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Amazing facts about Today’s Game HOF candidates
- Updated: December 3, 2016
Second chances are never guaranteed in life, but they’re more prevalent in the membership of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum than one may think.
Of the 217 Major League players whose plaques reside in the Cooperstown shrine, 96 (or roughly 44 percent) have been elected through one of the several iterations of the Veterans Committee. For those players who are fortunate enough to see their names considered again, years after they fell off the ballot administered by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, the Veterans Committee can reignite Hall of Fame hopes that were long thought to be dormant.
“I was shocked that I was on the ballot for the Veterans Committee, really,” Harold Baines, one of five former players on the 2017 Today’s Game Era Committee ballot, said recently. “When you get less than 5 percent [from the writers], you figure your chance is over with.”
• Complete Hall of Fame coverage
The Hall of Fame overhauled its system for evaluating historical figures outside the current BBWAA ballot this past July, creating four new Era Committees to split up generations of potential candidates. The committees include Today’s Game (consisting of players, managers and executives whose contributions primarily came between 1988 and the present), Modern Baseball (1970-87), Golden Days (1950-69) and Early Baseball (1871-1949). As early-era candidates were most recently considered before the overhaul, the Today’s Game candidates will be evaluated both this year and in the winter of 2018, with the other three era committees convening on a rotating basis in the coming years.
The Today’s Game Era Committee, comprised of 16 former players, executives and baseball historians, is scheduled to meet this Sunday morning at the Winter Meetings near Washington and will announce its results that evening at 6 p.m. ET on MLB Network with a simulcast on MLB.com. Candidates must receive at least 12 votes among the committee members (or 75 percent) to gain election to the Hall of Fame.
With the next Today’s Game Era Committee not scheduled to meet again for another two years, these five players hope their career resumes will be compelling enough to end their long waits and finally punch their tickets to Cooperstown. Here is a brief rundown of each candidate’s case for election, and one fact you may not have known about their storied careers.
Harold BainesWhy he was great: Baines’ Hall of Fame case …
