There are many standards for the Hall of Fame
The National Baseball Hall of Fame.
There are so many halls of fame. There are Halls of Fame, Walls of Fame and Walks of Fame covering everything from the Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame to the Walhalla Memorial in Bavaria and spanning from American TV Game Show Hall of Fame to the National Band Association Hall of Fame of Distinguished Band Conductors.
There’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame and the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame. The Apollo Theater has its own Hall of Fame and so does the Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Rockabilly, Bluegrass, Dance music, Classical, Gospel and the Polka (Yes, it appears there’s a hall of fame for the Hokey Pokey, and doesn’t that turn yourself around).
But, apologies to all these other museums, people still think Babe Ruth when someone says the phrase “Hall of Fame.”
Over the past month, baseball writers have hashed and rehashed the Baseball Writers of America ballot and who does and does not deserve to be in the 2016 Hall of Fame induction class.
The consensus was something we’ve known in the Pacific Northwest for decades: Ken Griffey Jr. belongs in the Hall of Fame.
We pretty much knew that as soon as The Kid stepped into the Kingdome outfield. How could anyone doubt the fact that this kid with the megawatt smile was headed to Cooperstown.
OK, maybe you waited until after he lined a first-pitch fastball from Chicago White Sox starter Eric King into the left-center field seats in his first Kingdome at-bat. But it couldn’t have taken longer than April 26, 1990 – when the youngster climbed the wall in left-center field in Yankee Stadium to take away Jesse Barfield’s 200th career home run, landed and raced toward the infield wearing an ear-to-ear grin and holding the ball up to show his dad, Ken Griffey Sr., who was watching proudly from the owner’s box.
In most people’s opinion, the Hall was a settled question long before 1995, when the kid raced home from first base on a double by Edgar Martinez to save the sport in Seattle.
What makes the debate over the Hall of Fame so fascinating is the fact that there is no single standard for enshrinement. Every baseball writer with a ballot has his or her own criteria about who is or isn’t a true hall of famer, and it can be surprising to see just how varied those criteria can be.
But that’s true of the greater population. We all have our own measure of success.
To some, it’s a statistical model. It’s about pure numbers and repeatable math.
Others are completely subjective. They look at a career and can instinctively know whether the player is or isn’t Hall-worthy. It’s the same process Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously used to describe obscenity, saying “I know it when I see it.”
Others use standards that come in all sizes and shapes, from elastic to rigid. One pundit suggested that any pitcher admitted to the Hall of Fame should have, at some point, won a Cy Young Award. The problem with his argument was that he was simultaneously lobbying for Mariano Rivera as a lock for Cooperstown, and Rivera never won a Cy Young.
There’s the World Series title sect that feels the best players should have won it all at some point, which is ultimately bad news to Hall members like Ted Williams, who many feel is the greatest hitter who ever lived.
These are all interesting discussions about the best of the best in whatever Hall of Fame is under discussion.
But it’s more productive to break down the things these players have in common in order to learn some personal lessons about success.
They all had to work their way into the big leagues. Some got there sooner than others, but they all worked their way up.
They all had to overcome obstacles along the way. Griffey had to deal with high expectations and Mike Piazza had to deal with no expectations – getting drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 Major League draft as a special favor by manager Tommy Lasorda to Piazza’s father, Vince.
Every player makes errors. The best learn from them and work hard not to repeat them.
Every hitter strikes out. If you hit .300 for a baseball season, that means you failed to get a hit 7 out of 10 times at the plate.
That’s a list you can learn from.