The Baseball Hall of Fame

Podcast Transcript

In the 1930s, the United States was in the grip of the Great Depression, and baseball was approaching its 100th anniversary.

One enterprising business leader in Cooperstown, New York, proposed establishing a museum and a hall of fame to honor the greatest players in the game.

Since its establishment, the Hall of Fame has become one of the most beloved institutions in the country and a source of perpetual controversy.

Learn more about the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The origins of the Baseball Hall of Fame go back to the 1930s in Upstate New York.

The country was in the midst of the Great Depression, and baseball was about to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 1939. Moreover, professional baseball had been around for over 50 years and had established a history of stars and records.

The creation of the Baseball Hall of Fame was largely the work of Stephen C. Clark, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist from Cooperstown, New York. Clark was an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune and served as president of the Singer Manufacturing Company during the early twentieth century.

By the early 1930s, Cooperstown was a small rural village whose economy had stagnated. Clark was deeply invested in its survival and believed that tourism was the key to its future.

Clark’s opportunity came from a popular but historically weak belief that baseball had been invented in Cooperstown in 1839 by Abner Doubleday. This idea originated from the Mills Commission report of 1907 and was still widely accepted by the public in the 1930s, even though serious historians already doubted it.

Clark understood that the truth mattered less than the story. If Cooperstown could credibly brand itself as the birthplace of baseball, it could attract national attention and visitors.

In 1934, Clark proposed creating a national baseball shrine to coincide with the supposed centennial of the sport in 1939. He offered land and significant financial backing to make the idea a reality.

Clark worked closely with the National League and the American League, as well as with baseball writers and executives, to give the project legitimacy.

Major League Baseball endorsed the effort, recognizing that a formal institution celebrating the game’s history could enhance its cultural standing at a time when the sport still bore the lingering damage of the Black Sox scandal in 1919.

Clark donated land for the museum and provided financial backing for the project.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was established as an independent, private, nonprofit organization. It is not controlled by Major League Baseball or any of the teams.

While the first class of inductees would be in 1936, the building hosting the hall of fame and museum wouldn’t actually open until 1939.

In the first Baseball Hall of Fame election in 1936, members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America were given the responsibility to pick the Hall’s initial class of modern era players.

A total of 226 writers cast ballots in that inaugural election. Each voter could select up to 10 candidates from a list of players whose primary careers began after 1900.

At that time, there was no retirement waiting period. Both retired players and even active players were eligible to receive votes. Also, there were no restrictions on who could be elected, so players who had been banned for life, like Shoeless Joe Jackson, could be elected.

To be elected, a candidate needed at least 75 percent of the ballots. With 226 ballots cast, that meant 170 votes were required for induction. The results were announced on February 2, 1936.

Five players surpassed the 75 percent threshold and became the first Hall of Famers: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. Cobb received the highest percentage with 98.2 percent of the ballots.

It should be noted that, despite these being among the greatest players to ever play the game, no one was elected unanimously. In fact, no one would be elected unanimously for another 83 years.

In addition to the Baseball Writers, there was a second means of election to the Hall of Fame that was established: the Veterans Committee. For the first election, they were limited to players who played in the 19th century. No one met the vote threshold from the Veterans Committee for the first election.

In 1937, the writers elected Napoleon Lajoie, Tris Speaker, and Cy Young. The Veterans committee was replaced by a small Centennial Committee. They selected four non-players: Connie Mack, John McGraw, Morgan Bulkeley, and George Wright.

In 1938, the writers elected only one player, Grover Cleveland Alexander, the Centennial Committee, Alexander Cartwright, and Henry Chadwick.

1939, the last class before the opening of the museum, saw the election of Lou Gehrig, George Sisler, Eddie Collins, and Willie Keeler, with the now Old-Timers Committee selecting Cap Anson, Buck Ewing, Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn, Albert Spalding, Charles Comiskey, and William Cummings.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum officially opened on June 12, 1939.

The dedication was timed to coincide with the widely believed centennial of baseball and was designed as a national celebration of the sport. More than 25,000 people traveled to the small village, including players, executives, and fans.

The admission process has undergone numerous changes since 1936. Initially, elections were held annually, but the schedule has varied over the decades. The BBWAA conducts elections each year, considering players who have been retired for at least five seasons and played at least ten years in the major leagues.

Players remain on the ballot for up to ten years, assuming they receive at least 5% of the vote in any given year.

The threshold for election has remained constant at 75% of votes cast, though the composition and size of the electorate have changed. Originally limited to a smaller group of established writers, the BBWAA voting membership has expanded significantly. Voters must have been active members for at least ten consecutive years to be eligible.

Beyond the BBWAA, various veteran committees have existed to consider players, managers, umpires, and executives overlooked by the writers. These committees have gone through multiple reorganizations and name changes.

Currently, several era committees meet on a rotating schedule to evaluate candidates from different eras of baseball history. This system replaced earlier incarnations, such as the Veterans Committee, which met annually and faced criticism for inconsistent standards and cronyism.

