First HOF class vs comparable players

[tireolddawg]

I’ve been thinking about why the five players in the first HOF class (Ruth, Cobb, Mathewson, Johnson, Wagner) have such a disproportionate demand for their cards compared to other players of similar stature. Ruth is maybe the exception, not too tough to figure out his demand. But guys like speaker, Lajoie, and Eddie Collins have fairly similar career stats to Wagner. Grover Alexander has similar career stats to Mathewson. Of course it’s not quite the same but similar enough to make me wonder. Those five being in the first HOF class is obviously a biggie, but wondering what people think are other driving forces behind this if any.

[packs]

Colorful personalities and public infatuation with them. It’s why Bartolo is more popular than say Tim Hudson.

[tireolddawg]

Originally Posted by packs

Colorful personalities and public infatuation with them. It’s why Bartolo is more popular than say Tim Hudson.

Makes sense. Another good example that is Ted Williams was (not significantly) a better baseball player than Mickey mantle. It feels like there’s a lot of Yankee bias when it comes to players’ legacy too.

[DeanH3]

I think being the first of anything, these 5 in this case, always helps popularity. Many good arguments can be made that others, like you pointed out, were comparable. But these 5 were chosen over all of them. So they bring a premium, rightly or wrongly. I would say that Cy Young is valued like he was among the first inducted.

[Mark17]

Put Alexander on the Giants, pitching at the Polo Grounds, and Matty on the Phillies, pitching in the phone booth known as Baker Bowl, and Alex is easily among those top 5 instead of Matty, and almost certainly a 400-game winner.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by packs

Colorful personalities and public infatuation with them. It’s why Bartolo is more popular than say Tim Hudson.

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+1. Ruth was larger than life, Cobb and Wagner were the best, and everbody loved Matty. I do think Speaker and Lajoie belong in that class too.
And a card.
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[robw1959]

Originally Posted by tireolddawg

Makes sense. Another good example that is Ted Williams was (not significantly) a better baseball player than Mickey mantle. It feels like there’s a lot of Yankee bias when it comes to players’ legacy too.

Maybe a bit off-topic, but I would argue Ted Williams was significantly better than Mantle. Just compare any significant stat like career average and OPS. Of course, Mantle had a similar home run total, but lets not forget that Teddy Ballgame was the only player to be called into active duty for both World War Two and the Korean War. So that's why many believe he would have had over 700 lifetime home runs had he not been excluded from five years of prime time MLB performance.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by robw1959

Maybe a bit off-topic, but I would argue Ted Williams was significantly better than Mantle. Just compare any significant stat like career average and OPS. Of course, Mantle had a similar home run total, but lets not forget that Teddy Ballgame was the only player to be called into active duty for both World War Two and the Korean War. So that's why many believe he would have had over 700 lifetime home runs had he not be excluded from five years of prime time MLB performance.

But if you bring defense and speed into the equation, that gap mostly disappears and maybe flips. I would have to say Mays was clearly a better overall ballplayer than Williams for example.

[packs]

I think guys like Alexander and Hornsby were hurt by their difficult personalities. Maybe even Williams. Collins and Lajoie probably suffer from too little personality. Lajoie’s place in the hobby is largely built around a card not issued decades after his career ended.

[Jay Wolt]

Mantle went to 12 World Series, Williams to 1, which the Sox lost

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Jay Wolt

Mantle went to 12 World Series, Williams to 1, which the Sox lost

And switch hit.
And had the All American looks and the folk hero mystique from playing hurt.
And hit 18 HR in those Series.

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by Jay Wolt

Mantle went to 12 World Series, Williams to 1, which the Sox lost

True, Jay, but one must consider the quality of Williams' teammates compared to Mantle's teammates.

[Mike Eisenbath]

You can't really do the "what-if's" when comparing players and considering the possibilities. I mean, what if there had been free agency in the 1950s. Musial would have been a Yankee with a bunch more homers and rings, and we'd say he was one of the greatest few ever because of New York and pinstripes.

What if Dr Frank Jobe had worked his medical magic on Koufax?

What if the Cardinals had signed Berra in their backyard instead of his buddy Garagiola?

What if ...

You have to take what actually happened and live with that. The rest is just barroom debate -- although WAR does try to make some sense of the differences.


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[robw1959]

Originally Posted by Mark17

But if you bring defense and speed into the equation, that gap mostly disappears and maybe flips. I would have to say Mays was clearly a better overall ballplayer than Williams for example.

