Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1785: What is This, a Cooperstown Episode?

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about how baseball writers are coping with the lockout, revisit the burst of spending that preceded its start, and marvel at the wide variety of Hall of Fame ballots that have surfaced so far. Then (19:01) they talk to Sean Gibson and Ted Knorr, two of the founders of […]

Gwylio'r fideo Ddim yn fy nghymryd yn uchel, ddim yn fy gwneud yn fawr Os ydych chi'n ei fwynhau, dylai hi wybod Mae'r sialens yn cael ei gyflawni pan mae eisiau i'w llwyddo Hello and welcome to episode 1785 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am understimulated by baseball news, at least. Do you remember some time ago, some years ago, I somewhat facetiously suggested that maybe all off-season activity should be kept under wraps until pitchers and catchers report to spring

training, and we would just all together together we would find out who went where and who's on what team now and it would be this glorious day we're all just surprised to see where everyone signed and where everyone was traded and that was a facetious suggestion but i retract even that i think having been faced with the equivalent of that even just for a couple weeks here i don't want to wish that on anyone, certainly who has to cover baseball and figure out ways to do that, but anyone who just has their interest jogged by baseball. I've been sort of fascinated in a gallows humor kind of way looking to see how people are filling their websites these days, including fan graphs.

You're doing a great job. Thank you. But everyone.com of course cannot mention current players or has decided that it will not mention current players and so uh i don't want to say they're scraping the barrel but uh they're getting creative when it comes to their baseball coverage and then there's a lot of like, here's what teams might do after the lockout ends. And where might this guy go? What might this team do? Or I've seen people like reporting old transactions that didn't end up acquiring but they were interested in him and there were trade talks between like the cubs and the padres last year involving eric osmer i mean i like hearing about trades that didn't come to fruition too but it seems like we're in withdrawal for actual transactions and so the substitute is either past transactions that were not completed or future hypothetical transactions that could be completed when transactions are occurring again.

Yeah, you didn't enjoy Ben writing about the congressional baseball game using Effectively Wild? Oh, I did, yeah. He mentioned the podcast in his first paragraph, so of course I enjoyed it. I guess it wasn't really about the congressional baseball game

so much as it was about math. But yeah, it's a challenge. Although, as I said on our last show, one of our recent shows, who knows when anything happens anymore. Like we always have some off-season lull, right? We've dealt with slow transaction winters before. But yes, this is a slightly new condition that we find ourselves in and i think that everyone just just let yourself be weird you know just like enjoy the strange of it all these circumstances are suboptimal admittedly but you know get get funky go all the all the

2021 retro sheet data is out now go dig in go have some fun with that yeah please yeah and ben i know recently the other ben took a look back at that spending orgy that happened before the tap was cut off and what he found was interesting i think he found that essentially the spending when it comes to dollars per projected war, was not wildly out of line with past years. It was wildly out of line with last year, which was itself wildly out of line with previous years. So last year, no one was spending. This year, at least briefly, they were spending more or less like they had in prior years. Although, if you look at the long arc over time, there has not been a continued

increase. But that was interesting because I think Rob Manfred in his letter was like, look, everything is wonderful and spending was huge and there's clearly no problem with free agency. He didn't say all of those words, but he suggested as much. And what Ben found basically was that, yeah, it looked a little more like normal, but also normal has not actually changed in a while. Whereas in the past, normal would keep climbing over time. Right. And I think, you know, and Ben was careful to make clear that we can't really arrive at a strong conclusion about this because the number of guys that are sort of in that middle class that we always lament these days. You could say that about any number of things, couldn't we? But in baseball, only like 19 of those guys

who are sort of the lower end fill-ins that every team needs every year, and hundreds of them will end up signing over the course of the entire winter, but I think only 19 have so far. But in the early returns, it seems like the stratification between the the stars sort of earning big big contracts and the the middle class of players struggling to to sort of not make ends meet but sort of keep pace is is continuing so it'll be something that we obviously have to revisit again once we have more contracts signed. But since we have the pause, we can kind of take a look at where things sit now. And yeah, it's dollar spent is a metric.

It is not the only metric. And it's one that requires a bit more investigation. And it turns out when you have like a really, really good free agent class, those guys get money spent on them. Yeah. News at 11. Film at 11. I don't know what they do on the news anymore they

tick tocks at 11 tick tocks that's what we do now well we just don't have news when it comes to baseball now we have lots of uh coaching reorganizations yeah if you're interested in who the new third base coach for this team or that team is this is just a great time for you but otherwise during this lull in transaction activity what what we do have is the Hall of Fame. What is this? A Hall of Fame episode? Yes. Yes, it is.

And we will not do nonstop Hall of Fame episodes, I promise. Maybe some of you want that. Some of you probably don't. But we probably won't talk about the Hall of Fame again for a little while. But we wanted to devote this episode to two different Hall of Fame-related segments. And in the second segment, we will be talking to Dr. Sali Yerkovich, who is a museum ethicist. And this is not a profession I knew about, which is just my fault. It was something I was not aware of until we had our recent conversation about the Hall of Fame and my deciding what to do with my ballot and whether to vote and how to vote.

And someone, I think, tweeted at me afterward and said, well, you should talk to a museum ethicist. And I did not know that there were ethicists who specialized in museums. who specialized in museums. And so we will talk to Dr. Yurkovich, who is not a baseball specialist, although she has visited the Hall of Fame in the past. And she'll tell us a little bit about how some of these issues that baseball Hall of Fame voters are wrestling with with the current ballot are also mirrored in some other museums these days. So nice to know that we have company, at least, as we try to figure all of this out. And also in the first segment, we will be talking to Sean Gibson and Ted Knorr about a new committee called 42 for 21 that is working for greater recognition of Negro League players and black baseball players who have not been inducted yet and maybe have not even been on a ballot yet. And as things stand, they will have to wait at least 10 years to be on a ballot. And the 42 for 21 committee is trying to change that and to speed up those cycles, which is a worthy cause, I think.

So there are new wrinkles, at least to the Hall of Fame conversation each time we talk about it. Yep. It's good to have new wrinkles and not just warts. Right. Got jerks. The ballots though, I haven't been paying the closest attention to the ballots that have been revealed and have been documented by Ryan Thibodeau and his team over at the Hall of Fame ballot tracker. But some of the ballots are bad.

And I'm not going to single out any individual ballots because they get plenty of attention drawn to them. But I'm constantly struck. It's like every color of the rainbow, like every possible ballot you could imagine. Because you would think that they would break down along certain lines and that you could do a taxonomy of Hall of Fame ballots and you could just say, OK, this person is clearly this kind of voter or that kind of voter. And you can tell if it's a small hall voter or a big hall voter or someone who cares about this or that. But sometimes they're just all over the place, at least in my opinion, where you look at it and it's like, where's the consistency here? OK, you voted for this person and yet not that person. And I'm trying to twist myself into some sort of logical not to figure out how that is actually consistent.

