Reflections of twelve Hall of Famers still on temporary display
No matter how old a man happens to be, one thing is sure. The baseball players have deteriorated since his youth. Baseball is the last popular team sport played by people of normal size: every shape actually. The geometry of the game has held up for 114 years, and the rules are basically unchanged. So each generation is measured against the same rough marks on the barn. Though it seems unreasonable to hold that the spectacular athletic improvement calculable in other sports does not apply here, most baseball followers are statistical, not logical. Many are sure to mention that there are ten more major league teams now than in 1962, and therefore, in a way, 250 bush leaguers at large. Certainly baseball no longer enjoys first call on the country's best athletes. Today, Flatbush's Duke Snider, like Stanford's John Elway, might have been persuaded to toss a football.
For all this, the lament that ballplayers used to be better remains mostly just a feeling, influenced by modern irritants. Pharmaceutical reports in the sports section have grown longer than the box scores, and money has impinged on the game past the point of cynicism. We look back on impoverished players longingly and regard the present lightly. Awe is reserved for memories, and not always even our own, sometimes our fathers'.
When the Hall of Fame season collides with the dog days of a baseball August, the feeling is emphasized. Two weeks ago in Cooperstown, N.Y., a buckskin village celebrated as the leafy laboratory of Abner Doubleday, Baltimore and Detroit Third Basemen Brooks Robinson and George Kell, San Francisco Pitcher Juan Marichal and Dodger Manager Walter Alston went into the Hall. Just 149 players are enshrined, only 15 having been beckoned on the first wave of the Baseball Writers' Association. (Ballots are cast five years after a player retires and for up to 15 years after that until he receives 75% of some 400 votes or is trundled off to "the Oldtimers Committee.") A mere 65 have been elected by the writers.
Yet, at this instant, there are at least a dozen, and perhaps a couple more, active players with certifiable Hall of Fame credentials,* who will go in easily, almost automatically; not players just well on course like Kansas City's George Brett or San Diego's Steve Garvey; not players with evident Hall of Fame skills like Baltimore's Eddie Murray, Atlanta's Dale Murphy or Milwaukee's Robin Yount. But cinch Hall of Famers on temporary display outdoors: Cincinnati Catcher Johnny Bench, California Outfielder Reggie Jackson, California First Baseman Rod Carew, Philadelphia First Baseman Pete Rose, Philadelphia Second Baseman Joe Morgan, Boston First Baseman Carl Yastrzemski and six pitchers, Philadelphia's Steve Carlton, Houston's Nolan Ryan, Kansas City's Gaylord Perry, the New York Mets' Tom Seaver, Baltimore's Jim Palmer and the Chicago Cubs' Ferguson Jenkins.