Should Roger Maris Have a Plaque in the Hall of Fame?

If a player’s election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum were based strictly on the word “fame,” Roger Maris would have been inducted decades ago. Maris, of course, passed the legendary Babe Ruth to set the all-time single-season home run record when he swatted 61 taters in 1961. Just as the baseball world was captivated by the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998 in pursuit of Maris’ record, fans and media members throughout the nation in ’61 were captivated by a pair of teammates (Maris and Mickey Mantle) chasing one of the most hallowed marks in the game.

Besides setting the single-season home run mark, Maris was the American League MVP in 1961. It was the second consecutive MVP trophy for the 27-year old right fielder. Fans and members of the Maris family could be forgiven if they started envisioning an eventual pursuit of Ruth’s career mark of 714 home runs and what would be written on the inevitable Roger Maris plaque in baseball’s greatest shrine in Cooperstown, New York. But that’s not what happened. Maris retired after the 1968 season, at the age of 34, with 275 career home runs.

Maris won two MVPs, three World Series titles and broke the game’s sacred record. But is that enough for a spot in the Hall of Fame? Over the years, many people have thought so. Maris was on the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) ballot for 15 years. Although he never got close to the 75% minimum required for a Cooperstown plaque, he did get over 40% of the vote in his last three times on that ballot (topping out at 42.6% in 1987). The significant majority of players who get at least 40% with the BBWAA eventually have been elected to the Hall via the Veterans Committee in future years.

Maris has another chance next month to make the Hall that way, through what is now known as the Eras Committee. On December 5th at baseball’s winter meetings in Orlando, a panel of 16 executives, media members and Hall of Famers will convene to discuss the relative merits of 10 candidates on the Golden Days ballot, which is meant for players’ whose primary impact on the game was between 1950 and 1969.

In this piece, I’ll offer a recap of Maris’ career and tackle the big question: is having one of the most famous and historic seasons in the history of the game enough to justify a plaque in Cooperstown for the player who did it?

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Cooperstown Cred: Roger Maris (RF)

• Indians (1957-58), Athletics (1958-59), Yankees (1960-66), Cardinals (1967-68)
• Career: .260 BA, .345 OBP, .476 SLG, 275 HR, 850 RBI
• Career: 127 OPS+, 38.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
• 1960 A.L. MVP: 39 HR, 112 RBI, 160 OPS+, 7.5 WAR
• 1961 A.L. MVP: 61 HR, 141 RBI, 132 Runs, 167 OPS+, 6.9 WAR
• 4 All-Star Seasons, won the A.L. Gold Glove in 1960

(cover photo: Associated Press)

Roger Maris: Before the Majors

Roger Eugene Maris was born on September 10th, 1934, in Hibbing, Minnesota, about 100 miles south of the Canadian border. His family moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota when Roger was five years old and then to Fargo in 1946. His parents were of Croatian heritage and went by Maras, not changing the surname to the spelling Maris until 1955.

Maris played both football and baseball for Bishop Shanley High School. On the gridiron, in 1951, he set a high-school record (that stands to this day) with four return touchdowns (two kickoff returns, one punt return, and an interception return). In that game, he also scored a fifth touchdown just for yucks on a 32-yard run.

(For the record, Maris’ touchdown-returning exploits aren’t officially recognized by the National Federation of State High School Associations because the feat wasn’t officially submitted to the organization).

Maris passed up a football scholarship at Oklahoma to begin his baseball career with the Cleveland Indians organization in 1953. In his second season (1954 in Keokuk, Iowa), the lefty swinger discovered his power stroke. His manager Jo-Jo White taught Maris to pull the ball and the 19-year old left-handed hitter swatted 32 home runs for the Kernels. Maris spent two more seasons in the minor leagues (in Reading, PA, Tulsa, and Indianapolis) before making his Major League Baseball debut with the Indians in April 1957.

Maris in Cleveland and Kansas City

Roger Maris is best known for playing right field in the majors but, as a rookie, he was mostly in left or center field; the Indians had an established power-hitting right fielder in Rocky Colavito. The 22-year-old rookie made an immediate impact in the majors. After going 3 for 5 in his MLB debut on Opening Day, Maris hit an 11th inning grand slam in the second game of his career to help Cleveland to an 8-3 win at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. Maris was hitting .327 after 19 games but slumped for most of the season, finishing with a .235 average (with 14 HR and 51 RBI).