And I don't know that I am like most of the electorate here, I think, compared to average Hall of Fame voter, or at least the average person who is eligible to vote for the Hall, because I haven't decided if I am a voter or not, I think I am more likely than average to pay attention to the advanced stats and war and jaws and to evaluate players through that lens, and less likely to give a lot of credence to the character clause when it comes to cheating and to peds and steroid use but maybe more likely to give weight to the character clause when it comes to other off the field issues and bad behaviors so i don't know that i map on to most of the voters all that well and yet yet even so, it's like, okay, trying to reverse

engineer your ballot. I'm trying to follow your thought process here. And often the people who vote will lay out their thought process, at least to some extent in a column, which does not always make it any easier for me to follow. Yeah. Again, like you, I don't think we need to call out particular ballots because I find that when people are engaged in attention-seeking behavior, that refusing to give them attention makes them absolutely crazy. So there's that part of it.

But yes, I think that this ballot in particular seems to be giving people fits when they're trying to really tread some sort of ideologically consistent or logically consistent line in terms of their ballot makeup. So I don't envy you, Ben. I mean, I think it is a hard needle to thread. But yeah, some of them have been kind of wild. There have been some real wild submissions. Yeah, there have. Some of them, I guess, are purposely wild, as you're saying, and they're effectively wild. If your goal is to get attention for your ballot and to have lots of people quote tweeting you, then that has certainly happened. So, yeah, when it is like not even like a protest vote, but just like a statement vote kind of. I mean, I guess you're entitled to that.

The point of having a big voting body is that every individual will have a different way of looking at these things. And hopefully you get the wisdom of crowds at the end of it. And I think on the whole, the baseball writers have recently done a decent job, at least from some perspectives. I think that there are certainly some ballots that would not look like my ballot if I cast a ballot, and yet I get it and I completely understand it and respect it. If you're someone who is just going to completely write off the character clause, or at least the portions of the character clause that i care more about maybe and just say this is a baseball museum and that's its sole mandate and purview and it should just be the best baseball players i get that because i felt that way myself until

fairly recently when i just had a hypothetical ballot and would imagine what i would do it's only fairly recently that I and some others have sort of changed our thinking. And so if that is your thinking, then I completely understand it. And it probably even reflects most people who would care about the Hall of Fame's thinking or most people who would be visiting the Hall of Fame's thinking, which is one thing that gives me pause. If I were to exclude some of the best baseball players ever on the grounds of things that had nothing to do with baseball is that actually serving the purpose of the institution or of baseball fans in general I don't know it's more just kind of a gut feeling not sure that I

am personally comfortable honoring or endorsing this person or promoting the celebration of this person basically but I totally get it if you're just like oh it's one of the best baseball players ever obviously why would you even have a hall of fame without that player so that i understand it's more i guess when it comes to the actual player evaluation differences is where maybe i'm more mystified you know when you have these ballots where i guess it's it's often where sc Scott Rowland is kind of like the reaction to some ballots because there are like players who are clearly, at least in my mind, not as accomplished as Scott Rowland and then Scott Rowland will be missing or, you know, there are other cases like that where I just think,

I don't know, I don't get it. Well, and I think that the ones that, and Rowland is like a really great example of this. We have seen a couple of ballots that have only had one person on it. I think we've, I think we've seen one blank ballot. Am I right about that? I don't know. I've lost track. I mean, certainly in prior years that has not been uncommon. are those are the ones where i uh you're right like those voters are within their rights to cast a blank ballot but it would just like put it in a drawer man just don't turn it in because i refuse to believe that there isn't anyone on that ballot who is hall of fame worthy and if you turn in a blank like it counts as a no yeah so like it has a real impact that like the mechanics of every you know the um ben it turns out that the mechanics of elections are really important to the end result. I don't know. There have been other life lessons to that effect. This has been a weird little intro for me, hasn't it? We're leaving it all in. I don't know, guys. We're toward the end of the year. Very tired. I didn't expect to be tired in mid-December. I don't know. Anyway, so those ones rankle for me because, you know,

especially with guys who are trying to sustain momentum or pick up momentum or are really close and deserving and, you know, it has a negative impact on them when that stuff happens. So I don't know. I struggle with whether we take the whole thing too seriously or not seriously enough. And depending on the day, my answer can change because there are moments where I'm like, but, you know, like a person is waiting to find out if this great honor that they care

about is going to be bestowed on them. You just sent in a blank ballot, man. Like, don't do that. So and then there are other days where i'm like we we just need to unplug this discourse and plug it back in because it's so self-serious it's gonna like collapse under its own weight so you know here's an episode that's entirely about the hall of fame yes and uh right i don't want to be too self-serious you're right it's not an easy decision but it's ultimately not like the the highest stakes

of anything in the world either it's just uh it's high stakes when it comes to baseball i guess so and and as i've said in the past like it matters it matters a great deal to these players and to their families and to the fans who rooted for them and so i think you know having some reverence for that is is appropriate even if we can kind of properly place it within the the broad spectrum of things that we need to worry about in the world like this does matter to people and so we should make sure to try to do right by it so yeah and i would never send in a blank ballot. I would either send in one with some names checked or not send in one. And as I decide which of those things to do, I'm planning to make a little pilgrimage to Cooperstown at some point before the end of the year when these

ballots are due because I haven't actually been there since I was a kid. And I don't really remember it all that well. And it's changed a lot in the intervening years, of Year's, I will go and take a little tour and see how I feel. And we can probably leave the ballot reactions alone for a little while. We will link to where you can find those things. They are very well chronicled. And of course, you can find Jay Jaffe's continuing coverage at Fangraphs where I was amused that he just lumped in Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, and Sosa into one giant post on Wednesday. It's like, let's just get this out of the way in just one go. Let's not string this out here.

If you want to read about these guys, here they are. It's just the lump payment. So that's there if you want it. Yeah, Jay's thoughts on that little group are well documented and have been for over a decade and some of it is some of it sparing us having to run individual posts for some of the more

noxious members of this class I mean like sure but also the real constraining factor was that because there were two era committees that met this year there really was an actual crunch in terms of time because it is important to Jay to profile everyone on the ballot before ballots are due because I think that he does offer a perspective

that voters find useful and he takes that responsibility seriously. So that was the 95% of it. And then the 5% was that we have sure talked about that group enough. So, I mean, some members of it more than others, to be clear. I don't think that everyone is quite as noxious as the rest, but. All right. Well, let's get to our guests and we won't even take a break. Let's just roll right into our first segment.

We are joined now by two of the three people behind a new committee called 42 for 21, which is bringing attention to deserving Negro leagues and black baseball candidates for upcoming Hall of Fame elections and trying to ensure that we won't have to wait too long for those elections to occur. One of our guests is Sean Gibson, the executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, whom we had on last year to talk about his campaign to get the MVP award renamed after his great grandfather, Josh. Sean, welcome back. Thank you for having me, Ben. I'm glad to be back. And our second guest is longtime Negro Leagues researcher and writer historian Ted Knorr, the founder of Sabre's Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference.

