Mark Whicker: Rolen’s HOF election sparks healthy debate

Former Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Scott Rolen was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on January 24.

January 31, 2023

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

The American League Championship Series returned to Canada in 1991 and gave one U.S. reporter a great chance to explore the city where life is measured in three zones that span 200 feet.

The renovated Hockey Hall of Fame was a good place to begin.

As the Blue Jays prepared to play the Athletics that night, the reporter told a Toronto colleague he had visited the Hall.

“Oh,” came the reply. “Did you get inducted?”

What?

“Yeah. If you give them $10 you can take the tour. If you give them $40 they’ll induct you.”

This was a reference to a couple of inductees in the Builders Wing that weren’t exactly indispensable to the game. But it also was a comment on the dilution of the Hall’s membership. Nobody was minding the velvet rope.

Since 2008, there have been at least four new Hockey Hall of Famers per year. Some of that is good, because the Hall is recognizing the women’s game at an unprecedented rate, and the European player is getting proper respect as well.

And the hockey hall is not nearly as porous as the Pro Football and Basketball Halls of Fame. There are 15 players, coaches, or scouts from Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain teams that Canton welcomes. There are 112 coaches alone in the Basketball Hall, including several who never won an NBA or an NCAA championship.

Golf has a Hall of Fame, too. Fred Couples is in it, with one major championship.

It’s a self-fulfilling process. Allow one borderline candidate, and six more are wondering why it wasn’t them.

Baseball, of course, is gloriously and confoundingly different, which is why last week’s general grumpiness over Scott Rolen’s election was in fact good news.

The Hall of Fame might be the only institutional advantage that baseball still has. The announcement is dramatic, the recipients are usually paralyzed by delight and the discussions go on forever, or until the next election. People get mad about the Hall of Fame. When they no longer do, that’s when the worrying starts.

Rolen is the 17-year third baseman for the Phillies and Cardinals, with stops in Toronto and Cincinnati. He won eight Gold Gloves and will be only the 18th man at his position in the Hall. Every other glove-wearing position in the game has more representatives, and that’s because third base is so difficult. You have to be a human dartboard defensively who can dive headlong in two directions, and then charge like a soldier for swinging bunts, pick them up barehanded, and throw over your left shoulder to first base. You’re also asked to hit 30 or more home runs and, usually, hit in the middle of the lineup.

Rolen fulfilled those requirements. He was a tough guy, 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, with quick feet and a cold eye toward those who didn’t rise to his commitment. He won eight Gold Gloves, which is a debatable measure of defense, but his metrics were also first-class. He never led the National League in any particular category, but he had an .855 career OPS, which is higher than those of Carl Yastrzemski and Reggie Jackson. In St. Louis, he played on a World Series winner and a National League champion, and he fit nicely with Albert Pujols and Jim Edmonds.

Rolen was a Rookie of the Year but he got MVP votes in only five seasons. He fought injuries and played 150 or more games only five times. He did have five 100-RBI seasons. He had 2,077 hits and 316 home runs. All of that, in some eyes, put Rolen squarely on the Cooperstown waiting list. The most common criticism was, “I just never thought of him as a Hall of Famer.”

It’s a tough room. Jack Morris had 175 complete games, 254 wins and went 21-6 when he was 37 years old. It’s difficult to argue that Morris wasn’t the American League’s best pitcher in the 80s, dominating as he pitched with Tiger Stadium’s fences pushing his shoulder blades. Six times, Morris pitched Game 1 of a postseason series. Yet the writers never gave him more than 67.7 percent of the vote in his 15 years of eligibility. You need 75.

His clock ran out in 2014. Four years later, the Veterans Committee elected him. And, as they say, Morris’ plaque is the same size as Babe Ruth’s. Rolen’s will be too.

Some people also yelped that Rolen shouldn’t get in as long as Dick Allen and Steve Garvey aren’t in. Which means the whole process is poorly understood.

First, the writers vote for players for 10 years, shortened from 15. The left-outs are then evaluated by a special committee, which sends eight of those names (shortened from 10) to the Veterans Committee. That 16-person committee meets yearly and is composed of former players, managers, executives and media members. Again, the required approval is 75 percent. Unlike the writers, who have their votes publicized unless they request otherwise, the veterans vote in secret.

Since the Veterans Committee turns over every year, its decisions are totally unpredictable. For years, union leader Marvin Miller was rejected, and then in 2020 he wasn’t. Ted Simmons arrived the same year, totally unforeseen. This year the Veterans elected former Blue Jays first baseman Fred McGriff, who slugged .509 for his 19-year career and hit 493 home runs. Since he was solid and not spectacular, the writers didn’t think he fit the template, but upon further review his consistency and endurance were recognized. That is why the 10-year waiting period is appropriate and why it isn’t weird that Rolen would go from 10.2 percent of the vote to the 76.3 he got last week. Sometimes you need to back up to see the totality of a player, because his final impressions are rarely good.

Rolen’s candidacy was boosted by the amateur pharmacologists among the writers who apparently think Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez wouldn’t have been Hall of Fame candidates without PEDs or just don’t like the fact they used them. They were shunned in this last vote. As far as Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Roger Clemens go, they’re at the total mercy of the Veterans Committee, which seems pretty unmerciful, up to this point.

Other Halls aren’t as moralistic. NFL edge rusher Von Miller once served a four-game suspension for PED use, but no one has begrudged him his subsequent awards, and he likely will be wearing the Gold Jacket when the time comes.

Obviously Cooperstown is an incomplete pantheon without Bonds, Clemens and Pete Rose. Those issues go beyond the actual playing. For those who are left, what are the criteria? They vary with each voter, but as the years go on it seems there are two questions that must be asked, once the numbers have been sorted: Did this player have an impact on the game? And was this player, provided he’s a non-pitcher, among the best in the game for a long period of time in both halves of the inning?

Rolen had an impact at each stop, and he was outstanding with bat, glove and baserunning ability. Yes, it wouldn’t have been an outrage had he missed, on his sixth try, but it isn’t an outrage that he made it either. The important thing is that we know he’s in, because it’s actually important, and we can take the arguments from there. And the louder the debate, the better for the game.