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Maris was hitting .225 after his first 51 games of the 1958 campaign before being traded in mid-June to the Kansas City Athletics in a deal that sent two-time All-Star first baseman Vic Power to the Indians. Maris finished the season with a .240 BA (28 HR, 80 RBI).

Maris was primarily a right fielder with Kansas City and he emerged as a star early in the 1959 campaign. Maris was hitting .344 (with a .407 OBP and .599 SLG) towards the end of July. That was good enough to be selected as the American League’s starting right fielder in the second All-Star Game (from 1959-62, two All-Star Games were played per season). The Athletics’ right fielder slumped after his All-Star appearance, however, hitting just .175 in his final 49 games (with only 2 HR). For the season overall, Maris hit .273 with 16 HR and 73 RBI. Today, Baseball-Reference credits Maris with a 3.3 WAR and 123 OPS+. Maris had shown himself to be a solid player, but nothing about his career thus far portended back-to-back MVP awards.

1960 A.L. MVP

In December 1959, the Kansas City Athletics traded Roger Maris to the New York Yankees. It was a seven-player deal in which the Yankees traded Don Larsen and Hank Bauer to Kansas City in return. The Yankees, perennial pennant-winners in the American League, had an unusually poor season in 1959, going 79-75 to finish 15 games behind the Chicago White Sox. Maris was acquired to be an upgrade from Bauer in right field.

Maris got off to a fantastic start in pinstripes. He went 4 for 5 with 2 home runs and 4 RBI on Opening Day and was hitting .476 after his first 11 games. At the All-Star break, Maris had a slash line of .320/.399/.703 with 27 HR and 69 RBI. He started in both All-Star Games, which took place in a three-day period.

As he did in 1959, Maris slumped in the second half of the season: he only slashed .239/.338/.439 after the break but still added 12 HR and 43 RBI to his totals. For the season, he finished with a .283 BA, 39 HR, and an A.L.-best 112 RBI. He also led the league with a .581 slugging percentage. By key numbers we understand today, he had a 160 OPS+ and 7.5 WAR, the high WAR number based on career-best defensive metrics. Maris’ 7.5 WAR was the best in the league (his teammate Mickey Mantle was second-best at 6.4). The baseball writers recognized Roger’s fantastic season with an MVP award. Additionally, Maris won the first and only Gold Glove of his career.

Thanks primarily to Maris and Mantle, the Yankees returned to the World Series, winning the American League pennant with 97 wins, which was eight more than the 2nd place Baltimore Orioles.

The Yankees faced off against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Maris hit two solo home runs (both in losses) and went 0 for 5 in the decisive Game 7, the famous contest in which Bill Mazeroski delivered a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th to deliver the Bucs a 10-9 victory.

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Maris’ Historic 1961 Season

Every once in a while, a Major League Baseball player will have the kind of season that captures the imagination of fans throughout the nation. In 1941, Joe DiMaggio‘s 56-game hitting streak was that kind of season. What made the 1961 season unique is that there were two players, teammates, playing for the game’s most storied franchise, who were chasing the most iconic single-season record authored by the biggest star in the game’s history. The pursuit of Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs, by both Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, created such a media frenzy in the Big Apple that Maris started losing clumps of his hair due to the stress.

The 1961 campaign was the dawn of a new era in both New York and the American League in general. Two new teams (the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators) turned the 8-team league into a 10-team league. (The previous version of the Senators had moved to Minnesota). In New York, longtime skipper Casey Stengel (the future Hall of Famer) was replaced by Ralph Houk, who would go on to win 1,619 games in 20 seasons as a big-league manager. Finally, and most significantly, the regular season was expanded from 154 to 162 games.