Hello, Ted. Good evening there, Megan and Ben. And we were supposed to be joined by Gary Gillette, who is also involved in the committee, but he had a power outage not long before this episode. So we will talk to Sean and Ted. And guys, if you could give us some info on how the committee came to be and what its stated aims are, we will link to some information and press releases that you've put out. But I don't know who wants to take this exactly. first and then Sean can jump in. We were inspired by Sean's year-long effort to get the Major League Most Valuable Player Award renamed after his great-grandfather. And the experience that Sean brings for the past year is he's very valuable. Of the three of us. He's been beating the bushes for a year. I bring a modicum

of experience in Negro League history. And Gary is our jack of all trades. He's, you know, an overall baseball expert. And he's our political person. So I don't know how much help I'm going to be. Sean may be better at things like that. But this group was formed, and we expect to expand our number. I'm talking about in decision making, maybe go from three to seven, nine, or 11, and to really campaign hard for the Hall of Fame to be inducting a more realistic picture of all 13 major leagues. Thank you, Ben, for that. All 13 major leagues that existed prior to the integration of the junior and senior circuits. And what form is that taking right now in terms of advocacy? Well, the first step, and we began this probably around November 1st, Gary and I putting together a 116-person ballot to just get a sense of the pulse of the Negro League historian,

artists, authors, former Negro League families, although Sean is our only rep from there at the moment. But we want to get a sense of how many worthy players are out there, players and executives and umpires, you know, just like the rest of the Hall of Fame. So that's our first step. Now, we have compiled them and that press release goes out today. We've named 42 such personages. And I guess we're looking to get that out. And thanks to you and Ben for helping. In fact, this is the first such interview. We only released him an hour or so ago. But this hopefully sparks discussion, not just with potential activists, for want of a better word, but also with the hall. Hopefully we'll get the hall's attention earlier than later in the process.

Yeah. And Sean, what drew you to this effort and what have you learned during your past year of activism and how have you seen attitudes and interest in the subject change? How have you seen attitudes and interest in the subject change? Yeah, you know, it's been great to join Ted and Gary. You know, I've been on Ted for a very long time, good friend. And I met Gary a few years ago. Actually, we met in person for the first time when the opera was in Detroit, the Josh Gibson Opera back in 2018, 2017. But, you know, my effort in this is it's all, you know, Ted and Gary are great historians.

What I want to bring to the table, of course, is Josh Gibson's name. In my experience working on an MVP campaign, as Ted mentioned, we had been pushing this MVP to rename the MVP after Josh, as you know. And the campaign was going very well, and it still is going very well.

It's just that we're waiting on the BBWA to decide what they want to do. But in all in all, you know, I'm a Negro Leaguer for heart, you know. And when they told me about this campaign, I definitely wanted to be involved. You know, my main thing to see is that, you know, I didn't realize until Ted and Gary told me this, that the hall is only taking the Negro League players every 10 years. And to me, I just feel like that is absurd. You know, why would you wait every 10 years

to induct Negro League baseball players? And I just, you know, when I found that out, that's really when I wanted to get involved in this and use my expertise, use our name to help get some of these players in. And, you know, it doesn't have to be every year, but, you know, I'm thinking every two years, every three years at the latest, but every 10 years, no, I don't, I don't, I don't understand that. So that's one of my main reasons. And I'm hoping to be able to get that changed. Right. So Ted, could you run through the history of Negro Leaguers getting into or not getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown? And it's been a little over 50 years since the doors were finally opened.

And Josh Gibson got in, of course, in 1972. There was a big discussion and committee in 2006, right? But it's been since then, no new Negro Beggars had been inducted until just last week. Well, for me, that history begins almost as far back as Jackie crossing the line, because in 1951, I think that's the year, Satchel Paige actually got a vote in the BBWAA election. He was probably not eligible. However, that's the first entry that I'm aware of, of the Baseball Hall of Fame, you know, shining a light, slight, but still, on the Negro Leagues. And then just over a decade later, with no Hall of Famer ever getting in on their first ballot since the very first election, here Jackie Robinson in his first

year in the ballot, therefore the earliest an African-American could possibly have gotten in the hall, he got in with Bob Feller also on a first ballot election. So those first two efforts by the hall, I think, deserve credit. And this is where I come from in approaching the hall. Their record dates as far back as major leagues in terms of the integration of the game. So this is something they should be building on. After that, you have the Ted Williams speech in 1966. And then as you alluded to, there were seven years in which they put in nine Negro League players, filled it a full nine-player team. And then they sort of dropped the ball. But even then, it was, oh, I don't know, maybe a couple of decades, but two Negro Leaguers found their way through that maze

without any real affirmative action. Although when you have a vet committee with Buck O'Neill, Roy Campanella, and Monty Irvin on it. I guess there's affirmative action there, even if it's not named. And then the Hall, again, in 1995, inducts a five-year promise of putting one Negro leaguer in every year for five years. And that was even extended two years before the investment of a quarter million dollars by Major League Baseball, managed by the Hall of Fame. And that ended up in 2006 with data like we never had before and 17 players and personages put into the Hall. So that was where they were at their peak. And that should have been further built upon. As you know, it wasn't. There was 15 years of silence with no Negro leaguers being eligible for the ballot and accordingly none getting on the ballot, which brings us to 2021.

I think one of the things that I was struck by as I was reading the coverage of election? Because I want to make sure that as we're designing this process, that each of these inductees is sort of given their due, right? This is an area where a lot of modern baseball fans have a real deficit of understanding in terms of the quality of play and the lives that these men led. But I also don't want to make the family members who might, you know, many generations removed, want to see their families' legacies honored. So how often do you think we should be sort of electing and considering ballots that include Negro leaguers and pre-Negro leagues, black baseball players, and what other sort of reforms to the voting

process would you like to see to ensure that the right people are enshrined? Yeah, that's a great question. Before I answer that, I do want to make a statement when Ted mentioned about Ted Williams. Our family always credited Ted Williams for that speech. We feel as though if Ted doesn't give that speech and mention Josh and Satch, we don't think they'd get in. So I definitely want to let the listeners know that the Gibson family does really appreciate the Williams family. Ted Williams making that speech and including Josh and Satch. But to get back to your point, you know, like I said earlier, it's right now is 10 years.

Realistically, for me, from my perspective, I would say I would like to see him every two years, three max. And also on the committee, you know, I think there should be some, you know, I know there's some historians on there, but it should be some family members on there. It doesn't have to be the Gibson family. It could be the Page family, Buck Leonard family, Turkey Stearns family that could be able to cast a vote. You know, the historians do all the work. They do all the research and they understand this process. And, you know, most of the data that these voters are getting and reading are from the historians. They don't want to do all the hard work. So I think there should be more historians involved in the voting process as

well. But, you know, the main purpose is for this 42 for 41 is to get their attention. Like we said, Ted said earlier, we sent out over 100 emails for people to submit ballots. And it's really just to get their attention. And hopefully by us getting their attention, they listen and decide not to do it every 10 years. So that's the goal. Yeah. So Ted, I did want to ask about the results of that early baseball ballot. And we had Adam Durowski on last week to talk over who got in and who unfortunately was passed over again. Of course, Buck O'Neill and Manny Mignoso and Bud Fowler all were inducted. And I think everyone was happy about those results and perhaps less happy that not everyone could get in because, as Mick mentioned, there were so many deserving candidates. And just cribbing here from the 42 for 21 press release here, there is still seemingly an imbalance.

