Baseball’s Hall a study in promotional finesse
Brian Costello, The Hockey News
There are a lot of critics out there lampooning the Baseball
Hall of Fame’s induction process, yet it’s still a far
better system than the one used in hockey.
That’s because the baseball process is relatively
transparent. We’re told who’s eligible and we see the
voting results. We may not always agree with what the baseball
writers decide as a group, but at least there’s discussion,
debate and interest.
If only it worked that way at the Hockey Hall of Fame. The
June announcement for hockey is always so dry and dictatorial.
Let’s compare the two.
Process
In baseball, 539 writers can vote for up to 10
Hall-eligible candidates. At least 75 percent approval is needed to
get in and five percent to remain on the ballot the next year.
In hockey, there are 18 members on the selection committee
and at least 75 percent approval (14 votes) is needed for a player
to get inducted.
I have no quibble with the difference in the make up of the
panel. The members of hockey’s selection committee are all
highly qualified former players, executives or established members
of the media. In fact, I’d rather have that than leave it in
the hands of the media, many of which are credible, but some not so
much.
I do like the larger sample group in baseball, though. In
hockey, all it takes is for a few committee members to have a
grudge against a former player and that player isn’t going to
get in.
Transparency
In baseball, we see a complete listing of all
the first-time eligible players, plus the holdovers. So you can
actually track progress from year to year.
Take this year’s inductee, Andre Dawson, for example.
He was first eligible in 2002 and picked up 45.3 percent of the
vote. In years following, his percentage went from 50 to 50 to 52.3
to 61 to 56.7 to 65.9 to 67 to 77.9 this year.
Bert Blyleven came oh-so-close this year at 74.2 percent. His
numbers have gradually risen in the 14 years he’s been up for
consideration. Regardless of whether or not you think Dawson or
Blyleven should be in, it’s a sport watching the process and
the results.
In hockey, we’re told who got in and nothing else.
Hockey made the switch to this cloak of complete secrecy in
1999 when a former player who didn’t quite make the cut
complained and said it was an embarrassment to have his name
besmirched as not good enough for the Hall.
I’ve never quite understood how a player can play 1,000
games in front of thousands of spectators, some of whom are booing
him, then call it an embarrassment because he wasn’t quite
bestowed with hockey’s ultimate honor.
But the Hall caved anyway and now we don’t find out
anything other than who got it. Is that important, you ask? Not
critical, but fans of players such as Pavel Bure or Doug Gilmour or
Dino Ciccarelli or Mike Richter or Adam Oates would love to know if
they were close to making it when they became first-time eligible.
As it stands now, we don’t even learn if they were nominated.
In a world of mass marketing and a growing number of
entertainment alternatives all trying to grab a share of the
consumer dollar/interest, the Hockey Hall of Fame is moving
backwards because its selection committee has zero sense of
promotional acumen.
Brian Costello is The Hockey News’s senior special
editions editor and a regular contributor to THN.com. You can find
his blog each weekend.
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