Election standards have shifted considerably across different eras. The earliest inductees were obvious choices, the game’s undisputed legends.

As the Hall filled with these immortals, standards became less clear. The 1960s and 1970s saw relatively generous induction rates, with some players entering who would likely not be inducted today.

The rise of sabermetrics and advanced statistical analysis fundamentally changed how voters evaluate candidates. Bill James and other analysts developed new frameworks for assessing player value that went beyond traditional statistics such as batting average and wins.

Metrics such as WAR (Wins Above Replacement), OPS+ (On-base Plus Slugging adjusted for era and ballpark), and defensive analytics gave voters tools to compare players across eras more accurately.

This statistical revolution created tensions between traditional and analytical approaches. Some voters enthusiastically embraced the new metrics, while others remained skeptical or hostile.

These divisions have played out in close elections where traditional stars with impressive counting stats faced competition from players whose analytical profiles revealed greater overall value.

Perhaps the Hall’s greatest early failure was its neglect of Negro League players. Excluded from Major League Baseball by an unwritten color barrier until Jackie Robinson broke through in 1947, Black players competed in separate leagues that often featured baseball of exceptional quality.

In 1971, the Hall formally recognized the Negro leagues as major leagues for historical purposes, which opened the door to inductions. The first selection was Satchel Paige, inducted in 1971 through a special committee vote rather than the standard writers’ ballot.

His election established the precedent that Negro leagues players would be evaluated in their own historical context, rather than by major league statistics they never had the opportunity to accumulate.

To handle these cases, the Hall relied on variants of what became known as the Negro Leagues Committee, composed of baseball historians, former players, executives, and writers with expertise in the era.

The committee reviewed surviving records, contemporary accounts, eyewitness testimony, and later scholarship. Because Negro leagues’ statistics were incomplete and unevenly preserved, selections emphasized dominance relative to peers, reputation among contemporaries, longevity, and historical impact rather than raw statistics.

Pete Rose’s banishment from baseball in 1989 for betting on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds created the Hall’s most enduring individual controversy. Rose, baseball’s all-time hits leader, would ordinarily be a slam-dunk first-ballot selection. However, a rule adopted in 1991 explicitly barred anyone on baseball’s permanently ineligible list from Hall of Fame consideration.

The controversy continues to generate debate, with Rose’s death in 2024 closing the door on any possibility of reinstatement during his lifetime.

No controversy has more deeply divided Hall of Fame voters than the issue of performance-enhancing drugs. The widespread use of steroids and other PEDs in baseball during the 1990s and early 2000s, sometimes called the Steroids Era, has created a moral and statistical quandary for evaluating players from that period.

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens became the faces of this debate. Bonds hit 762 career home runs and won seven MVP awards, while Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards. Both players’ statistical cases rank among the strongest in baseball history.

However, both faced credible allegations of PED use, detailed in the Mitchell Report and other investigations. Neither player was convicted of a crime related to steroid use, though Bonds was initially convicted of obstruction of justice before the conviction was overturned.

Despite their overwhelming statistical credentials, both players fell short of election during their ten years on the writers ballot, peaking around 65-66% of the vote.

Their cases exposed deep philosophical rifts among voters. Some argued that suspected or confirmed PED users should be categorically excluded regardless of statistics.

Others contended that PED use was so widespread during the era that singling out specific players was hypocritical, and that the Hall should reflect baseball history accurately, including its ugly chapters.

Still others noted the lack of clear standards, pointing out that voters had elected players who admitted using amphetamines, corked bats, or other forms of cheating.

The induction process culminates in a formal ceremony held each summer in Cooperstown. Inductees are announced months earlier through the writers’ ballot or an era committee vote.

At the ceremony, each new member is introduced, their plaque is unveiled, and they are invited to give an induction speech. These speeches are personal and unscripted by the Hall, though time limits apply. Family members may accept the honor and speak if the inductee is deceased.

The plaque is the central honor of the induction ceremony. It is permanently displayed in the Hall’s Plaque Gallery in Cooperstown. The plaque includes the inductee’s name, likeness, primary role in baseball, and a short citation summarizing their career.

As of the recording of this episode, 351 people have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame currently includes 278 players, 40 executives, 23 managers, and 10 umpires.

A player who is inducted into the Hall of Fame will often see the value of his baseball cards skyrocket.

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame twice, most notably for the induction ceremony in 1999 when George Brett, Robin Yount, and Nolan Ryan were inducted.

It was a great experience and something I’d gladly do again. You get to see all the old timers at the reception the night before, and the museum is actually one of the best in the country.

Coopertown is one of the quaintest towns in America, and if you are looking for any sort of baseball memorabilia, there are more per capita in there than anywhere else.

The Baseball Hall of Fame was the first major sport to establish a hall of fame, and it has served as a template for the halls of fame for other sports.

The Baseball Hall of Fame has become the ultimate achievement for players and the ultimate destination for baseball fans.