HOF voting needs changed

Published 12:00 am Friday, March 3, 2006

It is a great honor to be elected to any hall of fame.

Or is it?

What makes someone good enough to be in a hall of fame? And why are certain voters more qualified to pick a hall of fame member than others?

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Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame elected Bruce Sutter to the Hall of Fame last week. Sutter was one of the great closers of our era.

He was the only person enshrined.

Just missing was another reliever, Rich “Goose” Gossage who may have been the most intimidating and formidable closer of any era.

And Gossage pitched two or three innings to get his save.

So if Sutter belongs in the Hall of Fame, why not Gossage?

Hall of Fame voters please don’t try to justify why you passed on Gossage. You’re probably the same guys who passed on Jim Rice, the former Boston Red Sox outfielder who was one of the most feared sluggers for

more than a decade in the American League.

Why do these candidates need a certain percentage of the vote? If they’re good enough to be in the Hall of Fame, put them in. Go by their credentials and not how they measure up to other players in statistics only.

Gale Sayers was a great running back. I mean GREAT. He played in 86 games. A severe knee injury shortened his career, but he was such a great running back that there was no question that he belonged in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

And he is.

If a player is good enough to be in the Hall of Fame in five years, he’s good enough to be in now. The criteria isn’t going to change.

The late, great, Glenn Presnell should have been enshired in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Of course, he played in the 1930s which was an entirely different era than most anyone still alive even understands.

That means Presnell falls under the Old Timers’ committee. They select one player a year. Why one? If they have 10 guys who should be in the Hall of Fame, put them in. If they had done that with Presnell, he would have been alive to enjoy the induction.

A player who is at the mercy of young voters not familiar with his talents is Ironton’s Coy Bacon, a 17-year NFL player who was a first team All-Pro on two occasions. If he was playing today, he would have already been canonized for the Hall of Fame.

Bill “Tiger” Johnson, an NFL assistant and head coach since the 1950s, coached Bacon at Cincinnati where he set the unofficial quarterback sack record with 26 and was the team’s most valuable player.

Johnson told me that Baltimore Colts defensive lineman Gino Marchetti, once voted the league’s MVP, was the best pass rusher he ever saw. He said Coy Bacon was second.

Let’s give guys like Bill Johnson a vote. After all, we use a jury of one’s peers in to decide a trial’s outcome. Why not use a player’s peers to judge his value.

Probably because it makes too much sense.

Jim Walker is sports editor of The Ironton Tribune.