Onward...
6. Dorrel "Whitey" Herzog
2003 VC ballot: 31.6%
Claims to fame: longtime manager of the Royals (three AL West titles) and Cardinals (1982 World Series championship, two other NL pennants); 1281 wins and .532 winning percentage; some pioneering effort in the modern design of the bullpen (long men, short setup men, The Closer – he had Sutter there); total 18 years managing. (Complete managerial record.)
Baseball bonus points: was also a player, an outfielder for eight seasons (1956-63) with the Washington Senators, Kansas City Athletics, Baltimore Orioles, and Detroit Tigers. Batted .257/.354/.365, 414 hits and 241 walks in 1885 plate appearances. There were a couple of above-average seasons but nothing memorable; he was a spare part player that filled a specific role. (I'm evaluating him as a manager, but some people like to see the "overall baseball career" aspect and I'm not dismissive of that. Anyone who played the game at the major league level, particularly for a few years, clearly has more baseball talent than almost any of us. It deserves mention. In Herzog's case, however, I think his playing career is a very tiny bonus point and doesn't really improve his candidacy.)
The White Rat is best known for his small-ball style team that he built (he acted as general manager also) and ran in St. Louis in the 1980s, which produced three league titles and the one championship, all good things. AstroTurf was prevalent in the National League back then, including Herzog's home park, so he built his team on defense, speed, and pitching, and it worked pretty well – get guys on base, steal, scamper, and when Jack Clark got up to bat he'd put one over the fence. (The 1987 Cardinals were amazing in how far they went with minimal power – the whole team hit only 94 homers, and Clark had 35 of them.) In eleven seasons with the Cardinals, they finished third or better seven times, and in his five years with Kansas City they never finished below second. Darn good manager – won the Manager Of The Year Award three times (though only once after the BBWAA started voting on it) with a lot of winning under him.
But I don't see the Hall as needing him, particularly. One championship is nothing to sneeze at, but a great, Hall-class manager should have at least one repeat performance (yeah, 1985 had That Bad Call, but that happens sometimes; the Royals did outplay the Cardinals). That no one picked him up after the Cardinals dropped his services – well, I gotta think we only saw half or two-thirds of a true Hall career. Someone could have put Herzog back into the dugout, but it never happened, regardless if it was his choice or not.
Chipmaker's vote: no. Sorry, Whitey.
7. Bowie Kuhn
2003 VC ballot: 25.3%
Claims to fame: Commissioner of Baseball, 1968-84. During his tenure, baseball saw the introduction of the designated hitter, the opening of free agency, season-impacting strikes in 1972 and 1981, expansion in 1969 and 1977, realignment and the League Championship Series playoff tier added in 1969, and he suspended Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays from good standing with Major League Baseball because they were freelancing as greeters at a casino.
Kuhn was commissioner for a long time, and it's not an easy job. The commish has never really been an impartial arbiter; he's the owners' hired gun and he serves their agenda or gets fired, which was Kuhn's eventual fate. That he did serve for so long doesn't mean he did a good job; baseball motored along, but he did very little pioneering work for the game while holding the chair. The biggest story in his legacy is the eternal battles he had to fight with Marvin Miller and the players union, which he lost badly when an arbiter overturned the reserve clause during the 1975-76 offseason. (Miller would have negotiated capitulation at several points, though he had clear goals to achieve; Kuhn was hamstringed by the owners, who refused even to consider letting the reserve clause go. They lost hugely. Baseball now earns billions, not mere millions. Free agency has made the game better in many ways, but the men who ran the teams back then – some still around – couldn't see it and had to have it forced upon them.)
Kuhn was the owners' operative, and when he tried to act impartially they tended to get mad at him. Again, it's not an easy job, but Kuhn did not markedly make baseball better during his many years at the top. I don't assign blame to Kuhn for the free agency decision, he was forced to be the bagman for the owners, but that and the labor strikes are what stand out from his years in office, and they don't make him look good. (When Peter Ueberroth took over as commissioner in 1984, one of the first things he did was reinstate Mantle and Mays. I wouldn't vote for Ueberroth if he was on the ballot, but he did know how to get things done.)
Chipmaker's vote: no.