That's a very interesting point. Overall value does take into account defensive value, which is underrated. I still think it's Williams over Mantle even with defense added in, but perhaps as you postulate, Mays did bring more overall value than Ted Williams. Baseball has attempted to bring defensive prowess into the overall picture with the WAR rating, but that fails to compensate a player for missed time due to personal injuries.

What MLB needs is something like an overall runs production factor, which accounts for expected runs accrued to a team due to a player's OPS, bases stolen, AND defensive runs saved. So maybe like an overall expected runs produced and saved per game stat? Even then, you cannot compare performance evenly among all eras of the game. For example, how high would Ty Cobb's OPS rise if he didn't have to play half of his career in the dead ball era?

[Mungo Hungo]

Williams was just a more serious person than Mantle, which contributed a lot to him hitting .388 and slugging .731 in the season he turned 39. Mantle was already two years retired by that point.

But I think most people would take a peak Mantle over a peak Williams, at least in a 7-game series. If you wanted to point to one player who had everything you would want, it's hard to argue with Mantle.

Unless, of course, you went with Mays, who combined the peak athleticism of Mantle with the seriousness/longevity of Williams...

[jsfriedm]

Originally Posted by DeanH3

I think being the first of anything, these 5 in this case, always helps popularity. Many good arguments can be made that others, like you pointed out, were comparable. But these 5 were chosen over all of them. So they bring a premium, rightly or wrongly. I would say that Cy Young is valued like he was among the first inducted.

Cy Young is a strange case, because he really should have been in the first class. He didn't make it because writers were confused as to whether he was a 19th or 20th century candidate (the voting was separate). I think the player who was probably most hurt by not being in the first class was Tris Speaker. More than anyone, his profile is far lower than it should be both among collectors and among baseball fans at large.

[Seven]

I think a great deal of it has to do with mystique like others pointed out. I certainly think players like Collins, Speaker, Lajoie, and Hornsby should be valued similarly to the first class of Hall of Famers. We also have players like Joe Jackson who I would argue, are valued like they were in the first class (He most likely would've been had he not been apart of the Black Sox Scandal, in my opinion, but that's neither here nor there)

Cobb I think was universally accepted as the best baseball player ever, for a long time. I know he had a slew of records, some of which still stand to this very day. He was a high profile ball player in his playing days, and the stories about him were only amplified by the book that tried to malign him.

Ruth is Ruth, enough said, same with Walter Johnson. They transcended the sport at their respective positions. Christy Mathewson was revered for his Ivy League Looks, Proper Etiquette, and the fact that he could literally do no wrong, on top of being a hell of a pitcher.

And Honus Wagner, to this day, is still probably the best shortstop to lace them up. There are very few who can stand against him both in legend and in statistics. Plus at this point, he's taken the role of THE Holy Grail of the Hobby.


Truth be told I think from a collecting standpoint the only guy that truly stands up to the first five, and Cy Young, is Mantle. Whether you think he's overrated, perfectly rated, that Mays/Williams was better, is moot at this point. Perception is everything and Mantle is one of the biggest draws outside the original class. I previously mentioned Joe Jackson being another, though I could be wrong as my knowledge of Pre War is not as great as Post War.

[Rhotchkiss]

Regarding pre-war, the first 5 plus Cy Young, Joe Jackson, and Lou Gehrig (collectively, the “Big 8”), are everything going forward. There are SO many great players excluded by this statement, but future generations will know less and less about them and collect them less.

The Big 8, for whatever or many reasons, are the players that have grown bigger than the sport and bigger than their stats and accomplishments. Unless or until some movie or similar promotion elevates the general status of a different player, the Big 8 are, in my opinion, the only 8 to collect longterm if you are hoping for asset appreciation. This sucks bc, if I am correct, so many great players will fade into collecting obscurity.

I do think there is a second level who could stay relevant, albeit increasingly inferior, including Lajoie, Speaker, Musial, Williams, DiMaggio, Foxx, Hornsby, Anson, etc. But the gap between the Big 8 and all the others will grow as most players from the past pass into obscurity.

I think you see a similar phenomena happening in post-war vintage, where you have Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Clemente, Koufax, Ryan emerging as the GOATs of that era, with Paige, Berra, Rose, and maybe Gibson and Frank Robinson as having a chance, and the likes of Spahn, Kaline, Seaver, Banks, Bench, etc slowly losing steam, while Killebrew, McCovy, Marichal, Carew, etc. basically irrelevant.

As time goes on, some become immortal, others become mentioned, others become footnotes, and most are forgotten. The Big 8 are, and will remain immortal, and everyone else is just hoping to breath their legacy-air

[jsfriedm]

I would move Williams into the post-war GOAT category.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by packs

Colorful personalities and public infatuation with them. It’s why Bartolo is more popular than say Tim Hudson.

