35-31

Here’s a good point of clarification for you the next time you’re in an argument about voters leaving obvious Hall of Fame players off their ballot.

Inevitably, someone will say, “People even left Babe Ruth off their ballots,” or something of that ilk. The truth is actually even more shocking if you know the details of the first few years of Baseball Hall of Fame voting.

At the time, voters weren’t given ballots with players’ names on them to check off. They were simply asked to list their ten best players who played from 1900-1936. There were 226 votes cast that year and Ruth was named on 215 ballots. That means that 11 voters didn’t have Babe Ruth as one of the top 10 players in the sport between 1900-1936, a much more egregious misjudgment than just failing to check off a box next to his name.

Ruth, along with Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson all received the requisite 75% of the vote to become the first group of players elected to the Hall of Fame, even though the physical building hadn’t been built yet.

The next year, the BBWAA followed the same process and elected Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker and Cy Young. The “Centennial Commission” was formed to evaluate players who began their service prior to 1900, and they selected Connie Mack, John McGraw, Morgan Buckley (the first President of the National League), Ban Johnson (the founder of the American League) and George Wright, who formed baseball’s first professional team in 1869 and was an outstanding shortstop.

In 1938, the BBWAA selected only Pete Alexander while the Centennial Commission added pioneers Alexander Cartwright and Henry Chadwick.

The BBWAA followed that up in 1939 by electing George Sisler, Eddie Collins and Willie Keeler with the newly-formed Old Timers Committee choosing Cap Anson, Buck Ewing, Old Hoss Radbourn, Albert Spalding, Charles Comiskey and Candy Cummings, who allegedly had invented the curve ball.

That December at the winter meetings, the BBWAA held a special election to vote Lou Gehrig into the Hall of Fame. Gehrig had retired that summer in a moment you’ll be sure to see in a future installment of The Stud 400.

After Gehrig was elected, the BBWAA decided that no further elections would be held until at least 1942.

On June 12, 1939 the first National Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony was held, coinciding with the opening of the museum’s grand opening. Eleven living Hall of Famers were on hand to celebrate their induction, including four of the first five players elected. Mathewson was the only player from the original class who passed away before induction. He died in 1925 at the age of 44.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is the most prestigious of any major sport and its roots are fascinating. They’re certainly worthy of being included in the upper echelon of this week’s edition of The Stud 400.

Before we move on to this week’s edition of The Stud 400, here’s a look at the last five entries as we count down the 400 greatest moments in Major League Baseball history:

40: Pitcher’s mound lowered (1969)

39: 1994-1995 strike (1994)

38 :Reggie Jackson’s three HR World Series game (1977)

37: Willie Mays: The Catch (1954)

36: Sandy Koufax’s perfect game (1965)

And now, here’s Episode LXXX of The Stud 400.

35. Hank Aaron sets career RBI record (1975)

So much attention was paid to Hank Aaron passing Babe Ruth’s career home run record, that when he passed the Babe for the career RBI record a year later, it was almost an afterthought.

The fanfare wasn’t apparent in the games leading up to the event and there was no caravan of reporters following The Hammer around in anticipation of the event. You know the home run record numbers off the top of your head—714 for Ruth, 755 for Aaron—but could you quote either of their career RBI totals? Shit, I can’t and I am writing this thing!

As it turns out, Ruth’s RBI total was thought to be 2,209 when he retired, which outdistanced Cap Anson’s 2,075. Years after both Ruth and Aaron retired, Ruth’s RBI total was adjusted upward to 2,213. Aaron passed Anson for second place during the 1973 season and finally caught Ruth in 1975, his first season as a Milwaukee Brewer.

