Quote:
Originally Posted by Theoldprofessor
Choose your favorite veteran, or choose a team of them (one for each position, plus manager) and tell us why you believe it's time for him or them to be enshrined.
Me, I'm for Gil Hodges.
|
For me, this is simple - Ed Reulbach. Here's a page from my website that goes into more detail regarding my personal thoughts about this.
A few thoughts regarding HOF omissions have always been: during the period when the player in question played, as a kid, did you really want this guy's baseball card? Oliva was desirable, but Simmons was just one step up from a common. Sorry, no HOF there. Same for Phil Niekro and Don Sutton - longevity did not indicate 'hero' status to a kid.
Another thought - did the fans and sportswriters during the period that the player played, consider him great? Simmons was always considered to be very good, but certainly not great. But I have to admit, while I wouldn't enshrine Oliva, he was considered to be a damned good player. Same for Frank Howard, Sam McDowell and Roger Maris. While those three are questionable for reasons much-discussed, I would have enshrined Tony Perez a lot sooner - to me he was clearly a HOF'er, and one of the greatest players in MLB when I was a kid.
Early in my vintage card-collecting days, I thought Nap Rucker's stats really showed that he was HOF material. But in the eight years since creating the website I've come across period sportswriting that indicated that Rucker's contemporaries really didn't consider him all that great; in fact, he was considered a guy who didn't do so well in the big games.
But I have to still stick with Reulbach and Cravvath.
Vintage HOF Omissions