I'm quoting now. Currently, only 17 percent of players in the hall from the segregated era come from the Negro Leagues and black baseball. Yet 44 percent of Hall of Fame players from the integrated era are African-American or Latino. That huge disparity shows how much more attention needs to be paid to the Negro Leagues and black baseball. So I think we can all celebrate the new inductees while perhaps also lamenting that there weren't more of them.

And I wonder what you make of the makeup of the committee, because I know that there weren't more of them. And I wonder what you make of the makeup of the committee, because I know that there were some people who knew a lot about the Negro Leagues on that committee and voting and Adrian Burgos, who's been on the podcast before, certainly a Negro Leagues scholar, and he had a vote, but that was not necessarily the case for everyone who was part of that 16-person committee. Yeah, well, obviously, the Hall of Fame, last December 16th, it should be a – I'm a Catholic. That day should be a feast day moving forward. It took the Hall of Fame 310 days till they added their two cents into the issue. They even hosted Baseball Reference with Sean on, not Sean Gibson, but Sean Foreman. And that was one of his early announcements about the statistics being uploaded to Baseball Re reference. And they had two, a librarian and also Bruce Markison,

hosted that show, never touched on the subject of what the Hall of Fame was going to do differently or improving or adding on as the Major League Baseball did. But finally, in October, they announced that the screening committee was going to have five representatives from the Negro League research community. I was thrilled. That was a great step forward. That was followed up by the announcement of the ballot itself. I have to admit, being a Rap Dixon fan, it was one of the worst days of 2020, 2021 rather. But nonetheless, putting seven Negro Leaguers on the ballot was also an achievement. This is what I'm talking about with the Hall. achievement. This is what I'm talking about with the Hall. They've done marvelous stuff between the integration of baseball and 2006. And now after 310 days on the sidelines,

they're doing marvelous stuff again. Although maybe the Negro League candidates might have been better served with only five on that ballot instead of 10. And I did feel very bad for Doc Adams and Harry Stovey, who had, by rule, belonged on that ballot. But that was a great thing, too. And then finally, they announce, and they do this strategically, they announce who the voters would be. And I understand why they do that, because if Rapp was on the ballot, as soon as they announced those voters, I'd have been speaking to him. And I'm sure Pete Gorton was. He did very well with the John Donaldson vote total, eight. And then, of course, came December 5th. And I was happy to see Buck and Bud. They're kind of like bookends. They're both pioneers of sorts. And in between

those two great bookends, there are a couple score of players that need to be filled in now. And maybe we can transition to some of those players now. So as you mentioned, your poll results are hot off the presses. So are there a couple of candidates who you'd like to highlight among the poll results who you think should be, whether it's three years from now or 10 years from now, whenever the committee reconvenes, hopefully much sooner than 10, that you think should really lead the next class? Well, I do want to point out those first two. The one, of course, is dear to my heart. But when I talked to President Eidelson, I want to say five years ago, and he was as straight with me as he was with everyone else, because I've seen him quoted on what he told me.

So obviously, he was telling a consistent message to anyone who asked. He needed to see. He was very proud of the 2006 effort, and well, they should be. But following that up, he needed to see, in his own words, new data, new information on these players in order to consider them further. They'd already had been judged by a 12-person jury that was fully qualified, and they came up short. Well, our two leading candidates, which I'm very pleased with, I'm talking about Rap Dixon and Dick Redding. If you look at the, and I forget the exact number, it's probably maybe 15 position players on that 2006 ballot that didn't go in. The player with the greatest delta, that is the change, the new statistics, the hot raising the batting average and the slugging percentage and the on-base percentage is Rap Dixon.

Same thing with pitching. The pitcher with the best delta, the best change is Dick Redding. Now, we didn't publicize that because that's inside baseball. But it must be more, well, Seamheads publicizes that. All you got to do is look at the Seamheads data minus the NLRAG data from 06 and it jumps out at you. Dick Redding had a losing record in 06. The data just wasn't there. Dixon and Redding finished one, two in our poll. I do think they're the two top candidates. Sean, all year long, championed Rap Dixon and Gus Greenlee.

And Gus is fifth. And maybe it's time for Sean to extol the virtues of Mr. Greenlee. Yeah, and I'll agree with Ted. Definitely the first two. Rap Dixon, of course, and Cannonball Dick was my two top candidates. And then, of course, Gus Greenlee. I feel as though, you know, of course, you know, I'm biased with Gus, of course, being a Pittsburgh Crawfords and what he's done with that team

and what he's done as a championship and the players that play for him. I say he's fourth on our ballot. So those are the top three. Then even Vic Harris, who's another Graves guy, who's seventh on the ballot. And so, you know, some of those guys there, you know, we'll have to see. But, again, you know, I don't want to limit it to these guys. You know, as you see the ballot right there, it's 41, you know,

a little over 41, 42, 40 names. Right. A lot of these guys are deserving to get in. Yeah. You know, we can go down the list, and a lot of these guys are well deserving to get in. So those are just some of our favorites, some of my favorites, some of Ted's favorites.

But, you know, if some of these other guys got in, I'd be just as happy. Yeah, and some of the names you mentioned were on the early baseball bout, and we talked about them a little last week, Grant Homerun Johnson and Dick Cannonball Redding and Vic Harris and John Donaldson and George Tubby Scales is just outside your top 10. I guess one name who's high up on there who was not on that early baseball ballot is John Beckwith, who's your number three. Ted, could you tell us a little bit about him? Sure. John Beckwith, if I had to draw a 20th century counterpart, I'd probably say maybe Dick Allen, a right-handed hitter with power that ballparks weren't built to contain. And he also could hit for average. But Beckwith left legends of his home run capability. And in the 20s, and of course, I'm speaking from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the 20s, when Negro League teams would play Major League teams or Major League All-Star teams in the postseason, they often would load up their roster just as the major league

teams did with the best players they could find. And the two best from the offensive side of the game were Oscar Charleston and John Beckwith. Well, in Harrisburg, we were the privilege, I think, 26 and 27. We had both Beckwith and Charleston in our lineup, not to mention Dixon and Jenkins and Ben Taylor in 25. But that Harrisburg lineup was the highest paid team in black baseball, according to the Harrisburg Patriot. Now, I can't stand behind that, but anytime you start to put a lineup together with Beckwith and Charleston, you're going to have to pay. But yes, John Beckwith finished third in our poll. He also scored 79% earlier in 2021 when Larry Lester polled the Sabre Negro League committee. John is a very worthy and underrated and relatively unknown candidate. How did you guys go about assessing some of the black baseball