Early in the season, Maris didn’t show any sign of what would later occur. Maris didn’t hit his first home run of the season until April 26th, the Yankees’ 11th game. At the end of April (after 15 games), the reigning A.L. MVP was hitting just .204, with that single homer and 4 RBI. Meanwhile, Mantle hit .327 in April with 7 HR and 17 RBI. And then, in New York’s first game in May (in Minnesota), Mantle broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the 10th inning with a grand slam.

Maris hit a couple of taters in the next few games but, as of May 16th (28 games into the campaign), he still had a lowly .208 BA with 3 HR and 11 RBI. At the same time, Mantle had a slash line of .309/.419/.660 with 10 HR and 26 RBI.

It was starting with a game on May 17th at Yankee Stadium against the expansion Senators that Maris began his pursuit of the Babe in earnest. He homered in four straight games and hit ten more in the next 17 contests. All of a sudden, as of June 7th, Maris had 17 HR for the season while Mantle had 15. From May 17th through June 22nd (a span of 38 games), Maris hit 24 home runs.

In June, both of the M & M boys went on (or continued, for Maris) hot streaks. From June 8th to July 2nd (a span of 26 games), both Yankee sluggers hit 13 home runs. As the Yankees took to the diamond in the Bronx for a July 4th doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, Maris had 30 homers; Mantle was just behind with 28.

These were the statistics of Maris and Mantle as of July 9th (83 games into the season), before the first of the two All-Star Games:

• Maris: .282 BA, 33 HR, 80 RBI
• Mantle: .320 BA, 29 HR, 74 RBI

Maris’ 33 home runs were the most in the first half of the season since the All-Star Game was created in 1933.

“As the home runs kept coming, the media coverage began to take on a distinctive cast, and Maris suffered for it. Not only was the most revered record in baseball being put in jeopardy, but it was being done so by an outsider, the new kid from Midwest who not only sought to unseat the iconic Ruth, but was also challenging the reigning king, fan and press favorite, Mickey Mantle. This two pronged-“assault” was not something that Maris could ever win, and while he and Mantle got along fine–they even lived together during the season–the media did everything they could to turn the chase into a rivalry that it was not.”

— Bill Pruden, SABR Bio about Roger Maris

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Both Mantle and Maris homered in the first game after the All-Star Break and they both kept up their blistering home run pace for most of the rest of July. On July 25th, Maris homered twice in both ends of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium (against the Chicago White Sox). The four taters gave Maris a total of 40 for the season (through 96 games), with 95 RBI. Mantle managed to hit “only” one home run in that doubleheader but homered the next day to give him 39 HR and 89 RBI.

Maris went into a dinger drought after those four long balls on the 25th, hitting just one homer in 16 games, putting him at 41 with 49 games left to go in the season.

Maris broke out of his homer slump in a big way, hitting 7 taters in the next 6 games, to put him at 48 through August 16th, with 43 games to play. Mantle didn’t quite keep up the pace but still had 45 at this point. Then, on August 22nd, Maris hit his 50th home run of the season at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, home of the Angels. Maris finished the month with 51 home runs (with 29 games left), while Mantle homered on the last two days of the month, putting him three behind Maris with 48.

Now, while the M & M boys technically had 29 games left to tie or surpass Ruth’s record, Commissioner Ford Frick expedited the timeline by declaring earlier in the summer that either player would have to reach the 60 home run mark in the team’s first 154 games. This is known as the famous “asterisk” proclamation. (Remember, this was the first season in which the A.L. played a 162-game schedule).

Maris hit two home runs on September 2nd to give him 53 for the season. The next day, Mantle hit two of his own to get to 50. By September 10th (game #145), Maris had 56 homers to Mantle’s 53. The Mick, however, would effectively drop out of the home run race because he was sidelined for several games by a bad cold. Mantle would finish the season with 54.

In the meantime, Maris went into another mini-drought, going without a tater during a 7-game stretch in five days (which included three doubleheaders). On September 16th and 17th (in Detroit), Maris hit his 57th and 58th home runs of the season. When he failed to homer in either end of a September 19th doubleheader in Baltimore, he had officially failed to meet Frick’s standard of tying or breaking Ruth’s record in 154 games. The next night, he hit home run #59.

