A Flood of New Hall of Famers, Followed by a Grinding Halt

September 07, 2021
Sport

“The intent was to vote into the Hall of Fame such outstanding performers in the old Negro leagues who, in the opinion of the committee, would have made it anyway had they not been deprived of playing in the major leagues,” a committee spokesman told United Press International upon the committee’s disbanding. “We are satisfied that mission has been accomplished.”

The responsibility to elect Negro leagues players shifted to the Hall’s Veterans Committee, but with Roy Campanella as the only Black member, the committee was hamstrung by its lack of knowledge of Black baseball. “I rely on Roy Campanella,” Joe Cronin, the former American League president and Veterans Committee member told Newsday in January 1980. “He played with some of those men. I only saw them in Pittsburgh when I was a rookie when they played before our home games.”

Buck O’Neil, who would go on to help found the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City in 1990, joined the Hall’s Veterans Committee in 1981. That year, Rube Foster, founder of the 1920 Negro National League, was elected, followed by Ray Dandridge, an All-Star third baseman, six years later. A 1995 rule change allowed the Veterans Committee to elect four candidates instead of two, including a single Negro leagues player. Between 1995 and 2001, Leon Day, Bill Foster, Willie Wells, Bullet Joe Rogan, Smokey Joe Williams, Turkey Stearnes, and Hilton Smith all earned the votes necessary for induction.

It was progress, but like all prior attempts to correct the Hall’s historical record, it wasn’t enough. In 2006, with the Special Committee on African-American Baseball, things were going to be different.