8. Billy Martin
2003 VC ballot: 27.8%
Claims to fame: manager for 16 seasons, best known for his five tenures (covering eight seasons) with the New York Yankees, winning two AL pennants (1976-77) and one World Series championship (1977) plus helming another champion (1978) for part of the season; also managed the Minnesota Twins (one season, one playoff appearance), Detroit Tigers (three seasons, one playoff appearance), Texas Rangers (three seasons), and Oakland Athletics (three seasons, one playoff appearance). Overall 1253 wins, .553 winning percentage.
Baseball bonus points: Martin was a player, mainly a second baseman, for eleven seasons with the Yankees, Kansas City A's, Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Braves (very briefly), and the Twins. Batted .257/.300/.369 with 877 hits and 188 walks in 3717 plate appearances. All-Star in 1956. Played on four Yankee champion teams (1951-53, '56) and another pennant winner (1955). Overall .333/.371/.566 in the postseason.
One word that always comes up when describing Martin is "fiery", and it's pretty accurate. He was world-class combative and confrontational, and while it did work for him, it never worked for very long. I don't think a Hall Of Famer needs to have one especially long tenure with any one team, but neither should he bounce around like a ping-pong ball, because that indicates that teams probably are happy to be rid of him. HOFers don't have to be men of sterling character – examples abound – as long as they make significant baseball contributions. Martin, I think, never really did that. He was a good short-term manager who wore out his welcomes, and usually pushed his teams, through both personality and player selection and usage, to the point where it no longer responded strongly to his style of leadership. Martin made headlines (mainly because he was in Yankee Stadium) and he made some history, but he doesn't really carry the sort of historical weight that the Hall is intended to honor.
Chipmaker's vote: no.
9. Marvin Miller
2003 VC ballot: 44.3%
Claims to fame: executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, 1966-84. Planned for and eventually won an arbitration decision overturning the reserve clause, bringing about free agency for the players. Essentially never lost when confronting the team owners.
Marvin Miller managed, deliberately, to introduce free agency to baseball, and the game has been the better for it. I recommend John Helyar's Lords Of The Realm as excellent reading on just how important and strategically clever Miller was, and indicative of how the owners (in the past, though it's not much different today) could be such pecuniary, power-drunk bastards. And Miller beat them every time. He put the entire player population into the position it enjoys today, able to reap huge financial rewards along with intermittent opportunities to choose where they'll play and to sell their services on an open market (and what could be more All-American than that?).
The 61 living HOFers who get to vote are mostly ex-players, many of whom retired before free agency came along, or who were near their career end and never got a big taste of it. So, on a personal level, I can understand how some of them would not feel obligated, even indebted, to vote for Miller. He also improved the union pension plan, though, so really every ex-player has collected some benefit from his efforts as leader of the union. (Nearly all of the living players were active during some point in the Miller era; some of them hired him.) As the voting pool evolves – newer, free agency-era players get added, older voters pass on – I can foresee Miller's eventual election as inevitable. But the man is well into his 80s and, while honoring the living is not as important as honoring the greats of history, I really would like Miller to earn the honor of the Hall while still healthy and among us, because his Hall induction speech would probably be a ringing knockout, and I'd like to hear it. Miller's impact was huge and lasting; that's exactly the sort of influence the Hall should recognize and honor.
Chipmaker's vote: yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
10. Walter O'Malley
2003 VC ballot: 48.1%
Claims to fame: longtime owner of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, 1950-70s (family held the team until 1997); moved the Dodgers to LA and convinced the Giants to move simultaneously (mainly due to the need for a proximal rival); extremely knowledgable and influential among the owners fraternity.
Though people in Brooklyn to this day loathe O'Malley, his daring break for California transformed the game for the better. Geographic expansion was due as the nation grew and moved about, and he took the initiative. He was one of the very big men amongst the owners for a long time, but that's not the sort of storyline that plays well on a Hall plaque or even in a favorable biography. He was in many ways a typical owner – tightwadish, deceitful at times, powerful for the sake of being powerful. There's nothing inherently wrong with these personality aspects, but they don't enhance one's candidacy for the Hall. He did transform the game on the business side – teams are now found in four time zones and two countries – and while that's a good thing and it wasn't done for bad reasons, in this case I think it does not reach Hall measure. I'm going to vote for him anyway, half-heartedly, but if I had to start throwing my votes overboard he'd be the second to go after Finley.
Chipmaker's vote: yes (but I might change my mind tomorrow).
Part three sometime soon.
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