On Tuesday, September 26th, at Yankee Stadium (against the Orioles), Maris hit his 60th home run of the season, hitting the sixth pitch he saw for a solo blast down the right-field line off Jack Fisher. Maris initially froze at home plate, waiting to see if the ball would stay fair or drift foul.

The final three games of the season for the Yankees were at home against the Boston Red Sox. Maris went 1 for 5 in the first two games without a home run. Then, on Sunday, October 1st, in front of just 23,154 fans, Maris hit #61, a solo blast to deep right field in the 4th inning off Tracy Stallard. It was the only run that would score in the Yankees’ season-ending 1-0 win. The 61st home run occurred in what was technically the Yankees’ 163rd game of the season because there had been a tie game called due to rain earlier in the season.

Besides hitting 61 home runs, Maris also drove in 141 for the season (best in the league) and scored 132, best in all of baseball.

“It is the greatest homer I ever hit… I can’t remember much after I hit it. I was happy. I just wanted to run around those bases. When I got to the dugout, everyone from one end to the other shook my hand. Then they pushed me out to the playing field to take a bow.”

— Roger Maris (October 1, 1961)

 

Thanks in good part to the 115 home runs swatted by the M & M boys, the 1961 Yankees won 109 games, the second-highest total in the team’s history, a result of the lengthened schedule. (Ruth hit his 60 home runs in 1927, the year the Yankees went 110-44).

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Anyway, after Maris’ historic campaign, the World Series was almost an afterthought. The Yankees won it easily, in 5 games, over the Cincinnati Reds. Maris hit just .105 in the Fall Classic but did break a 2-2 tie in the top of the 9th inning in Game 3 with a solo blast.

The 1961 A.L. MVP Vote

Because his career lasted only 12 years (with 5,847 plate appearances), there are only two elements to the Hall of Fame case for Roger Maris. We’ve just chronicled the super-obvious plank, that he hit 61 home runs in 1961. The other part of it is that Maris is a two-time MVP. Most (but not all) players who have won multiple MVPs have wound up in the Hall of Fame. That’s not because it’s an automatic “you check this box, you’re in” rule that’s followed by the writers. It’s simply that players who were good enough to be voted the best in their league in two separate seasons generally had enough other quality campaigns that their induction into Cooperstown was inevitable.

What’s interesting about the case of Maris is that, by metrics available and today and those available to the writers in 1961, Maris was not the best player in the league in 1961, despite the record-setting home run season. In real life, Maris barely beat Mantle in the MVP vote, getting 202 points to The Mick’s 198. Additionally, when you look at the numbers posted by Detroit’s Norm Cash, Maris probably should have finished third.

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Yes, it’s true that Cash hit 20 fewer home runs but his batting average was 92 points higher and his slugging percentage 42 points higher despite the smaller HR total. (Cash had 22 doubles and 8 triples; Maris had just 16 doubles with 4 triples).

1962: Encore Campaign

What could Roger Maris do for an encore after his record-setting 61 home run campaign? Well, for starters, he hit a three-run homer on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium to help the Yankees to a 7-6 win over the Baltimore Orioles. After that opening salvo, Maris went into a brief slump, hitting just .143 with no RBI in 10 games. However, he righted the ship after that and, although he didn’t approach his production of 1961, still hit .256 with 33 HR and 100 RBI.

Maris played in 157 games in ’62, appeared in both All-Star Games, and spent a bit of time in center field, as Mantle was battling injuries. Still, Mantle won his 3rd MVP despite playing in only 123 games. It helped The Mick’s cause that he slashed .321/.486/.605 (195 OPS+) in those 123 contests.

The Yankees won the A.L. pennant for the third straight season and were matched up against the San Francisco Giants in the World Series. In Game 1 (at Candlestick Park), Maris set the pace with a two-run double in the first inning to lead the Bronx Bombers to a 6-2 victory. After a Game 2 loss, Maris delivered the key blow in Game 3 at Yankee Stadium, a two-run single off lefty Billy Pierce (also a Golden Days Hall of Fame candidate) to break a scoreless tie and lead the Yankees to a 3-2 win. Maris went 0 for 6 in the next two games before, in Game 6 (a 5-2 loss), adding a solo tater (also off Pierce).

