The Wiffle Ball finally entered the National Toy Hall of Fame this year; hopefully, Seattle Mariners great Edgar Martinez will get his due in Baseball Hall of Fame voting.
If you care about the MLB Hall of Fame, following Ryan Thibodaux on Twitter is a must. He tracks the publicly available MLB Hall of Fame ballots as they are released and compiles them in an online spreadsheet.
With nearly 27 percent of the vote known, there are five players above the 75 percent threshold necessary for induction. These five are Chipper Jones (98 percent), Jim Thome (96 percent), Vladimir Guerrero (95 percent), Trevor Hoffman (80 percent) and Edgar Martinez (80 percent).
This is the ninth year for Edgar Martinez on the Hall of Fame ballot, so he only has two more chances with the BBWAA. He’s made significant strides the last three years, jumping from 27 to 43 to 59 percent.
The Seattle Times is regularly tracking his vote count, and many fans believe Edgar should have been inducted long before this, but it’s taken a while for the voters to come around.
In this regard, Edgar Martinez is like the Wiffle Ball. In November, the National Toy Hall of Fame announced their Class of 2017 inductees: the paper airplane, the board game Clue, and the Wiffle Ball.
As a longtime Wiffle Ball enthusiast, I can only wonder, ‘What took you so long, National Toy Hall of Fame?’
The Wiffle Ball was invented by a man named David Mullany in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1953, ten years before Martinez was born.
Its precursor was a perforated plastic golf ball, but the golf ball was nearly impossible to curve so Mullany and his father created a baseball-sized plastic ball with eight oblong perforations and the Wiffle Ball was born.
The perforations allow anyone to easily make the ball curve, as demonstrated in this commercial from many years ago by Whitey Ford.
Like Edgar Martinez, the Wiffle Ball has had a great career. It became popular in the 1960s and grew in popularity in the 1970s.
The World Wiffle Ball Championship was created in 1980, and now there are hundreds of tournaments across the country. Many of these are played in smaller versions of major league ballparks, like Ebbets Field, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park.
With its long history of providing fun times to kids and adults, it’s shocking that it took until 2017 for the Wiffle Ball to enter the Toy Hall of Fame. In 2016, the three inductees were Dungeons & Dragons, Fisher-Price Little People, and the swing.
I may be biased, but the Wiffle Ball deserved to gain entry before D&D and Fisher-Price Little People (I’m okay with the swing).
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Even more egregious was the 2011 induction of the blanket. Seriously? The blanket?
Can you use a blanket to play outside on a summer day with a bunch of your friends?
No. The blanket is the Jim Rice of the Toy Hall of Fame. And don’t get me started on the stick, inducting during 2008, or the cardboard box, a 2005 inductee.
Now that the Wiffle Ball has gained its proper entry into the National Toy Hall of Fame, it’s time for Edgar Martinez to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Seattle Mariners are doing their part. They handed out a 15-page pamphlet full of Edgar’s stats at the pressroom of the Winter Meetings.
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Maybe that swayed some voters because Edgar Martinez is above the threshold so far. Hopefully, he can stay there.