At the time, based on Ruth’s alleged RBI total, Aaron needed just eight RBIs to pass Ruth and he got to it pretty quickly. Aaron drove in seven runs in his first 13 games and, after being shut out in his first two attempts, he finally topped Ruth on May 1. Aaron got his historic RBI in the third. Don Money singled with one out but was forced at second on a grounder by Robin Yount. Sixto Lezcano singled to move Yount to second, and the 19-year-old shortstop then scored on Scott’s single. Next, Aaron made history with the Brewers’ third consecutive base hit, driving Lezcano home and giving Milwaukee a 3-2 lead.

Aaron ended his career with 2,297 RBIs and nobody is touching that anytime soon. The active RBI leader is Freddie Freeman, and at 35 years old, he’s still about 1,000 RBIs away. The active RBI leader under 30 is Rafael Devers who is 1,500 RBIs away and will eat his way out of the league before he has a chance to catch Aaron.

34. First Hall of Fame election (1936)

Although the Baseball Hall of Fame didn’t open officially until 1939, the first class of inductees was voted on in 1936. The voting rules were pretty basic, which unintentionally led to a shitshow of a process. The BBWAA were instructed to vote for any ten candidates from the 20^th century who they thought were Hall of Fame worthy. A separate veteran’s committee was instructed to vote for any 10 players who played before 1900 who they thought was worthy. Same as today, anyone who received 75% of the vote would gain enshrinement. Those were the full instructions.

The intent was that at least 10 players from the 1900s and five pre-1900 players would gain the necessary vote. If more than the desired number was selected, they would take the top ten and five players from that group, respectively. Things didn’t turn out that way. Only five players gained 75% of the vote and nobody from the pre-1900 group received more than 55%. A big part of the confusion was that there was no instruction about how to handle players whose careers overlapped eras. Another problem was that voters were given sample ballots with player names listed and just assumed those were the only people eligible to be voted on. It’s a big reason that Cy Young wasn’t in the first class as he received about 50% of the vote in each group.

In total, 226 ballots were cast in the post-1900 group and 78 ballots were cast in the pre-1900 group. The five players who received the necessary 75% of the vote were Ty Cobb (98.2%), Babe Ruth (95.1%), Honus Wagner (95.1%), Christy Mathewson (90.7) and Walter Johnson (83.6). Nap Lajoie was next with 64.6%. Cap Anson led the way among pre-1900 players with 39.5 votes.

The reason he received a half vote was because some voters listed ten players when they were supposed to list just five. Instead of making an adjustment, everyone on those ballots received a half of a vote instead of a full one. I told you it was a shitshow.

33. Johnny Vander Meer back-to-back no-hitters (1938)

There are plenty of unbreakable records in the Major League Baseball record book and most of them found a spot in the The Stud 400. Some of those records are unbreakable due to the way the game is played these days.

Nobody is approaching Cy Young’s 511 wins or 749 complete games, Walter Johnson’s 110 shutouts or Nap Lajoie’s .426 batting average for a single season. It’s basically physically impossible because of how much different today’s game is. Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak, Barry Bonds 755 home runs, Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games and Rickey Henderson’s 1,406 steals aren’t going to be beaten either, but at least those records can be achieved within the framework of the way the game is played. You can add Johnny Vander Meer’s name to that list, too, as nobody is breaking his record either.

Vander Meer’s record might not have the panache of finding yourself on the top of any of the statistical leaderboards, but it’s just as difficult nevertheless. Technically, Vander Meer holds the record for most consecutive no-hitters with two. It’s damn near impossible to match that—nobody has done it in over 150 years of Major League Baseball—and to beat it, someone would have to pitch three straight. Not happening. Vander Meer threw his first no-no on June 11, 1938 against the Boston Bees and followed that up four days later when he turned the trick against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the first night game ever played at Ebbets Field. He actually had fans abuzz in his next start as well as he managed to get through the first ten batters of the next game without allowing a hit either. He had to settled for a four-hit complete game win instead.

32. Larry Doby integrates the American League (1947)

If you’ve been following The Stud 400 and have a working brain, you can safely assume that Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier will have quite a lofty ranking in our countdown. We have come to the point in the countdown where Larry Doby gets his respect as well.

