For the ninth time in history and the first since 2013, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) has not elected a new inductee to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, both authorities reported Tuesday.
Pitcher Curt Schilling was the closest to the election, getting 71.1 percent of the votes cast, falling just 16 votes short of entering the sport’s Immortals Precinct. Schilling was followed by Barry Bonds (61.8 percent) and 354-game winner Roger Clemens (61.6).
Schilling, Bonds, Clemens and outfielder Sammy Sosa all got 75% of the votes for the ninth year in a row, meaning they will return to the ballot in 2020 for a 10th and last chance.
Dissatisfied with the result, Schilling stated that he would not like to see his name on the ballot next year to leave his entrance to Coopertown to the Veterans Committee.
“I am not in the last year of voting. I request that the ballot be removed. I will give in to the veterans committee and the men whose opinion really matters,” he wrote in a letter on Facebook.
Support for Bonds and Clemens has largely stalled in recent seasons, as the writers’ positions on players related to the Age of Steroids have largely remained at levels just below the threshold. Last season, Clemens was named in 61 percent of the vote, while Bonds got 60.7.
Schilling, on the other hand, had seen his vote share rise from 45 percent in 2017 to 70 percent last year. Historically, most players who reach the 70 percent level end up getting enough support to land in Cooperstown. However, opposition to Schillings’ presence in public and on social media seems to limit his support.
One of Schilling’s most controversial moments is a 2016 tweet in which he appeared to endorse journalists’ lynching, which was later removed. More recently, Schilling expressed support for the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, even though ballots had been submitted before that date.
Bonds and Clemens’ numbers on the field are indisputable, as both players are among the most prolific players in baseball history, although their performance has been bogged down by accusations of using performance-enhancing drugs that surrounded them. Since they were still active. players. Schilling’s merit-based case isn’t that strong, but the recent trajectory of his share of the votes had suggested he was on his way to being hyped. That the three prominent ones look in from the outside suggests that the character clause that appears in the criteria the hall gives to writers is greater than ever.
The BBWAA’s exclusion from votes is only part of the reason why the Hall won’t be getting new members this year. Hall-era veterans ‘committees generally meet each year just before winter meetings to consider candidates whose eligibility has expired for the writers’ ballots. The 2020 winter rallies were virtually held due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so the veterans committees did not meet and will not reconsider candidates until the December 2021 rallies.
Therefore, Tuesday’s announcement means that no new player has been granted access to Cooperstown since the Kennedy administration. In the period from 1958 to 1960 only Zack Wheat (1959) was selected.
Since the Hall of Fame was established in 1936 (the first ceremony took place three years later), the writers also did not choose a new immortal in the 1945, 1946, 1950, 1958, 1960, 1971, 1996 and 2013 trials, being this, Curiously, the last time the players were shut out by the journalists, where Bonds, Clemens, Schilling and Sosa debuted on the ballot.
The fact that the BBWAA has not favored any of the candidates does not mean that the glorification of 2021 will be omitted.
Last year’s class of Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons and the late Marvin Miller, the first executive director of the Major League Baseball Association, will be honored on Sunday, July 25 at the Clark Sports Complex in Cooperstown (MLBPA).
Additionally, as part of the festivities, the 2020 Ford C. Frick Award-winning storytellers (Ken Harrelson) and 2021 (Al Michaels) and the 2020 JG Taylor Spink Award-winning writers (the late Nick Cafardo) and 2021 (Dick Kaegel).
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Hall of Fame ceremony was canceled last year, something that had not happened in six decades. Cooperstown had no swearing-in ceremonies in 1950, 1958, and 1960 after the vote resulted in no new electives, while no elections were held in 1940, 1941, and 1943. In 1942, Rogers Hornsby was elected, but no ceremony was scheduled to address the travel restrictions in the United States regarding World War II.