Morris is the Man
By Murray Chass
December 12, 2008
Consider this the second part of a two-part series of columns about the Hall of Fame. In the first part earlier this week I addressed the foolishness of the Hall board of directors in fiddling with the electoral format in an unsuccessful attempt to get more players elected to the Hall. In this second part I will address the foolishness of the writers who vote for the Hall of Fame.
Obviously designating a player as a Hall of Famer is a subjective undertaking. Some players prompt a consensus view positive or negative, but others produce debate.
To use a contemporary example, every time I write that Mike Mussina does not merit election his fans flood the site with e-mail arguments supporting his election. Unfortunately for them, if minds don’t change in the next five years, I don’t believe he’ll make it based on my conversations with other writers.
Mussina’s fans have the right to express their views, but writers not only can express their views, we can also vote. Even writers, though, disagree among themselves.
Greatness in some cases is obvious. Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax were great. But 11 writers did not vote for Ruth in 1936, the year the Hall began, and Koufax was left off 52 ballots when he was elected in 1972, his first year of eligibility.
No player, in fact, has ever received 100 percent of the votes. Nolan Ryan pitched seven no-hitters, won 324 games and struck out 5,714 batters. Yet six writers (out of 497) did not vote for him in his first year on the ballot.
Some writers have the bizarre idea that no player should be elected in his first year on the ballot. But there’s a rule that says if a player on any ballot does not get 5 percent of the vote he is removed from the ballot and he doesn’t get his full 15 years of eligibility.
What would happen if, say, 96 percent of the writers didn’t vote for a player in his first year because they held that odd belief but believed the player merited induction into the Hall eventually? They would have lost their chance to vote for him because he would not be on the ballot the following year.
That’s an extreme case, but it demonstrates how foolish writers can be. The year-to-year voting also shows curious patterns among the writers. Rich (Goose) Gossage was elected last year on his ninth try. Did he improve his strikeout ratio or add some saves to his career total? Did he have some more seven-inning relief appearances?
Of course not. Some writers gave more thought to his career. Some saw him creeping toward election and decided to vote for him so they could say they voted for him. Most important was the absence from last year’s ballot of mandatory first-timers.
Candidates who are not obvious first-timers suffer when the Ripkens and the Gwynns are on the ballot. Voters don’t seem to want to clutter their ballots or the induction ceremonies when obvious choices can be voted on for the first time.
Jack Morris appears to be a victim of that kind of thinking. Although I believe Morris belongs in the Hall of Fame and should have been elected already, I also suspect he will never get there.
In his ninth year on the writers’ ballot last year, Morris received 233 votes, or 42.9 percent, his best showing but still a great distance from election.
In his first four tries, the once great pitcher didn’t get 23 percent of the vote. But then he started gaining support, surpassing 40 percent for the first time in 2006 when Bruce Sutter was elected. But then Morris slipped back to 37.1 percent in the year Ripken and Gwynn were elected.
Last year with the holdover Gossage the only successful candidate, Morris surged again and now has six years in which to pick up another 175 or so votes.
Just as I disagree on the qualifications of some players, other writers can disagree with me on my view of Morris. But if it’s dominance the writers seem to want, Morris was dominant.
Has anyone pitched a better game than Morris’ 10-inning 1-0 shutout of the Braves in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series? Post-season performances don’t count in consideration for the Cy Young award, which Morris never won or came close to winning, but Morris was the post-season pitcher Mussina could only dream about.
Morris, a 20-game winner three times, the last at age 37, won three World Series championship rings with the Tigers, the Twins and the Blue Jays. He is best known as the pitcher who won the most games in the 1980s (162), but his dominance went beyond that decade. From 1979 through 1992, the right-hander won 233 games, 41 more than the next highest total, Bob Welch’s 192. During that span Morris pitched 169 complete games. Fernando Valenzuela was second with 107.
Morris was what baseball people used to call a workhorse. CC Sabathia is about the only pitcher today who could earn that sobriquet, and yet he has pitched more than 200 innings only three times. In a 13-year stretch Morris pitched 235 innings or more 11 times.
Morris finished his 17-year career with a 254-186 won-lost record and a 3.90 earned run average. It’s the e.r.a. that writers probably hold against Morris. No pitcher residing in the Hall of Fame has an e.r.a. higher than Red Ruffing’s 3.80.
But Morris won in spite of his relatively high e.r.a. Today pitchers often excuse their failure to win by noting what little run support their teams give them.
Will I vote for Morris? Absolutely - if I vote. In the first column of this series I related my effort to convince the Baseball Writers Association to withdraw its participation in electing the Hall’s members.
I haven’t voted for years because my employer, The New York Times, banned all employees’ participation in voting for awards of any kind. No longer working for the Times, I am free to vote if I choose to vote. But before I make that decision I have to rethink my reasons for thinking the BBWAA should abandon its role.
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