No perfect system for Hall of Fame selections

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – This should probably start off with a warning. What you are about to read is in some ways an attempt to compare apples and oranges – and in other ways apples to Tuesdays.

This is an attempt to compare the admissions standards for baseball’s and pro football’s halls of fame. A barstool debate, solved right here in your morning paper.

“Hmm,” says George Brett, baseball induction class of 1999.

“Um, OK,” says Willie Lanier, football induction class of 1986.

“I’ve never heard of someone try to do that,” says Jeff Idelson, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Baseball’s hall announces its newest induction class today. Rickey Henderson will be in it, beginning the countdown to what could be one of the all-time entertaining acceptance speeches.

Jim Rice will probably make it in his last year of eligibility, Bert Blyleven will be close, and Andre Dawson and others will most likely not make it.

The Internet will explode with reaction, praise and condemnation on all sides. People will call Rice “the most feared hitter of his generation,” and others will say that’s a nice line if only it were true.

People will quote Blyleven’s 287 wins and call him the father of the modern curveball, and others will say he never won a Cy Young Award.

What they might all be missing is recognition of where the standard has been set by voters.

“Baseball, it’s harder to get in (than football), that’s for darn sure,” Blyleven says. “But I think the standards should be high.”

There is a thought among and around baseball circles that the Hall of Fame voters – made up of more than 500 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America – take on the role as the game’s gatekeepers.

Starting with Babe Ruth himself not being a unanimous selection among the first induction class of 1936, that gate has been opened for only the very best. Nobody has received every vote – Tom Seaver’s 98.8 percent is the closest.

Brett figures voting is based 90 percent on statistics and on-field performance, with the remaining 10 percent based on leadership, relationships, and the way a player conducted himself.

Whatever, there are all-time greats who need to buy a ticket like the rest of us to get in – 21 men who made eight or more All-Star games and are eligible for induction are not in. There are guys who won multiple MVP and Cy Young awards who remain unelected, some barely getting a look.

Bill Freehan made 11 All-Star teams, won five Gold Gloves and was second in MVP voting the year his Tigers won the World Series in 1968. He received just two votes for the Hall of Fame and was dropped from the ballot.

“I would’ve loved to get more consideration,” Freehan says now. “Everybody looks at offense and nobody looks at defense. My concentration was always defense.”

Here’s the apples-to-oranges (or Tuesdays) part, so please stick with us.

The people in pro football are happy with their system, which is vastly different from baseball’s while still relying upon media representatives. Pro football’s group is 44 – one representative from each franchise plus 12 at-large selectors. Kansas City’s man is Bob Gretz.

The biggest difference between the two selection processes is that the football people get in a room and debate it out once a year at the Super Bowl. Baseball relies on each voter to do the research on their own.

“Every year we look at our system,” says Joe Horrigan, vice president of communications for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “We’re of the belief that this is the best way to do it.”

The other big difference is that baseball requires 75 percent approval, and if that means nobody gets in one year, so be it. Baseball voters haven’t selected more than three in any one year since 1955.

Football requires 80 percent approval, but it’s not quite that simple – they’re required to select between four and seven inductees every year.

Some of this is the nature of the sports. Fifty-three guys on an NFL roster, only 25 in baseball, so maybe it’s only natural that football lets more guys in.

“I don’t look at it like that,” says Lanier, who is also on the pro football hall’s board. “They have to select those they feel have met the criteria. From that point of reference, those that are (inducted) are those that should be.”

So which is tougher?

Maybe the best way to do this is to ask someone who is involved in both sports’ selection process. There aren’t many of them, but Bernie Miklasz is one.

He’s a sports columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and – you might be interested to know – a believer that the Chiefs’ Derrick Thomas will get in soon, if not this year.

“The standards are higher in baseball,” Miklasz says. “I really believe that. But it can also be more clear-cut.”

Miklasz says that because the line in baseball is better marked by statistical milestones that mostly don’t exist in football.

Rick Gosselin, a columnist for the Dallas Morning News who is Dallas’ football representative and a former baseball voter, says that “baseball’s at one extreme and football’s at the other” in terms of admissions standards.

One number that backs Gosselin and Miklasz: 90 percent of the 78 men who’ve made eight or more Pro Bowls and are eligible for the Hall are in, while 74 percent of the 86 eligible men which made eight or more All-Star games are in.

There’s also no “character clause” in football’s selection process, so a guy like Lawrence Taylor is enshrined while Pete Rose sells his autograph down the street.

Both Gosselin and Miklasz see football’s face-to-face debate as an improvement over baseball’s system, but each say there is no perfect system – either by process or standards.

“There’s gotta be a middle ground,” Gosselin says. “Baseball is too exclusive, and I think football lets in too many.

“But I’ve learned this: no matter how many you put in, it’s not enough for fans. You put in 12, you should’ve put in 15. Put in 15, you should’ve put in 20.”