candidates from prior to the formation of the Negro Leagues, where you might not have many or any reliable statistics as opposed to the ones that have now been reclassified as major league. Is that largely based on just a lot of digging through newspaper accounts at the time and things that other contemporaries said about them? I mean, I know that there's a lot of data gathering that's gone on with a player like John Donaldson, for instance. I guess I'm most interested in sort of how you even are able to assess who were the best players from that period. I guess I'm most interested in sort of how you even are able to assess who were the best players from that period. I mean, Bud Fowler, we know, right, because he was the first, right, in professional baseball that we know of. But with others at that time, I know it's a little tougher

if you can't just look it up on seam heads. Let me pick one because with a specific player, I can sort of talk with a little bit of sensibility. George Stovey, the first thing we look at there, the 1952 Courier poll didn't mention him, but in 2006, he wasn't among 94 players nominated for that ballot. nominated for that ballot. He did not make the ballot, but he does have statistics, very limited innings in seam heads. And really, seam heads is our go-to place for the statistical data. And his ERA plus is 221. Now, again, this is in limited appearances, but that's outstanding. And his war, his pitching war is 6.2. So both of those tell us a lot. Stovey, at the highest level of baseball he could get up to, the International League,

I believe he still holds the record in that league for most wins in a season. He won 40 games. And he was one of the black battery they had. The other half would have been Fleet Walker. That is one of the instances of where Jim Crow finally put up his barrier against African-Americans playing in organized ball. So that also was worthy of some mention. And of course, he does get 50% of the vote in the 41 for 21 poll. I don't know where he finished. I think he finished in the area. He's number 20. So he finishes 20th, and I think he's well-positioned to be a Hall of Famer after five or six other pitchers that are ahead of him, of course. Sean, I wanted to ask you, because you're in sort of a unique position

to opine on this, if there are lessons that we can draw from the experience of the families and descendants of Negro leaguers in terms of the current ballot where we're looking at live players, because I think that Dick Allen is the very tragic and most recent example of sort of failing to acknowledge someone while he's alive to enjoy that. And we saw the same thing with Buck O'Neill before him. So what lessons might we learn in terms of how the Hall should think about induction, not just for the players that the committee is concerned with, but more generally? Yeah. Like you mentioned a couple of two guys, Duck Allen, who actually was an endorser for the Josh Gibson to rename the MVP after Josh. And of course, like you mentioned, Buck O'Neill, who spoke on behalf of the 17 players that went in back in 2006.

Both are gone. Buck is going into the hall. You know, he's no longer here. Yeah. You know, it's tough. It's tough on the Negro League side because you look at it. We just celebrated last year our 100-year anniversary, right? And so there's not too many of these guys still around. It's sad. I think I know of Ron Teasley, who's in Detroit. He's 94 years old, played with the New York Cubans. And so when you talk about the descendants, it's mainly, you know,

it's not too many families. And then I'm sorry, too many players living. Right. And so that's tough right there. You know, we're in an era now where it's the families that's taking over and keeping that legacy alive for their relatives, their fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers. And so, you know, that's why I was saying it'd be great to have, you know, when you come up, when you talk about the Negro League ballots, the players with the ballots, it'd be great to have a family member or two involved in this process or as a voter. You know, I think we know these families, we know this history of the Negro League baseball players. And so I think we'd be strong candidates to be involved in this process

some kind of way or be involved as a vote. So I think that's one way they can hear our voice. And in the meantime, while we wait for more Negro Leagues players to be inducted, hopefully, what can be done or what is being done to bring attention to those players in other ways? And I know that you, Sean,

and of course, Bob Kendrick at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum have just brought so much visibility to players and of course, Sabres efforts and yours as well, Ted. So I guess getting into Cooperstown is important and certainly add some visibility, but I guess it's not the be all end all. And of course, we don't necessarily have to wait however many years it is until Negro Leaguers are eligible for induction again to keep telling their stories. Yeah, I'll start off, Ted. What I think, though, I mean, we're going to still do our part here with the Josh Gibson Foundation, of course, promoting Josh and the other great Negro League players, of course, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. I heard you mention earlier,

Ben, you know, next year is celebrating Josh's 50th anniversary of his Hall of Fame induction. And so we'll get a lot of media press around that. Of course, it's also Buck Leonard's 50-year anniversary as well. So you got two great New League baseball players celebrating their 50th anniversary as their nickname was the Thunder Twins. And so that's one way we'll be doing it. Of course, with this 42 for 41, you know, this will be an ongoing thing. I mean, we started it, like Ted said, back in November. We're only a month in. This will be a long, this will be a long, worthwhile campaign. And, you know, the goal will be, you know, like Ted mentioned, to get other committee members on this.

Hopefully get some other family members involved in this. hopefully get some other family members involved in this. One of the things that the family has done, we have started our own alliance, which is called the Negro Leagues Players and Families Alliance. And so with that being said, you'll hear more of us working together as one voice, promoting the Negro Leagues, promoting our descendants,

and just getting more awareness of these great players. And I would say this where I turn over to Ted, you know, you know, the pandemic, you know, we had a bad year in the pandemic in 2020. But I think it also brought a lot of us together. There's a lot of people I have met, I would never have met with this whole campaign process just going through the pandemic. A lot of things has changed during the pandemic. A lot of things has changed during the pandemic. A lot of things has changed during the whole Black Lives Matters movement. You know, some people feel as though that New York City statistics would not be going to Major League Baseball record books if it wasn't for the Black Lives Matter movement. And so, you know, the pandemic in 2020 was an interesting year. And we're going to try to capitalize on that, and Bray needs all these guys to like.

Ted, do you have anything to add to that? Well, yeah. We touched on, well, first of all, Sean's right on 42 for 21 is not going to be static. We're going to publish this list, and then, now here's where we do need to recruit others, because I'm not a writer. Gary's an excellent writer. What little I've read of Sean, he can write. I'm not a writer. But Gary's intent is for us to publish, monthly might be a little ambitious, but an article, of course, Ben, you certainly can submit. But we will be posting with an eye towards the hall, but not necessarily just the hall. So that's one aspect. But I wanted to comment about other improvements to the hall system that we can advocate.