Maris went 0 for 4 in Game 7 but made a defensive play that was critical to the Yankees’ eventual 1-0 victory. In the bottom of the 9th inning, with New York clinging to that 1-0 lead and Matty Alou at first base, Willie Mays tagged Ralph Terry with a double down the right-field line. Maris cut off the ball before it could reach the fence and his accurate throw to cut-off man Bobby Richardson held Alou at third base. The next batter, Willie McCovey, lined out to Richardson to end the game.

1963 & ’64: Final Years of the Yankees Dynasty

On a per-game basis, Roger Maris had the third-best season of his career in 1963 but injuries limited him to just 90 games. In those 90 games, the Yankees’ right fielder hit .269 (146 OPS+) with 23 HR and 53 RBI. Although Mantle’s playing time was also severely restricted (to just 65 games), the Yankees won the A.L. pennant easily with 104 wins, thanks to an MVP campaign by catcher Elston Howard and big seasons on the mound by Whitey Ford and Jim Bouton.

The 1963 World Series was a reunion of sorts, as the Yankees faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Fall Classic for the first time since the franchise relocated from Brooklyn to Southern California. The Dodgers were led by their future Hall of Fame ace starters, Cy Young winner Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

The Dodgers pitchers silenced the Yankees bats, limiting the Bronx Bombers to four runs in a four-game sweep. Koufax outpitched Ford in both Games 1 and 4 while Drysdale bested Bouton in a 1-0 shutout in Game 3. As for Maris, after going 0 for 4 against Koufax in Game 1, he had to leave Game 2 in the third inning after injuring himself. Maris got hurt when he crashed into the right-field fence at Yankee Stadium while chasing a triple by Tommy Davis; he would not appear in either Games 3 or 4.

Maris was mostly healthy in 1964. In 141 games, he hit .281 with 26 HR and 71 RBI (127 OPS+). Mantle was also healthy and, with more sterling efforts from Howard, Ford, and Bouton, the Yankees won the A.L. pennant again, this time with 99 wins.

In the World Series, the Yankees were up against the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that featured future Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Lou Brock and also had a terrific third baseman (Ken Boyer) who would win the N.L. MVP. (Boyer, incidentally, is also on the Golden Days Hall of Fame ballot). Maris’ bat was mostly quiet in this Fall Classic (he hit just .200 with one RBI) but that lone ribbie was a part of back-to-back home runs with Mantle in a Game 6 victory. Ultimately, thanks in part to Boyer’s grand slam, the Yankees lost Game 7 for their second consecutive World Series defeat.

1965-66: Roger Maris’ Final Two Years in Pinstripes

The longtime Yankees dynasty ended with that seven-game World Series defeat in October 1964. The 1965 edition of the Yankees won just 77 games and finished 6th in the American League in what was a collection of mediocre to terrible campaigns by the key cogs of the pennant-winning squads of the previous years. Thanks to a broken hand, Maris played in only 46 games (he hit .239 with 8 HR and 27 RBI). Mantle and Howard also battled through injuries, while Bouton pitched with a sore bicep and had a miserable campaign (4-15, 4.82 ERA).

For the Bronx bummers, 1966 was even worse. The team went 70-89 to finish last in the A.L. Maris was again limited by injuries, this time to 119 games, and his performance wasn’t remotely close to his previous standards (.233 BA, 13 HR, 43 RBI, 102 OPS+). This year, it was Whitey Ford’s turn to get old: he was limited to 73 innings due to frightening circulatory problems in his left arm. The press and fans were disappointed that Maris couldn’t carry the club. The 31-year old right fielder contemplated retirement but the Yankees gave him a welcome change of scenery by trading him to St. Louis for third baseman Charley Smith.

1967-68: Final Years for Roger Maris

With the Cardinals, Roger Maris was joining a team with several stars in the prime of their careers. Maris was expected to be a complementary player, which suited him perfectly. In 125 games, Maris hit .261 with 9 HR and 55 RBI (with a 116 OPS+). A strong defensive season gave him a 3.6 WAR for the season, 7th best on the team.

