Baseball Hall of Fame: Playing by the numbers
Here is a player worth keeping an eye on, but there’s one guy who could extend a Hall of Fame voting streak that stretches back 30 years. Every year since 1987, there has been at least one player who earned a single vote. By “a single vote,” I mean just that: one vote. No more, no less.
#HOF projections through 179 ballots. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. https://t.co/FSee2RMBZM pic.twitter.com/sdcGIHYMMp
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) January 11, 2018
This is something of a tradition. There have been players who earned just one vote in almost every BBWAA Hall of Fame election going back to the first group of players in 1936. That year, nine people received a single vote. Six of these nine would eventually make the Hall of Fame (Fred Clarke, Sam Crawford, Home Run Baker, Rube Marquard, Dazzy Vance and Connie Mack).
In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, it was common for the BBWAA ballot to have 70 or more names listed and there were often 20 or more players who received a single vote. The 1959 ballot contained 154 names, 41 earning a single vote. Sanity prevailed in the mid-1960s when the number of players on the ballot dropped, as did the one-vote guys. Since 1964, there has never been more than seven one-vote guys on the BBWAA ballot.
The mid-1970s had a sudden disappearance of one-vote guys in 1974, 1976, and 1977. The only other year with zero one-vote guys was 1987. Thankfully, reliever Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky got a single vote in 1988 to start the current 30-year run.