Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, 1958
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 1958 followed a system established after the 1956 election. The Baseball Writers Association of America voted by mail to select from recent major league players and elected no one. The BBWAA was voting only in even-number years, with the Veterans Committee meeting only in odd years to consider older major league players as well as managers, umpires, and executives. For the second time the induction ceremonies in Cooperstown were canceled because there was no one to induct.
BBWAA election
Several elements of the current procedure were put into effect. There was a printed list of eligible candidates, all of whom had played in at least ten major league seasons. Only 10-year members of the BBWAA were eligible to vote, and they were instructed to vote for up to ten candidates rather than ten.[1] The latter revision resulted from complaints by many writers in 1956 that there were no longer many viable candidates, a situation which had been caused partly by changes governing candidate eligibility.
The BBWAA was authorized to elect players active in 1928 or later but not after 1952, a 25-year span of major league finales. (In a change, they were permitted to be active in non-playing roles.) The Hall of Fame would induct any candidate who received at least 75% support, as always, which was 200 votes on 266 ballots returned. A total of 2,400 individual votes were cast, an average of 9.02 per ballot.
There were about 400 players on the new ballot and about 154 received at least one vote.[2] Cross (†) marks candidates who last played in 1951 or 1952. Under the new rules they would have been on the ballot for the first time, alone among the candidates who received votes, but this was the first ballot with a list of players. Candidates who have been inducted subsequently are named in italics.
Players who were elected in future elections. These individuals are also indicated in plain italics. |
Notably, future Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn received a vote despite being active. Also, Hall of Fame manager Joe McCarthy received two votes, despite having been inducted the previous summer, and his two-year major league career making him ineligible as a player.
References
- ↑ Ken Smith, Baseball's Hall of Fame, Ninth edition, 1979, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 67.
- ↑ "1958 Hall of Fame Voting | Baseball-Reference.com". Baseball-Reference.com.
- ↑ Though eligible for the first time by the rules set in place for the 1958 election due to his final game in 1951, Vander Meer received votes in 1945 (while inactive due to military service) and 1956.
External links
- 1958 Hall of Fame Voting, Baseball Reference. Confirmed 2010-09-12.
- BBWAA Results by Year: 1958, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Confirmed 2010-09-12. — The list is truncated at George Case, the sixth of 41 candidates who received one vote.
- Bill Deane, "Award and Honors: Hall of Fame Elections: History", in every edition of Total Baseball edited by John Thorn and Pete Palmer. Third edition, 1993, New York: Harper Collins, pages 297-309.