The Hall's 2010 Veterans Committee Ballots

The Baseball Hall Of Fame has, finally, released the two ballots for the Veterans Committee. Twenty candidates are under consideration for election in the Class of 2010.

I'll have more soon regarding the individual candidates, the subcommittee memberships, and any other changes since these two ballots were last considered in 2007. Many of the candidates are repeaters.

The Managers & Umpires ballot (* == considered on December 2007 M&U ballot):
Managers -- Charlie Grimm, *Whitey Herzog, *Davey Johnson, Tom Kelly, *Billy Martin, *Gene Mauch, *Danny Murtaugh, Steve O'Neill.
Umpires -- *Doug Harvey, *Hank O'Day.

First thoughts: two of the ten M&U candidates in 2007 were elected (Billy Southworth and Dick Williams), and of the eight who did not make the cut, seven are revisited this time. There really needs to be some relegation mechanism, such that failure to capture enough of the vote (25%, 50%, whatever) forces a candidate to skip one cycle, because re-reviewing obvious deadwood doesn't get us anywhere and simply doesn't help matters.

The Executives & Pioneers ballot (* == considered on December 2007 Executives ballot):
Executives -- Gene Autry, Sam Breadon, *John Fetzer, *Bob Howsam, *Ewing Kauffman, *John McHale, *Marvin Miller, *Gabe Paul, Jacob Ruppert, Bill White.
Pioneers -- none.

First thoughts:
1. Three of the ten candidates got elected last time, and of the seven who did not, six return this time -- again, some relegation would help rotate the potential pool.

2. The Hall has decided to ignore Miller's request that he not be stood for consideration. Miller had a point, and knew of what he wrote -- the 12-man electorate has a majority of executives (seven of 12 voters), some with personal experience with him, and no one who works in a front office (unless possibly an ex-player) will ever view him as anything less than an adversary of Dark Lord magnitude. Miller considers being nominated a waste of time and nothing but lip service.

3. The electorate has not changed much -- the composition is still two HOF players, seven executives, and three writers. Of those, both the players have changed (this year's player voters will be Robin Roberts and Tom Seaver), one executive (Bobby Brown, who was an ex-player from the pre-Miller era, has been bumped in favor of John Schuerholz), and one writer (Paul Hagen out, Phil Pepe in). Even if Miller has both players (likely) and all three writers (possible) behind him, he'd still need a majority, four of seven, of the executive voters to win induction. In 2007, he got three votes. So standing Miller as a candidate remains a case of either rank witlessness or historic disrespect on the part of the Hall, because he clearly has no chance with this subcommittee as it is presently constituted. And so, we'll watch this script play out yet again.

Candidate evaluations coming soon.