With the announcement yesterday of Derek Jeter’s election to the Hall of Fame on his first try, my thoughts went to other players elected to the Hall on the first ballot. While recently elections to the Hall on the first ballot have not been unusual (there were twelve in the 2010s and ten each in the ‘00s, ‘90s, and ‘80s), back in the day a first ballot election was pretty unusual. In fact, after the first election in 1936,1 nobody was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot until 1962. If you wonder about who might have missed out on a first ballot election during that time period, let me mention one name: Joe DiMaggio.
But, as I said, in 1962, two players were elected on the first ballot: Bob Feller, with 93.8% of the votes, and Jackie Robinson, with 77.5%.2 Only two more players were elected on the first ballot in the 1960s, though: Ted Williams and Stan Musial. And in the first seven years of the 1970s, only three were elected on the first ballot: Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn, and Mickey Mantle.
Ernie was inducted into the Hall of Fame on August 8, 1977, saying in his speech, as only he could: “We’ve got the setting. We’ve got the fresh air and sunshine. We’ve got the team [as he looked around at the other greats on the platform]. Let’s play two!”
Less than a year later, we were in Cooperstown, looking at Ernie’s plaque.
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1 The first five players elected to the Hall of Fame were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson.
2 75% of the votes are required for election. The interesting thing about the 1962 election is the vote total Bob Feller got. With just 266 career wins, “Rapid Robert” is sometimes overlooked in lists of greatest pitchers. But the reason for his win total was that he missed almost four full seasons, at the height of his career, serving in the Navy during World War II. He enlisted in the Navy on December 9, 1941, becoming the first professional athlete to enlist.
3 The results were just announced in the middle of the day back then.
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