The Redbirds won the 1967 pennant with 101 wins and matched up against the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. In Game 1, Maris drove in a pair of runs (both on groundouts), giving Bob Gibson the only runs he needed in a 2-1 victory. After the teams split the next two games, Maris set the pace in Game 4 with a two-run double off Boston’s Jose Santiago. Again, those runs were the only ones Gibson would need in a 6-0 shutout. Maris also contributed a solo home run in a Game 5 loss and an RBI in Game 7 as St. Louis (behind Gibson again) wrapped up the title with a 7-2 win. Overall, it was the best postseason performance in Maris’ career; he slashed .385/.433/.538 with 7 RBI.

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Thanks to one of the greatest seasons in baseball history by Gibson (22-9, 1.12 ERA), the 1968 Cardinals won 97 games and another N.L. pennant. Again limited by injuries, Maris played in only 100 games (hitting .255 with just 5 HR and 45 RBI) and decided that ’68 would be his final MLB campaign. Unfortunately, the World Series would prove to mark a disappointing end to Maris’ career. He hit just .158 (with one RBI) and the Redbirds lost to the Detroit Tigers in 7 games.

Roger Maris After Baseball

Cardinals owner Gussie Busch helped Maris transition into retirement by setting him up with a beer distributorship in Gainesville, Florida, where he would spend the rest of his days. Maris had a happy reunion with the Yankees in the following years, thanks to the new owner George Steinbrenner, who was determined to repair the relations between the franchise and its two-time MVP. In April 1978, he flew to New York with Mantle to raise the 1977 pennant flag.

In 1984, Maris was diagnosed with lymphoma, cancer of the lymph glands. He was hopeful of making a recovery and was doing quite well in the summer of ’84 when his Yankees’ uniform number (#9) was retired and plaque in his honor added to the other legends in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. In April 1985, Maris was honored with Mantle on Opening Day and he donned the Yankee pinstripes for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Unfortunately, Maris was unable to beat his cancer. His health deteriorated and he passed away on December 14th, 1965, just 95 days after his 51st birthday.

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Thirteen years after his death, the name Roger Maris was spoken on a daily basis as sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both chased the single-season home run mark that Maris had set in 1961. Maris’ family was on hand in St. Louis when McGwire hit his 62nd home run (he finished the season with 70 and swatted 65 more in 1999). Sosa finished the 1998 season with 66 taters and eclipsed the magic number of 61 twice more (in 1999 and 2001). Barry Bonds bested everyone, also in 2001, when he hit 73 home runs at the age of 37.

In the years after these feats, of course, the accomplishments of McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds have been tainted by their links to Performance Enhancing Drugs. In the minds of many baseball fans, those massive homer totals all have an asterisk next to them. In the minds of many fans, Roger Maris remains the legitimate single-season home run champion with his 61 long balls in ’61.

Roger Maris and the Hall of Fame

As many others have pointed out, the Cooperstown case for Roger Maris is simple. Is one historic season in an otherwise good but not extraordinary career enough to make a player a Hall of Famer? For many (but not enough) of the writers of the BBWAA, the answer to that question was “yes.” As a result, Maris got over 40% of the vote in the last three of his fifteen years on the Hall of Fame ballot (topping out at 43.1% in his last year, 1988).

To recap, these are the final career statistics for Maris:

• .260 BA, .345 OBP, .476 SLG, 127 OPS+, 38.3 WAR
• In 5,847 plate appearances: 275 HR, 850 RBI, 1,325 Hits

These are not the statistics of a Hall of Famer. On the Maris Baseball-Reference page, the names on his “similarity scores” list include Bob Allison, Hank Sauer, Jay Buhner, Jesse Barfield, Tony Armas, Eric Davis, Danny Tartabull, and Matt Stairs.

Now, none of those players won two MVP awards (or even one) but there is precedent for a player to win the MVP two times without getting into the Hall of Fame. Dale Murphy and Juan Gonzalez both won a pair of MVPs and neither is in the Hall (although I am personally an advocate of Murphy’s induction).