advocate. And one, as Sean was talking about the makeup of the voters, their vet com typically has hall of famers, executives, and writers. And God bless them. All of them know their baseball, but the Negro Leagues go back now 75 years. So if you've watched them as a teenager, you're 93. So there's really not too many people who have a great knowledge there. So I think it's important to bring back, and this is an expression I don't like using, but a segregated committee, you know, segregated to Negro League expertise and a ballot segregated to Negro Leaguers only in order to get this job done right. These are players who were punished by segregation. And now they're punished by integration of a Hall of Fame ballot. And that shouldn't be allowed. There are 37 now players in the hall as Negro leaguers, with Bud and Buck just joining that list. from segregated ballots. Only Buck and Budd and Rube and Ray Dandridge went in from integrated ballots. So I think that's another improvement that can be made to the current system. As ugly a word as segregation is, I think it's necessary because of the history of the country,

think it's necessary because of the history of the country, unfortunately, prior to 47 and continuing through this day. As you note in the press release, you're not necessarily saying put all 42 people on your list in, although I guess you probably wouldn't object, but you also write there, even if all of those 42 were to be added to the Hall of Fame, it would still bring the percentage of Black and Latino players from the segregated era to 34%, which is 10 percentage points or 22% less than the 44% representation of Black and Latino players in the integrated era. So if you just go by the math, it seems like there is a lot of ground to make up there potentially. It seems like there is a lot of ground to make up there potentially. And of course, you did not have opportunities for a lot of black and Latino players to play during that era, at least at a high level in professional leagues. So I guess that makes it more difficult. But even so, there's a long way from proportional representation there and a lot of great candidates who are still outside the plaque room there. And as the press relief mentions, we're not looking for proportional representation. 30% would be an improvement, of course. But I don't feel that there's a, what's the old remedy, quota. I'm not looking for a quota system here because that would also limit the number of entries. And I'm not so sure 42 covers everyone. I just want to give a fair and just look at everyone and wherever it falls,

it falls. Certainly 17% doesn't do the job. Well, we wish you both the best with your efforts, and we will link to the press release and the list of players from the poll results. And of course, you can find out more about 42 for 21 at 42for21.org. You can also find the Josh Gibson Foundation at joshgibson.org. We have been speaking to Ted Knorr and Sean Gibson. Thanks very much, guys. Thank you. All right. We will take a quick break now.

And when we come back, we will be joined by Dr. Sally Yerkovich of Columbia University, who will tell us what the field of museum ethics has to say about how to handle the BBWA Hall of Fame ballot. about it. So come on in It's a small price to pay I won't refuse Those who have lost their way All right, we are joined now by Dr. Sally Yurkovich. She has many positions and accomplishments of which I will list just a few. She is the Director of Special Projects

at the American Scandinavian Foundation. She's also a professor of museum anthropology at Columbia University. She wrote the book about museum ethics, a practical guide to museum ethics, and she is also a former director of the Institute of Museum Ethics. You are probably sensing a theme here, and she knows a lot about museum ethics, which is why we wanted to have her here today. Dr. Yurkovich, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. So can you tell us a little bit about museum ethics, which I was not especially familiar

with myself before it came to my attention during the whole Hall of Fame discussion. So could you tell us a little bit about when and how it developed and basically what it concerns? Sure. Actually, it developed quite early in the U.S. In 1925, what was then called the American Association for Museums wrote a first code of ethics for people who worked in museums. The idea was to establish professional standards that could

be recognized throughout the country and also to assure the public certain standards were being upheld by museums. That code has been revised over the years, as you might imagine, most recently in around 2000. And I believe it's actually under consideration right now because of all of the changes that have happened over the past couple of years. It's become clear that a lot of the professional codes of ethics that apply to museums are not as up-to-date as they might be. But there also, there is an International Council of Museums, which works with museums worldwide, and they also have a code of ethics that is, exhibit their collections, and how they provide access to their institution, all sorts of things like that. So it covers the whole gamut of working in a museum. of working in a museum. So I know that Ben is going to hope that you can give him some guidance on how he ought to engage with the Hall of Fame as a voter. But I'm curious before we get there,

if we can take a step back, sort of what institutions like the Hall of Fame, which have a sort of historical obligation right there trying to present the history of baseball so that folks can come to the museum and understand it, but then also to valorize certain individuals throughout the game's history as being sort of exceptional. When you're dealing with an institution like that, which has sort of multiple missions, what are some of the thornier sort of ethical considerations that the individuals trying to run an institution like that might have to grapple with? It's an interesting question. I think, I mean, you're basically dealing with an institution

like Cooperstown, you're basically dealing with a history museum. So you're dealing with, you know, obviously people who are living, but also people who lived in the past, and you're concerned about telling their stories accurately. So Cooperstown shares some of the challenges that all history museums have. Museums are trusted as reliable sources of information by the public. And so one of the challenges that museums have is ensuring that what they tell the public is accurate and, in the best cases, up to date. It gets tricky with history because we know things now that people didn't know in the past. We know things about people who lived in the past that either things that weren't widely known are more widely known now. So, for example, sexual orientation is one of the big issues. Sometimes

we have discovered that individuals who lived in the past had relationships with people of the same sex. And when we look at that now, we see that that makes sense in terms of how they lived their lives and how they really accomplished what they accomplished. It wasn't known then. We know it now. So the History Museum has to ask the question, do we say anything or do we just talk about this person as that person has always been talked about?

So it's the thorny issues come when, you know, we've moved beyond what used to be thought and we think differently. And we have to walk a very fine line, not imposing our values on the past, but making sure that we provide an accurate picture of what happened in the past. And there's been sort of a sweeping societal re-examination of some of these issues, not just in museums or halls of fame, but with monuments or statues. Who do we want to memorialize? And if our current values don't reflect an earlier era's values, then do we leave those things as a reflection of those times, or do we say it no longer reflects these times, and so we're going to remove that. So that has kind of come to baseball just in the past few years here too. And baseball often reflects society in some small microcosmic way. So you alluded to some of those shifts in museums and museum ethics over the past couple of years that are leading to a re-examination of those standards. Can you get into any specific

samples or just the general issues that have sparked that conversation? Sure. Well, certainly museums are now much more concerned about sustainability than they ever have been. And so, I mean, as everyone becomes concerned about climate change, museums become concerned about how to ensure that they're operating in a way that they're not doing further damage to the environment. So sustainability is a big issue, as is diversity and access. Over the past 20 or 30, maybe 40 years, museums have gradually become more and more aware of the need to be active educators and to ensure that the museum, the exhibits that they do and the programs that they provide are really accessible to

everyone. And I don't mean accessible just in the physical sense, but also just of interest and relevance to everyone. So that means in many cases that museums have had to slightly shift the kinds of things that they are thinking about and have had to look at their collections in new ways to see how something that appealed to a white audience in the 1950s might appeal to a much more diverse audience today. So diversity is a big issue. And obviously, after all of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and concerns that have arisen over the past year and some, those issues have become more important. Also, the independence of museums is an issue. There are places in the world where museums are not allowed to act as independently as they have in the past. And that's independently from governments as well as independently from donors.

