while. But I think Allen's case is a big picture one, because his seasons during his peak period are among some of the best of his generation, and I think he deserves to be in. 

I say this because I get why Dick Allen took this long to get inducted. He doesn't come off like a true Hall of Fame type for everybody. But to me, Dave Parker is one of the best pure hitters of the 70s, and it's insane that it took people this long to induct him. So many great teams, like that 1979 Pirates team, the mid-80s Reds teams, and the late 80s A's teams, worked because they had Dave Parker in there doing incredible things. The man had three home runs in the 1989 World Series, and nobody remembers that because they're too busy remembering his 14 hits and 6 RBIs in the 1979 World Series.

So honestly it's weird to me that it took this long for Parker to get in. At his peak he was a world class athlete. But he never got higher than 25% of the writer's association voting. I think, like Allen, Parker's contentiousness with ownership with both Pittsburgh and Cincinnati worried people, and they looked to some late career stats to say 'well he couldn't completely pull it together'. And I don't love that. A player being tough to manage only gets me when it usurps his overall appeal. Albert Belle's never gonna be a Hall of Famer because he turned what could have been a career run into just 5 or 6 years of high production. Jeff Kent's never gonna be a Hall of Famer because everyone he ever played for hated his guts. It's no secret that Dave Parker got busted for cocaine usage, but people are being held out of the Hall of Fame for taking drugs that actually enhanced their play, and this is just coke. You take away a grammy for lip-syncing, not for taking acid. 

Regardless of what held these guys back, I'm happy they're in now, they both deserve it. I can happily add both collections of contemporary card issues of them to by ever-growing Hall of Fame binders. It's just a matter now of which guys I grew up watching will join them. 

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