Joe DiMaggio
The idea that in 1954 more than 30 percent of qualified Hall of Fame voters might not have seen Joe DiMaggio as worthy seems somehow impossible. Yet it’s true that 77 of the 252 voters that season left DiMaggio off their ballots, even while electing Rabbit Maranville, who we today would plainly think of as DiMaggio’s inferior.
DiMaggio’s credentials are pretty obvious, but let’s review them for the record. He had a career .325 batting average with 361 home runs. He played on – and was a leader on – 10 pennant winners, nine of them World Series champions. In 1941, the second of his three MVP seasons, he hit in 56 consecutive games, an all-time record.
And he did all that while missing three complete seasons due to World War II.
Since voters of that era kept the rationales behind their ballots private, we can do no more than surmise why 77 of them chose not to vote for DiMaggio. In attempting to fabricate a rationale after the fact, the one we can rule out is the kind of electoral animosity that hurt players such as Hornsby or, in a later election, Ted Williams. DiMaggio was a loved figure among the press as well as the public.
Those three seasons of military service might have had something to do with it, as might DiMaggio’s tendency to be injured. In tandem they worked to reduce his availability. He only averaged 133 games and 590 plate appearances per season, 542 per season after 1942.
It’s more likely DiMaggio was a victim of the view that, “hey, I’m not voting anybody in on the first ballot” mindset. As noted earlier, between the inaugural 1936 election and 1962 nobody was elected on their first ballot. So it appears that voters simply chose to make DiMaggio pay a year’s worth of dues.
In any event, they elected DiMaggio one year later with 88.8 percent of the vote.