Hall of Fame voting and WWII

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

It has been accepted among the voting writers to account for service time in their voting. There are a number of players of the era whose numbers wouldn't normally quite be up to snuff but they lost 2 or 3 years of their prime to service to their country. If you credit Travis with matching the best 3 years of his career for the years he missed his WAR is still only 45. Hodges didn't really lose much if any major league time to the war as his first year back, 1946, was spent entirely in the minors. Buddy Lewis isn't really that close even if you do credit him with 3 peak years his WAR isn't even 40. DiMaggio would be about 47 WAR if you credit him with peak years. Not really HOF worthy.

Mickey Vernon was another one who always intrigued me. While his WAR also would only come to about 45 if you give him those years back he batted .356 his first year back from the war, winning the batting title. If you give him two similar years he winds up over 2800 hits, close to 600 Doubles and 1500 RBI, which would've been much harder to overlook especially in a time when raw stats were much more important. He won two batting titles and if there was a third that would've been an interesting addition to his resume as well.

[packs]

I'm not sure we ever got to see Cecil Travis' peak though, which is why in his case I think the gap makes him a HOFer. He was only getting better when he went to fight and usually a player puts up some of their best seasons between 28 and 31.