By Cliff Rold
Somewhere out there are three baseball writers who thought Ken Griffey Jr. didn’t deserve first-ballot entry to the Hall of Fame.
They saw a player with the sweetest swing of his generation, over 600 home runs, over 500 doubles, and over 1800 RBIs, and thought, “maybe next year.”
About all that can be said for that is, well, its tradition. No one has ever received a unanimous call to the hall in baseball. No one ever will. Some fall back on the tradition of not voting anyone in the first time. Even Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth didn’t get 100% induction votes.
Those voters, practically speaking, might have looked at a Griffey and thought, ‘well, he’s in even without my vote so (insert player here) could use my check mark.”
To many it is most easily summed up as baseball probably just having the stingiest voting of any major sports hall of fame. The problem isn’t Griffey missing votes as much as it is guys like Curt Schilling and Mike Mussina not getting enough. That doesn’t even envelope the whole issue of the PED era which someone else can contemplate.
It is in stark contrast to the most recognized hall of fame for the sweet science: the International Boxing Hall of Fame (IBHOF) in Canastota, New York.
In many years, boxing’s hall is ripe for controversy in the other direction. To be sure there are voters who would fall on the baseball-esque stingy side. For the most part, they wouldn’t have voted for Ray Mancini’s 2015 induction or Arturo Gatti’s in 2013. They still bring up, with disdain, the induction of Barry McGuigan in 2005.
The stingy side doesn’t always win in boxing.
In baseball, it’s a super majority selection process. Players must appear on 75% of ballots to be inducted. IBHOF voting is plurality based. Under current standards, the top three vote getters get in. Vote totals are not announced.
Some years, the class is a lock. 2014 was a year like that. Almost everyone assumed Oscar De La Hoya, Felix Trinidad, and Joe Calzaghe were going in first ballot. They did. It would be no surprise if the first two likely appeared on every ballot and Calzaghe probably wasn’t far off.
Other years, it’s easy to imagine that votes could be all over the place. Debate among boxing writers about the merits of Gatti was ample enough that it would be no surprise if he fell well short of something like 75%. It wouldn’t matter in boxing. He could have been on 40% of ballots. As long as that was one of the three highest totals, he was in.
We don’t know the numbers. We know the result.
Would boxing’s hall be better off with a standard closer to baseball’s?
It’s of course not as simple as yes or no. Boxing and baseball is not an apples to apples comparison. Baseball has an international component but, when its writers are voting, they are predominantly looking at the historical figures of Major League Baseball. The best of the Negro Leagues received their due over time. Japan’s Sadaharu Oh, their home run king, never has.
Boxing isn’t limited the same way, at least not by rule. The overwhelming number of boxing hall of famers made their bones in the US, or at least on US TV but the sport is a global endeavor. The voting bloc of the Boxing Writers Association of America insures that this eyes-based tilt will continue. It is not US-market exclusive. A standard more like baseball’s might make it look that way.
Forget the 75% standard. If boxing adopted the baseball rules of dropping anyone who doesn’t receive a 5% appearance rate in their first ballot, many international names and lighter division fighters would lose their chance before a case could be properly made.
Recent years have seen long overdue inductions for Jung-Koo Chang, Myung-Woo Yuh, and Hilario Zapata (just elected in December). Along with Michael Carbajal and Humberto Gonzalez, they make up arguably the five greatest fighters in the history of the 108 lb. class.
Carbajal and Gonzalez both went in on the first ballot. The others were eligible for well over a decade and more apiece before they got the call. Carbajal and Gonzalez carved their fame stateside; Carbajal was a US Olympian to boot. It’s not a coincidence.
The other three needed protracted lobbying efforts from interested fight scribes like Lee Groves, Marty Mulcahey, and Steve Farhood to make their case. Eventually, those cases won out. Baseball has a veteran’s committee to overcome writer omissions, but it’s never the same. Despite the wait, ultimately Chang, Yuh, and Zapata were vindicated under the same voting process as their peers.
It wasn’t fair they waited so long. With a 5% threshold, there wouldn’t have been time to build their case. Worse than unfair, that would have been unjust.
It would be as unjust as the still excluded candidacy of Thai flyweight Pone Kingpetch. The lazier sort might look at his record (28-7) and be missing the context of his career. Kingpetch was the first world champion from Thailand, opening up what became one of boxing’s most consistent markets. He was a three-time world champion when there was only one champion in his division.
Kingpetch defeated two hall of famers for crowns (Pascual Perez for his first, Fighting Harada for his second in a rematch) and defeated another worthy battler who has lingered on the ballot for years (Hiroyuki Ebihara) for his third.
He belongs.
Given changes to the balloting, his chances now come bi-yearly on the old timers ballot. It was enough to get Yoko Gushiken in. If the previously mentioned aren’t the five best ever at 108 lbs. it’s because Gushiken belongs in the conversation with them. Kingpetch may yet get his turn at bat.
The focus here is on smaller fighters because they often have the biggest struggle for recognition and fight in division’s with less US attention. They are not alone. Middle and light Heavyweight great Lloyd Marshall took years to be inducted. Middleweight Rodrigo Valdez didn’t even make the ballot for years. Lightweight great Esteban De Jesus never has.
Some would argue that the ‘three get in’ rule is a problem. In terms of merit cases, it sometimes might be. Boxing doesn’t have the metric measurements of baseball so defining a hall of fame career can be wildly interpreted. For practical purposes the IBHOF doesn’t have the same sort of economic nets baseball plays with. It needs induction classes. Like boxing itself, it survives on events. So sometimes, when the right year allows, a Gatti is in because it wasn’t a De La Hoya-Trinidad-Calzaghe kind of year.
Is that really a problem?
Gatti drew a loving crowd to hall of fame weekend. This scribe didn’t vote for him. Admittedly, this ballot leans to the stingy side. It doesn’t mean it’s an outrage when it goes the other way. Any hall of fame is ultimately just a museum to honor the past.
When one looks at the walls of the IBHOF, they are seeing most of the greats who belong there with new names being added each year. They will learn about the epic career of Harry Greb and the emotional triumph of McGuigan against the backdrop of Northern Irish turmoil.
And when fans attend the baseball hall, the three people that didn’t vote for Griffey won’t matter. He’ll have his plaque on the wall where it belongs.
Which standard is right? Does there have to be a right answer? Or is part of the fun really just getting to argue about it until the next class is available to be voted on? It seems like both could do a better job making sure that those who belong are enshrined.
Let the standards debate rage on.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