My 10u son is sort of a living legend in the Little League and the travel world. He had a great run in 2024, came out of nowhere to start hitting. The thing? He's the slowest kid not only in the league, but on Long Island. People love to see him steal bases, get extra base hits and lumber around the bases. (Add that to his incredible redemption/reclamation story from spring/summer 2025 - broken back - looooong story) I've fielded 3 phone calls the last couple of weeks looking for my boy to play with other travel teams. It's the mini Bartolo/Luzinski aspect because he is not the best player on the team, he's like #4 or 5 out of the 13. players on the team.

[Beercan collector]

Jackson and Wagner certainly deserve to be collected and cherished,
But add the fact that they’re basically not available in the T206 or T205
Sets Which drives up the value of their other cards - imagine if the T206 situation was reversed and There are only a handful of Cobb cards available,
But a large amount of Wagners with 4 variations, Not able to be satisfied with the easy T206 Cobb almost everybody would be competing for crackerjack Cobbs and sporting news Cobbs etc., not sure what my point is I Daydream about stuff like this .. Beautiful stuff Kevin, Makes my goofy analysis seem goofy

[Seven]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Regarding pre-war, the first 5 plus Cy Young, Joe Jackson, and Lou Gehrig (collectively, the “Big 8”), are everything going forward. There are SO many great players excluded by this statement, but future generations will know less and less about them and collect them less.

The Big 8, for whatever or many reasons, are the players that have grown bigger than the sport and bigger than their stats and accomplishments. Unless or until some movie or similar promotion elevates the general status of a different player, the Big 8 are, in my opinion, the only 8 to collect longterm if you are hoping for asset appreciation. This sucks bc, if I am correct, so many great players will fade into collecting obscurity.

I do think there is a second level who could stay relevant, albeit increasingly inferior, including Lajoie, Speaker, Musial, Williams, DiMaggio, Foxx, Hornsby, Anson, etc. But the gap between the Big 8 and all the others will grow as most players from the past pass into obscurity.

I think you see a similar phenomena happening in post-war vintage, where you have Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Clemente, Koufax, Ryan emerging as the GOATs of that era, with Paige, Berra, Rose, and maybe Gibson and Frank Robinson as having a chance, and the likes of Spahn, Kaline, Seaver, Banks, Bench, etc slowly losing steam, while Killebrew, McCovy, Marichal, Carew, etc. basically irrelevant.

As time goes on, some become immortal, others become mentioned, others become footnotes, and most are forgotten. The Big 8 are, and will remain immortal, and everyone else is just hoping to breath their legacy-air

Agree with all the observations, and I'm even kicking myself for leaving Gehrig off my list.

As a side note, I'm often surprised that Gehrig gets left off the "What if?" discussions. Had he not developed such a terrible disease, I truly believe we'd look at him in the same breath as Ruth. Were looking at potentially 600+ Homeruns and 3000 Hits, to go with a slew of achievements. He easily has 10+ World Series wins as well.

[Hankphenom]

With 20/20 hindsight, seems like they probably should have done at least ten players, including 19th century, in that first election. That they only did five reflects on just how exclusive they intended the HOF to be, I think, a LOT more exclusive than it became when they found out what a promotional bonanza to baseball and the town Induction Day turned out to be. Just look at the years afterwards when nobody was elected! That would be unthinkable today. And yes, I do have a dog in this hunt, but I've always thought that if you're going to pick five up to that time, they got the right five, absolutely nailed it, all things considered.

[Seven]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

With 20/20 hindsight, seems like they probably should have done at least ten players, including 19th century, in that first election. That they only did five reflects on just how exclusive they intended the HOF to be, I think, a LOT more exclusive than it became when they found out what a promotional bonanza to baseball and the town Induction Day turned out to be. Just look at the years afterwards when nobody was elected! That would be unthinkable today. And yes, I do have a dog in this hunt, but I've always thought that if you're going to pick five up to that time, they got the right five, absolutely nailed it, all things considered.

We can only assume, but I believe the intention of the Hall of Fame was to be very exclusive. I know the voting process/requirements has changed a few times throughout the course of history. We started going off the rails with the Veterans committee, being packed full of former players, trying to get their buddies in the Hall.

[MVSNYC]

Great thread, great conversation. I'll echo what others have said. Seems to be that individual personalities and World Series wins help take players (who are already excellent) to the next level.

As mentioned above, Cy Young should've likely been in that first class, and I do think he's viewed on that level...Here's one that'll give Leon a bit of heartburn.