It might be hard to imagine today as both the National League and American League are essentially blended together, but back in 1947, the leagues were very distinct from each other. So while Robinson integrated Major League Baseball and the National League, it still left a hole in the American League, which remained segregated. That hole only lasted three months. Indians owner Bill Veeck was an early supporter of integration and allegedly had multiple plans to integrate baseball prior to 1947, only to have those plans shot down. With Robinson on the Dodgers, Veeck saw no more roadblocks to integrating the American League. As with Robinson, Veeck wanted to find a Black ballplayer with the talent to succeed and the temperament to handle the racism that was bound to come his way. He landed on Doby, and it was a great choice.

Veeck’s plans for Doby were significantly different than what the Dodgers had done with Robinson. With the Dodgers, Robinson was signed from the Kansas City Monarchs and spent the entire 1946 season with the Montreal Royals in AAA. That helped him prepare for some of the things he was going to experience in the Majors. With Doby, Veeck essentially wanted everyone just to show up to the ballpark one day and see a Black player in the lineup without any fanfare. His thought was that if they treated Doby as just another player who they acquired, the fans would just go along with it and accept him as well. It didn’t quite work out that way. Doby was still subjected to the same racism that Robinson was, but he wasn’t as prepared as his National League counterpart. Doby didn’t have the benefit of easing into his Major League career by playing a season in the minors. He went straight from the Negro Leagues to the Major Leagues in the same season and was just 23 years old at the time. By comparison, Robinson was 28 by the time he arrived in Brooklyn. Doby was integrating stadiums and cities where Robinson had never played.

Doby hit just .156 in 29 games for the Indians and struggled with the adjustment to the Major Leagues. However, his talent started to carry him the next season receiving MVP votes at the end of his first full campaign. The year after, Doby made the first of his seven straight All-Star Game appearances and he was on a path that would end with him enshrined in Cooperstown. Like Robinson, Doby was a classy ambassador for the game during and long after his career ended.

31. Pete Rose banned from baseball (1989)

Over the final 35 years of his life, Pete Rose’s public image was, well, not good. We don’t need to sit here and recount every one of his transgressions, because there are probably too many. Plenty of fans still revered him as a baseball hero, but for many fans, especially those who weren’t around for his glory days, it was impossible to separate the player from the man. For those fans, it’s hard to state just how beloved a figure Rose was in the game up until the gambling allegations broke. Rose was one of the faces of baseball for the better part of two decades. One of the game’s all-time greats who had a golden ticket to become an inner-circle Hall of Famer. He was the player coaches and parents pointed to when they wanted to show a kid how to play the sport. That’s why his downfall was so shocking.

In February of 1989, Rose was questioned by Bart Giamatti and Peter Ueberroth and vehemently denied having bet on baseball. He claimed he stuck to football and horse racing. That April, Sports Illustrated published allegations that Rose did indeed bet on baseball and lawyer John Dowd was retained by Major League Baseball to investigate. It turned out that Rose had bet on baseball at least in 1985 and 1986 and Dowd was also able to detail that Rose bet on the Reds, who he was managing at the time, 52 times in 1987 and wagered a minimum of $10,000 a day. Dowd concluded that there was no evidence that he ever bet against his own team.

On August 24, 1989, Rose accepted a permanent place on baseball’s ineligible list but continued to publicly deny wrongdoing. It was one of the biggest falls from grace any player or baseball figure experienced. Now we wait to see how voters handle his Cooperstown case as he has been reinstated after passing away in 2024.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of The Stud 400 when we highlight a postseason high and a postseason low for the best player to ever put on a uniform. We’re going to be stealing, streaking and taking a dive into perhaps the greatest game ever played. We may only be knocking on the door of the top 25 next week, but that won’t stop us from declaring ourselves the greatest of all time. Two “unbreakable” records fall in next week’s Stud 400, tune in to BallNine next week to see which icons defied baseball experts with their accomplishments.