So a museum is concerned about maintaining its integrity. And part of that means having a voice that's not controlled by an outside force. So those are just some of the issues. They're not really related to baseball, but they're related to all of our lives. Well, and I think that they relate to the Hall of Fame. When you look at it as an institution, it is trying to chronicle baseball, which has, you know, I think moments that we can all be proud of, but also has moments in its history that reflected, you know, deep systemic prejudice. I'm curious, as museums are sort of going through the process of more fully grappling with some of the issues that you raised, how much work is being done to sort of

reflect back on existing catalogs and exhibits to make sure that they are accurately portraying the world as it as it sort of happened then, and that it isn't presenting sort of an overly rosy view. I think the Hall has earnestly endeavored to do that, but I imagine that they would probably also say it's still sort of a work in progress to make sure that they are really telling baseball's story as accurately as possible. Yeah, I think it's going to vary from institution to institution. And certainly the museums that have more financial resources are going to tackle these issues more

readily than others, because especially when you're dealing with exhibits, exhibits are expensive and making changes in them sometimes can be, you know, can require a certain amount of investment of not just time, but also money. But I think that museums are really taking a much closer look at themselves and trying to think beyond the obvious ways of thinking about what they're doing and ensuring that they are, you know, reflecting the concerns of contemporary audiences. It's not easy because we're so used to thinking in, you know, sort of more conventional ways. One of the really big issues right now, especially in European museums, is decolonization, which means, you know, sort of getting out of the colonial mentality that many countries

have. I mean, this is an issue for us as well, but to decolonize themselves, to decolonize their collections, to try not to assume the position of power all the time and to share authority with their audiences. This is not an easy transition to make for museums. So I think I know that in some institutions it's being tackled right now, and I would imagine it's going to take quite a while for it to be the case across the board. So the question of separating the art from the artists or not separating them but presenting both aspects, that's something that we all wrestle with in our personal lives. If there's someone whose work we like and then we have to decide do we still support them if they do something disturbing in their personal life. I imagine that this is something that museums have had to wrestle with too. Do you decide to exhibit someone's work without providing

that context if there is some extra information or do you do both? Do you say here's the painting and here's the person who painted it and now your eyes are open and you know. Are there any standards or practices when it comes to that? Have there been changes in how museums present this information? This would obviously be relevant to the Hall of Fame if you're talking about, say, Barry Bonds, and you're wondering, can you separate his baseball performance from his history of domestic violence allegations, for instance? Yeah, well, when you're dealing with art, you're really dealing with probably three different factors or three different things that you want to consider.

One is sort of the moral criticism of the artist and his behavior. The second would be the aesthetic criticism of his artwork, his or her artwork. And the third would be the moral criticism of the artwork itself. moral criticism of the artwork itself. So what that would mean would be, I mean, if a work of art is unquestionably, aesthetically excellent, but you know, well, let me take Picasso, for example. His work is recognized as really important. Yet, when you find out more about Picasso's life, there are a lot of things in his life that one wouldn't want to admire or to set up as a, you know, example to follow. That hasn't really affected the display of his work, although probably in exhibitions that show some of his work, there would be interpretation or labels

in the exhibit that would acknowledge some of the issues that he had and that may have affected his work. So in that sense, there can be a line, an easy line drawn between the two. But in other cases, it's not quite so easy. For example, and this is actually the instances of this I know are more in photography than they are in painting, but there are probably some examples of this in painting as well. There are some really wonderful photographers who have taken pictures of their children. And in one case in particular, a male photographer featured his two daughters in a number of photographs that are, again, considered to be excellent photographs and excellent works of art. It was discovered that he had sexually abused his daughters,

sexually abused his daughters. And the museum who was exhibiting his work decided that they needed to talk about that, that they couldn't do an exhibition of his work without mentioning this fact. And so they did that. They provided the context for the work, but they didn't not show the work because of that. So they were able to sort of balance the two. It was controversial at the time. There were some people who didn't like the fact that they did that, but the museum felt that they couldn't not do that. And I think this is where the Hall of Fame finds itself in sort of a unique spot and one that requires us to think really carefully about how we engage with it as an institution because part of its project is the museum where you get to go and see the exhibits and i think that they do a good deal of work to

try to contextualize baseball through time and tell you know the uncomfortable and unsavory parts of its stories and then we have the hall of fame where you know depending on the year it's not just that you're acknowledging the baseball prowess of the folks who are inducted, but you're potentially giving a stage to a living person to respond to the honor, which I think is part of what complicates this question for someone like Ben, who has to vote on this in a couple of days. And so I wonder how, if there are other examples that you can think of where museums are doing both of these things and how they grapple with that because we can't, you know, it's hard to put an explainer up while Barry Bonds is giving his Hall of Fame speech

or Curt Schilling is giving his Hall of Fame speech saying, also, on the state, Kurt said these things are pretty bad. So how might the Hall think about dealing with that? And how might voters think about how to balance those considerations? Well, I think they would think about whether what the person has done has been done in their private life or in their life as a baseball player. And I'm saying that, I mean, in the case of artists who have done something wrong, unless that something wrong is expressed in their art

and their art becomes questionable, there's not a relationship. I mean, you can sort of draw a line if their art is just beautiful and doesn't relate to murdering someone or abusing someone or whatever, then it might be okay. But in the case, for example, of someone, another photographer who turned out to be, who did, again, photographs of young children that were quite beautiful, but it was discovered that he was beautiful and probably erotic. He was discovered to be a pedophile. And what has happened in that case is that because his art is related to what he did that's socially unacceptable, the museums who hold his work have taken the work out of their online collections so that it can't be used by other people in an inappropriate way. And they've not really exhibited the work at any recent times. So they've sort of drawn the line there with the sort of unacceptable behavior that relates to the artwork. Yeah. I mentioned to you the example via email of Kirby Puckett, who was inducted into the

Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001. And then over the next couple of years, a whole slew of reports came out that revealed his history of allegations of harassment and abuse and so on yet if you go to his plaque at the hall of fame or if you visit his page on the hall of fame website there's not only no mention of that but there are mentions of his character in a positive light his youthful exuberance his outgoing personality his ever-present smile his leadership skills and so on and that was all part of who he was at the ballpark. But if you didn't do your own research, you'd come away from his plaque thinking, Kirby Puckett, what a really great guy. And maybe he wasn't in all walks of life.

So there's this other side to the story that the Hall isn't sharing and that could get lost if you're just a baseball fan who goes there and thinks, oh, this is a role model. This is someone to look up to. And, you know, he was enshrined before those things came to light. And so I guess that is along the lines of the example you were just citing, although not the same offenses. the plaque or display of a person who is already in in some ways and that's obviously a big can of worms and if you were to do that with players in the baseball hall of fame it would go well beyond kirby puckett so i get that it's a headache and that you could just say it's a baseball museum it's a baseball hall of fame we're talking about the baseball not the other stuff but it sounds as if there's been some movement at at least in some cases, to revisit those things even after the fact, potentially. Yeah. Halls of Fame have a really tough role because they're, by nature, supposed to be celebratory. And so it's a tough position to be in because we know so much more about people now than we used to.

And it's hard to find a perfect person. Yeah. And you were just saying you can draw a distinction between things that did or didn't affect the work. So the things that Barry Bonds' ex-wife and ex-girlfriend said he said or did to them didn't affect his baseball playing. friend said he said or did to them didn't affect his baseball playing and there were other controversial things about perry pons that may have affected his baseball playing that probably would ultimately be more likely to keep him out but you could separate those things except for this pesky character clause and the fact that you are instructed to consider integrity i guess you could say it is in a baseball context primarily, but that's what

gives me pause, I think, is that if there were no character clause and voters were instructed explicitly, just consider the baseball stuff, forget about everything else, that would still be maybe morally dubious, but at least it would be following the instructions as written. Whereas if you have this and you're voting for him or you're inducting him, then either it's a tacit endorsement of his character or you're saying, well, his character isn't great, but he was so good at baseball that it just outweighs all of that stuff. So it's really tough to know how to handle. Right. It's very tough. Right.

