There’s a sequence in George Lucas’ classic film American Graffiti in which Curt Henderson (played by Richard Dreyfuss) gets hijacked during his long last night before going off to college in 1962 by a trio of leather-jacketed Modesto, California high school dropouts who call themselves the Pharaohs, the kingpin and would-be James Dean of which is a character called Joe Young (played by the always great Bo Hopkins). In order to prove his mettle to these State Pen apprentices, Henderson first must distract the owner of a penny arcade while the Pharaohs swipe small change from pinball machines for gas money, and later is forced to crawl on his stomach behind a parked police car and quietly hook its rear axle to a chain attached to a used-car lot lamp post. Soon, when the Pharaohs speed away, the squad car gives chase for about three seconds before the chain tears away the axle and the vehicle is left, lights flashing and siren blaring, wheel-less in the middle of the street, the cops inside dumbfounded. At that point, you hear Dreyfuss’ voice shout from the passenger side of the Pharaohs’ before-its-time low-rider, “Here’s one for justice!”
On Monday, February 27 the Baseball Hall of Fame announced the results of its first-ever (and possibly last) “Here’s One for Justice” election, in which 17 people from the old Negro Leagues and the segregated, independent barnstormers that preceded them were chosen for Cooperstown. The announcement culminated a six-year-long effort to improve the Hall’s representative justice for what, until the 1970s, had long been baseball’s invisible men ── the players of color who were barred from the majors prior to Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947.
The process leading to this election began in 2000 with a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball to fund what has been billed as the most comprehensive-ever study of the history and available statistics of the Negro Leagues and segregated baseball during the period 1860-1960. After what appeared to outsiders to be numerous but unexplained delays (some of which, no doubt, involved the statistical research required), and following a procedure similar to that of the current Veterans Committee process, the study eventually produced a list of 94 semi-final candidates, which was then pared down to a 39-name final ballot by a five-person screening committee last November. For reasons which remain obscure, the 39 finalists were formally separated into two groups with separate ballots, nine names representing “colored” baseball before the formation of the Negro Leagues as we know them, and 30 whose careers came mostly after 1920. The voting and screening committees were chaired by former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent, and received “counsel” from Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, neither of whom voted.
As with all Hall of Fame balloting, the 17 successful candidates required 75-percent support from the voters, in this instance a select committee of 12 electors hand-picked for their expertise in various aspects of Negro-League history, many of them members of the Society for American baseball Research (SABR). One of the experts, Robert Peterson, author of the seminal book Only the Ball Was White, passed away just days before the election results were announced. But, aware of his failing health, Peterson had submitted his ballot a couple weeks in advance and his votes were counted, meaning that each successful candidate needed to receive at least nine votes from the panel.
The list of new electees includes a dozen men chosen as players and five as executives, the most deserving of which (in my opinion) were outfielder George ‘Mule’ Suttles ── who, despite the legends which abound regarding catcher Josh Gibson, is the recognized Negro-League leader in career home runs ── and J. L. Wilkinson, longtime owner of the Kansas City Monarchs and the man who actually pioneered night baseball. Another very worthy selection was Effa Manley, owner of the Newark Eagles, who becomes the first-ever woman elected to Cooperstown (women from the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League of the World War II era have their own special section, but are not formally members of the Hall). Ironically, both Wilkinson and Manley were white.
The others chosen include pitcher-outfielder Ray Brown, flycahser Willard ‘Home Run’ Brown, pitcher Andy Cooper, second baseman Frank Grant, outfielder Pete Hill, catcher Biz Mackey, pitcher Jose Mendez, catcher Louis Santop, first baseman Ben Taylor , outfielder-pitcher Cristobal Torriente and infielder Jud Wilson, along with execs Alex Pompey (owner of the New York Cubans), Cum Posey (owner of the fabled Homestead Grays) and Sol White (founder of the Philadelphia Giants). Grant, Hill, Mendez, Santop, Taylor and White all were listed on the ballot among the “pre-Negro Leaguers”.
To many observers, the biggest surprise in the voting was the elective failure of the only two living candidates, outfielder Minnie Minoso and first baseman-manager Buck O’Neil. Minoso played just two seasons in the Negro Leagues (1946-47, batting .293 in league games), before joining the Cleveland Indians in 1949. In a 17-year major-league career, he collected 1,963 hits, had 186 home runs, batted .298 with an OBP of .389, and was a seven-time all-star, three-time league leader in triples and stolen bases, and near-perennial leader in hit by pitch. Given his short stint in the Negro circuits, it’s apparent that more than three committee members felt his tenure there was not long enough to justify his election as a true “Negro Leaguer”. In that light, it’s hard to understand why, if the electors were destined to deem his Negro League service inadequate, Minoso was put on the final ballot ── stealing a spot from a well-qualified, full-time Negro leaguer (notably pitcher-catcher Ted Radcliffe and owner Gus Greenlee). But, as one who has long supported Minoso’s case for Cooperstown election, the failure to elect him was also disappointing because he simply will never be chosen under the current Veterans Committee procedure.
