Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
January 10, 2009
Vote for the Hall

New York Newsday is running a Hall of Fame poll. Feel free to go vote and work against the New York bias of the readers.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:08 PM | All-Time Greats | TrackBack (0)
Comments

"New York bias"?? That's weak. Except for Rickey (95.8%); no former Yankee/Met (Mattingly, Raines, Tommy John, Lee Smith, Strawberry, Orosco, or Mo Vaughn) has even cracked 50% of the voting.

Posted by: Crafty Lefty at January 11, 2009 02:47 AM

You beat me to it, Crafty Lefty. Not one player on the list who ever played for a NY team got even 50% of the vote. The only one close is Raines, who should definitely be in. Not only that, but one of the Yankee nemeses, Rice, did get more than 50%.

The most telling case is Mattingly who is a NY icon but who only received 38.7% of the vote. The notion of an east coast bias or NY bias in award voting is not only untrue, it is perversely wrong as NY tends to underrepresented in such votes. And in this case, even a NY publication does not draw a clear NY bias. On the national scale the refusal to give extra credit to NY players is even more pronounced as any review of MVP, Cy Young and HOF ballots makes clear, despite an occasional exception.

Posted by: Bob R. at January 11, 2009 08:45 AM

When I looked a the poll last night, the percentages were higher. These things do change over time.

Posted by: David PInto at January 11, 2009 09:01 AM

Actually, I think the voters there are doing pretty well. I voted with the majority on everyone except that I also voted for Dale Murphy and Alan Tramell.

Yes, that means I'd vote for Jim Rice. OBP be damned, he really was one of the most exciting hitters of his time. Everything stopped when Rice was up.

Posted by: Gary at January 11, 2009 07:42 PM
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