On Monday, the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee (whose official name, according to Wikipedia, is actually 15 words long) will announce that up to five of the 10 players and executives on the Veterans Committee ballot will be inducted into Cooperstown in July. Any candidate who gets the support of at least 12 of the 16 committee members (i.e., 75 percent—just like the main BBWAA balloting) will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Rather than wait for the results to be announced, we here at Beyond the Box Score decided to take matters into our own hands and held a mock vote, just as we did for the BBWAA's end-of-season awards. Our BtBWAA Veterans Committee was just like the real one, but instead of Hank Aaron and Brooks Robinson we have a bunch of nerds glued to our calculator screens in our moms' basements.
Eleven BtBWAA writers cast ballots for our election, so the magic number was nine votes, or 82 percent. Check the results after the jump.
| Ron Santo | 100% |
| Minnie Minoso | 73% |
| Ken Boyer | 46% |
| Luis Tiant | 46% |
| Gil Hodges | 18% |
| Jim Kaat | 18% |
| Charlie Finley | 9% |
| Tony Oliva | 9% |
| Buzzie Bavasi | 0% |
| Allie Reynolds | 0% |
Congratulations, Mr. Santo: if we had any authority, you would be unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame (hopefully the real vote will produce a similar result). Minoso just barely misses the cutoff, and while Boyer and Tiant were pretty far from induction they still got significant support. Meanwhile, Bavasi and Reynolds didn't get any votes.
If anyone's interested, I voted for Santo, Minoso, and Tiant. Santo was a no-brainer, and while Minoso and Tiant required more thought I stand by my votes for them.
The hardest decision for me was Boyer. I went back and forth on him multiple times before ultimately leaving him off my ballot. He's a borderline candidate, but he falls just short in my eyes. You can give him some extra credit for being significantly better than some other already-enshrined third basemen—it's only fair, I suppose—but if being more deserving than Freddie Lindstrom becomes the new benchmark for Cooperstown, you'd better be ready to cast plaques for Ray Lankford and Jason Kendall.