Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
The worst part is that I believe this committee still requires a decade of Major League Baseball service to be selected, and thus Creighton who died before it existed cannot ever be considered in the current system. Barnes only played 9 years and thus cannot be considered either. Marty Marion can be considered by the committee for pioneers, but not the two actual pioneers who clearly merit induction.
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If you ask the HOF powers that be, they will tell you that players whose careers that don't include 10 recognized major league seasons that are "pioneers", such as Barnes, Creighton,etc, are eligible to be considered. In theory this is true. Originally, the HOF had a pioneer type category. Candy Cummings was elected in 1939 with a career of less than 10 recognized major league seasons. I may be wrong, but I think Cummings was the first and only pioneer player elected that didn't meet the 10 year rule. The truth be told, the HOF has no motivation to elect any pioneer players, and I emphasis players because early managers, umpires, executives are better represented as pioneers in the HOF than players. This is ludicrous. There is almost no chance the HOF voters will even consider pioneer players and bypass the 10 year rule. Mind you, some of the players that played less than 10 major league seasons played more than 10 years before the recognized major leagues were formed. As an aside, most Negro League players in the HOF never played a major league game and are included. Pioneers that don't meet the 10 year rule are the only players, for all right and purposes, that have almost no avenue for election. Like Negro league players, pioneers were not able to meet the 10 year rule through no fault of their own other than being born too early.
Also, major league baseball doesn't recognize the 1871-1875 National Association as major league even though the best players of the day were playing in it. It follows that the HOF excludes the NA when calculating major league service time. This clouds the waters even more. This determination is illustrated by the fact that both Candy Cummings and George Wright are list as executives by the HOF and don't use the term, heaven forbid, "pioneer". In fact, the HOF doesn't even call this duo players because of the 10 year rule. What a joke.