Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenny Cole
I would argue (and have done so) that being hurt playing baseball is completely different than being hurt serving your country. On the one hand, playing baseball is entirely voluntary. Being drafted into the service for WWII was not. Being hurt playing in the profession you chose is substantially different, IMO, than being hurt doing something that you had no choice other than to do. As I understand it, Travis never resented having his career ruined by being drafted, which is true of most of the greatest generation. But the fact remains that he did, as a result of events over which he had no choice.
Herb Score had great projections until he got hurt doing what he had chosen to do. Cecil Travis had great projections until he was hurt doing what he was required to do by his country. To my way of thinking, there is a significant difference between the two, and it really bothers me that he gets next to no recognition for the sacrifice that he made. There really isn't any slippery slope in my estimation, because he is the only potentially HOF worthy candidate I can think of who had to make that sacrifice.
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I think this my biggest objection is that it's not a numbers argument or an argument based on things that actually happened for his hall of fame case. Serving in WWII is admirable, more admirable than having a hall of fame baseball career. I'm not sure that means we should ignore what actually did happen and credit him with a purely theoretical career.
Travis had a WAR of 29.8 and an OPS+ of 108, 8% percent better than the league. He had 2 seasons with a 120 OPS+, 1940 (120 exact), and 1941 (a fantastic season, 154). Travis was, by OPS, a league average bat from 1934-1936. He was pretty good in 1937-1938, was slightly below league average in 1939, very good in 1940 and had a fantastic year in 1941. He never came back the same from the war and was done after, for the reasons mentioned by others earlier.
His best stat is his high battering average in an era where batting averages were very very high. Nothing else stands out, and he only had one excellent season looking at his numbers in context with the league he played in.
To get Travis to a hall of fame career, we have to assume that it was that season that was how he was going to produce, not any that came before, and then grant him not just 3 more excellent years during the war but a couple more after that as well. It seems as likely to me that he would not have continued this high level of play for several more years, as it is that he would. I think it is pretty safe to assume that Ted Williams, Johnny Mize and Stan Musial would have continued to crush the league during the war years, because they had a long track record of doing exactly that over the years he did play in Major League Baseball. Travis, looking at the numbers, did not.
The more I look at it, the more it seems clear this is a pretty shaky series of assumptions to make, if one even accepts the prerequisite argument that we can elect someone for a theoretical accomplishment that did not happen in actual fact. Travis would, I think, be the first player elected for things that did not actually happen in the real world. I don't think this is a good idea, because it opens the Hall to any number of "What if?" scenario's as well as awarding a player for theoretical achievements. In fact, he had 1 Hall of Fame level season.