In the case of Maris, those two MVP campaigns are the only two in which he had seasons that could be considered Hall-worthy. Yes, he hit 33 HR and drove in 100 runs in 1962 but those totals were only the 5th best (for HR) and 10th best (for RBI) in the American League. In addition, his OPS+ in 1962 was just 126, tied for 11th best in the league (with MVP Brooks Robinson) and behind luminaries such as Norm Sieburn, Pete Runnels, John Romano, Joe Cunningham, and Floyd Robinson (not Frank Robinson, Floyd Robinson).

With the exclusion of the Negro League players (for whom the statistical record is incomplete), there is only one position player in the Hall of Fame who hit less than .275, hit fewer than 300 home runs, drove in less than 900 runs, and collected fewer than 1,500 hits. That player is catcher Ray Schalk, who was a somewhat dubious Veterans Committee selection in 1955.

And, of course, Schalk was a catcher, a position in which the players generally deserve to get the benefit of the doubt for shorter playing careers due to the physical demands of the job.

If one were to widen the lens of those four basic offensive numbers, only seven Hall of Famers hit less than .285, hit fewer than 350 HR, drove in less than 1,000 runs, and collected under 1,750 hits. The other six (Joe Gordon, Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, Phil Rizzuto, Roger Bresnahan, and Rick Ferrell) were all middle infielders or catchers.

Conclusion

When I was writing last month about the Hall of Fame case for Maury Wills (also a Golden Days Eras Committee candidate), I made the point that the crux of his case rested on his historic 1962 MVP campaign, the one in which he stole 104 bases to break Ty Cobb‘s modern-day record. Supporters of Wills would argue that Maury’s case goes beyond that, asserting that Wills revolutionized the art of the steal in Major League Baseball. However, I noted (as others have) that the White Sox’s Luis Aparicio actually beat Wills to the punch by a year.

Anyway, in back-to-back seasons, iconic numbers posted by two of the game’s greatest legends (Cobb and Babe Ruth) were eclipsed. As I said at the top of this article, if the Hall of Fame was only about fame, then Roger Maris would already have a plaque in Cooperstown.

Personally, I don’t think that’s enough. If Giancarlo Stanton had swatted 61 home runs in 2017 instead of 59, would we be already polishing his plaque in the Hall? What if Ryan Howard had hit 61 homers in 2006 instead of 58, would that make him a Hall of Famer? To put the question another way, what if Maris had fallen short in 1961, and finished with 58 or 59 taters? Would he even be on this ballot?

What about Luis Gonzalez, whose outlier season was in 2001 when he hit 57 home runs and his team (the Arizona Diamondbacks) won the World Series against the Yankees? Gonzalez got 5 out of 429 votes (0.9%) on the 2014 BBWAA ballot despite career totals of 354 HR, 1,439 RBI, 2,591 Hits, 119 OPS+, and 51.6 WAR. In every statistical category, Gonzalez had a superior career to Maris’ but he didn’t win a pair of MVPs and he didn’t hit 61 home runs in a season.

Now, in fairness, there is sort of one precedent for his type of case. Hack Wilson is in the Hall of Fame because of his historic 1930 season in which he hit .356 with 56 HR with 191 RBI (the most for a single season in baseball history). Wilson’s career WAR (38.7) is nearly identical to Maris’ (38.3). The difference, however, and the reason I said “sort of” is that Wilson’s had five Hall-worthy seasons and finished with 1,063 RBI and a career OPS+ of 144.

To me, if we’re going to honor a player for one historic season, then we need to induct Dwight Gooden, whose 1985 campaign (24-4, 1.54 ERA, 12.2 WAR) was arguably the best for a pitcher since the dead-ball era, which ended in 1918. Here’s another example: in 1968, the Tigers’ Denny McLain won 31 games (with a 1.96 ERA). He matched Jim Bagby (1920) and Lefty Grove (1931) as the only pitchers in the post-dead ball era to win at least 31 games. Does that make McLain a Hall of Famer?

I think I’ve made the point. Roger Maris is one of the most important historical figures in the history of baseball. If that makes him a Hall of Famer, so be it. But he’s on a ballot right now with eight players who had a greater volume of work in their careers. I don’t see how Maris gets a vote for Cooperstown on this ballot.

Thanks for reading. Please follow Cooperstown Cred on Twitter @cooperstowncred.

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