p> On September 8, the Baseball Hall of Fame will hold its first exaltation ceremony in more than two years with a scaled-down midweek event in Cooperstown, New York. In addition to sports work pioneer Marvin Miller, three former players will join the ranks of the immortals: Derek Jeter, Ted Simmons and Larry Walker.
Among the players, Jeter was an obvious candidate, always destined to be with the greats of the game. The cases of the other two onboard players were slower: Walker was on the ballot for up to 10 years before finally breaking the 75% threshold. Simmons retired in 1988 before being signed by a committee of Hall veterans at the 2019 winter meetings.
When they did it, they did it. The door to the Hall of Fame opens in only one direction. But ultimately, why did Walker and Simmons finally part ways with other players whose careers were of similar quality? And if they are now members of the Hall of Fame, why did they have to wait so long?
Would Walker have gotten in earlier if the riddle that is Coors Field hadn’t played such an important role in his career? Would Simmons have succeeded if advances in analysis had not come to revisit his place in the historical pecking order? Now that doesn’t matter anymore. They will speak in Cooperstown on September 8.
This is not to denigrate the exploits of Simmons or Walker, but how far does Walker’s career really separate from, say, Minnie Minoso? Or Simmons by Jorge Posada? What about all the other players who are at or near the same level of performance? It really could come down to what Bob Dylan called a simple twist of fate, something that did or did not happen.
These players remind us that very often, context is king. Each of these players was as good as many of those who made it to Cooperstown. And with a little narrative adjustment to their story, maybe that’s where they would be today. Either way, his underlying abilities remain the same. Their fate in the Hall is not determined by ability, but by how we perceive that ability.
But what if those perceptions were filtered through a different lens?
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