It's really tough to know how to handle. Right. It's very tough. And as Meg mentioned, there's the issue of Barry Bonds is a living person and he would show up and give a speech. And there's some veneration and honor that goes along with this title. And people get to see you on display and you get to sit with the Hall of Famers and you get a standing ovation probably. I don't know if he would, but most Hall of Famers would. And so it's sort of whitewashing the off-field actions potentially. And I guess there's not a Hall of Fame ethics discipline that is specifically focused on that, but I wonder whether there are any parallels in the Baseball Hall of

Fame, probably one of the better known Hall of Fames, at least in this country. But I know there are others that don't consider that aspect of the person's personality or off-field performance. Yeah, it doesn't. I don't know of any, but it certainly does complicate things. So it's tough. I can't think of any others. Do you think that the hall might be well served to sort of pick a lane here? Because it does seem like part of the conundrum for the institution, you know, even setting aside the voters for a moment is that you do have this like celebratory aspect to it where these guys get plaques and we give them an induction weekend

and they are sort of feted for their accomplishments and then you have a more traditional museum that is trying to sort of provide an an honest and forthright historical record of the game. Do you think that part of this might be resolved if they did one or the other, but didn't try to keep doing both? Could be. I mean, the other thing would be to try to address this more in the museum itself. You know, as well, I see that it has become a big issue for people. And it just may be something that the museum would want to try to tackle. So assuming that people who go to the Hall of Fame also go through the museum, you know, you might have some balance there between the two. But yes, it's very difficult to do both.

And would it be especially an issue if you have a museum that really caters to all ages and to kids. And, you know, if you're walking through the plaque room and the plaque says, so-and-so hit 762 home runs, and also here's what his ex-wife said to him, you know, and it's like, hey, buddy, let's go look at your favorite baseball players. And then suddenly they're being presented with all of these heinous things that players did or were accused of. I can see how maybe that wouldn't be the best museum experience. And maybe there is some better way to present that

information. Or yeah, maybe there is some sort of specification. You walk into the plaque room and it says, hey, these are just the best baseball players and that's it. And if you want to find out more about who they were as people, go to this website or go to this room in this other wing of the museum or whatever it is. Yeah. Or go find out some of the issues or challenges that they faced during their careers. Go to the other room. The other thing is that you also need to be really careful about allegations as opposed to established truths or or if there are those, or facts about someone. I think we get caught up often in allegations without really understanding

whether, or without hearing the other side. Yeah, it's a tough issue because the standards, even within baseball and within the culture at large have really changed to the point where these things about Barry Bonds when they came out, maybe they were news, but they were overshadowed subsequently by his exploits on the field and also the PED scandal. And now I think there are a lot of people who aren't even aware of them. Whereas with a current player, when these things come out now, and unlike what was the case during his career, there are actual methods and measures that are put in place and players can be suspended for these offenses or even allegations. And it really does tarnish an active player's reputation in a way that I think for a retired player,

it's all in the past. Unless there's something else that dredges it up again, then a lot of people just aren't aware of it. There was a big report about the player Yasiel Puig this week and about some private secret agreements that he had made with women who had made allegations of abuse and they just came to light. And everyone's saying Yasiel Puig sounds like a monster and he does but there are very similar things that players on the hall of fame ballot did that people don't really talk about because there's so much else to talk about with them so it's tough and it sounds like museum ethics does not necessarily hold a one-size-fits-all answer there isn't exactly like a handbook that the baseball hall of fame could flip open and, here's exactly how we should handle this and here's how we should display the plaques, etc.

Yeah, no, unfortunately, it doesn't do that. It just sort of helps you focus on where the problems are and hopefully gives you some values to use in thinking about how to resolve the issues. Right. Okay. Well, is there anything else in the discipline of museum ethics or your experience or any specific cases that have come up that you think might have some bearing or similarities to this situation? Or are we on our own here? Ben is desperate to figure out a way to know. I know. I wish there were something, you know, that would help clarify the whole situation for you. But I don't think there is. I mean, everybody has to deal with this on their own and try and figure out how to straddle the issues that come up. And it's tough. It's tough. I know that you're the chair of the International Council of Museums Ethics Committees. So if you could maybe convene the committee and have a special session devoted to Baseball Hall of Fame

voting and send us some guidance, that would be great. I think they would love to think about the problem. Okay. Well, I always enjoy when we have guests on from different fields and have a multidisciplinary podcast here. So thank you. It's good to know that these issues are being raised in other areas as well, even if there are no easy answers. So we have been talking to Dr. Sally Yurkovich.

Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. And good luck in making your decisions. Thank you. I don't envy you. All right. Thanks to all of our guests for joining us today, and thanks to you for listening. When we finished recording, Dr. Yurkovich said that probably my best bet is to try to separate the baseball and some of the off-field activities that are unrelated to baseball. That would at

least resolve some of this conflict, but in a way it would create some conflict too. I certainly see the merits of that approach, and I wouldn't blame anyone for pursuing it. And maybe I ultimately will decide to do something similar. But as of now, it's still sort of given me pause. I'm sorry we didn't get to talk to Gary Gillette on our first segment, but you can hear him with Sean and Ted on last week's episode of Fangraphs Audio, and maybe we can have him on some time to talk about other topics because he's been involved in many other preservation and restoration efforts. He has helped lead the restoration of the historic Hamtramck Stadium in Michigan, one of the few surviving sites where Negro Leagues baseball was played. It was the home

of the Detroit Stars, and I believe it's reopening next spring. I'll link to some info on that on our show page. And I also wanted to shout out the work of another Negro League's researcher named Eric Shalek, who has done a lot of really complex work on developing major league equivalencies for Negro League's players. For those of you who aren't familiar with MLEs, they're a Bill James creation, and they're usually applied to current minor leaguers. So you can say, what are so-and-so's stats in AA equivalent to in the majors if that player had been promoted? And Eric Shalick has developed a method to do sort of the same thing for Negro League players to try to figure out if baseball had been integrated at the time, what might their stats have looked like? What would their careers have looked like? And I'll link to some resources for that too. Maybe we can talk to him sometime,

but it's interesting stuff. Would Cool Papa Bell have had 3,366 hits? Would Josh Gibson, who of course only played through age 34, have had 435 homers? So it's translating that performance not only to different leagues and contexts and offensive environments, but also extrapolating over longer schedules, etc. You still have to do some mental math to figure out, okay, seasons were this much shorter, and maybe the offensive environment or the talent level was a little different in this way or that way. So it's an approximation, but it can be an eye-opening one. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, and the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount, or a larger monthly amount or an annual amount to help keep the podcast going and help keep it ad-free and get themselves access

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We'll roll on, roll on Cutting it fine with the clock on Papers for you Carry on working there Meet the museum And you in the winter gardens