O’Neil, who was 35 when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947, never played in the majors. His Negro League playing career ── spent mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs as a teammate of Satchel Paige ── spanned 1934-50, during which he was a three-time all-star and hit .292 in league competition. He also managed the Monarchs for eight seasons (1948-55), signing with the Chicago Cubs as one of the first-ever Afro-American scouts at the end of that tenure. In 1962 O’Neil also became the majors’ first-ever black coach with the Cubs. But his real fame came later in life, after he “starred” in much of the famous Ken Burns baseball documentary on PBS and served for roughly a decade as the Negro League expert on the Hall’s old Veterans Committee. Reasons for O’Neil’s elective failure are less clear than Minoso’s, as his election was widely expected.
O’Neil is now 94, Minoso is 83 (depending on which birth year you accept), and it’s likely that the recent special election marked the best, perhaps last chance for either man to gain entry into baseball’s Valhalla. Sadly, we will never know how close either man came to election, because the HOF trustees and special committee chose not to release any final tally for the voting. That ill-advised failure is especially disheartening in light of recent efforts by the Hall trustees to eliminate the shroud of secrecy that once surrounded the old Veterans Committee elections, and to make the overall Cooperstown process more accessible to the public.
Regardless, the election boosted the number of people enshrined for Negro-league service of any kind to a total of 35. Among the 18 prior members, half were chosen in the 1970s by a previous special committee on the Negro leagues, the others by the pre-2001 Veterans Committee. At this point, there is no indication whether the Cooperstown trustees have any intention of ever considering Negro leaguers again ── so this may have been the last opportunity for inductions based on that element of baseball history.
In the days since the election results were announced there has been some controversy, much of it predictable, over (1) whether the panel erred in omitting O’Neil and/or Minoso, (2) whether the new selections finally raise the level of representation to a number that constitutes fair and equitable recognition for the Negro leagues as a whole, plus (3, and ironically) whether the panel went totally overboard in an effort to redress past injustices. Sabermetric guru Bill James has also argued on the SABR-only website that the Cooperstown trustees are most likely to be privately aghast about the large number of inductees approved, and that ── as a result ── the election marks the first, last and only time that “serious researchers” will ever be invited to participate in the HOF selection process.
James may well be correct, although the answer to his concern will obviously take time to manifest. As for whether or not a total of 35 inductees are adequate representation for a century of segregated/Negro-league baseball, it’s appropriate to note the following:
• There are currently 196 men enshrined at Cooperstown for their major-league playing careers, plus 47 others for service as managers, executives, umpires or pioneer contributors. The total, 243, represents about 1.4 percent of the roughly 17,000 people who have served in the majors in one or more of those capacities since 1876.
• In comparison, the recent selections push the Negro-league total at Cooperstown to just over 0.7 percent of the 4,800 initial candidates considered by the special committee.
• The ratio of the two largest groups above (17,000 to 4,800) is 3.54-to-1 in favor of MLB, while the ratio of men elected (243 to 35) is 6.94-to-1, also in favor of MLB and almost twice as large.
In light of those numbers, given the absence of complete performance statistics for the Negro leagues as a whole, and regardless of potential differences in the immeasurable "average" talent level between the white majors and the Negro leagues at any given time, it's specious to contend that there could be any meaningful qualitative difference to the Negro leagues' detriment between the top 1.4 percent of major leaguers to date and the best 0.7 percent of Negro-leaguers during those circuits' history. In fact, if anything, you might expect the smaller group to reflect a higher level of quality. It's also arguable from the numbers above that application of an equal representational standard for each group implies that something in the neighborhood of 67 Negro-league Hall of Famers (1.4 percent of the 4,800 initially considered) is justifiable to achieve relative equity. That still leaves Cooperstown about 32 Negro leaguers shy of representational justice.
It’s a cinch those 32 “missing” members cannot and will never be elected by the current Veterans Committee, which seems to have been designed intentionally to be as impotent as the average age of its membership predicts. It’s also a little ironic that Jackie Robinson was elected to Cooperstown in the very same year (1962) depicted by American Graffiti. With regard to equal representation, one can only hope that a little over five decades from now equal representation will have been achieved, and proponents of justice for Negro leaguers are not forced to paraphrase the publicity tag line for George Lucas’ film classic by asking the Cooperstown trustees “Where were you in 2062?”