[GeoPoto]

Player #139J: Charles S. "Buddy" Myer. Second baseman with the Washington Senators in 1925-1927 and 1929-1941. 2,131 hits and 38 home runs in 17 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .389. 2-time All-Star. 1935 AL Batting champion. 1928 AL Stolen Base leader. His best season was 1935 for Washington as he posted a .440 OBP with 115 runs scored and 100 RBIs in 719 plate appearances. He was involved in one of baseball's most violent brawls when he was spiked and possibly racially derided by the Yankees' Ben Chapman.

We will follow Myer's SABR biography as we track his career -- Part 10: In a dissection of Hall of Fame voting, the analyst Bill James noted the uncanny similarity in the batting stats of Myer and a near-contemporary National League second baseman, Billy Herman.
G R H RBI BA OBP SLG
Myer 1923 1174 2131 848 0.303 0.389 0.406
Herman 1922 1163 2345 839 0.304 0.367 0.407

Myer received a single vote from sportswriters in the Hall of Fame balloting; Herman attracted votes in several years, peaking at 20 percent (75 percent is required for election). He was elected by the veterans committee in 1975. James asked, “How in the world can you put one of those people in the Hall of Fame, and leave the other one out?”

Selections by the Hall’s various veterans committees have been notoriously whimsical; those committees are responsible for most of the questionable inductions. James suggested that Herman benefited from the halo effect of his four World Series with the Cubs and Dodgers, and a long career as a manager and coach that kept him on the baseball radar. Myer spent the second half of his career with an irrelevant second-division team, then vanished from the game.

While James concluded that Herman and Myer were “of essentially the same value", 'the two players’ reputations were quite different when they were active. They look virtually identical in lines of statistics, but not to those who saw them play. Herman started six All-Star Games in nine years and was the National League’s top second baseman between Frankie Frisch and Jackie Robinson. For much of Myer’s career, he was the American League’s third best behind Hall of Famers Gehringer and Tony Lazzeri.

It is an accident of timing that the AL had three outstanding second basemen when the NL had Herman and nobody else in particular. That accident colors their places in memory. Billy Herman was the National League’s best second baseman. Buddy Myer? Oh, yeah, him. Pretty good ballplayer.

It may be unfair, but that’s how history has passed it down.