Is this the last, best Hall of Fame hope for Atlanta Braves great Dale Murphy?
It’s called the ‘Modern Baseball Era’ ballot… the second or third chance for many players to get entry into the Hall of Fame when the writers passed them over. But what of this Atlanta Braves fan favorite?
A lot of virtual ink has been scribbled into dozens of blog posts over the years about Atlanta Braves great Dale Murphy and his credentials — pro and con — for the Hall of Fame.
In truth, he’s one of those maddening borderline cases… the kind of player who is often used as a yardstick to determine whether somebody else merits inclusion based on whether he is at least better than Dale Murphy.
Murph had his ballot years… 15 of them. Nowadays, candidate only get 10 years of ballot access. The writers had seemingly given up on him by 2013 – his last year – since he only garnered roughly 19% of the ballots.
That’s not close to the required 75%.
While he was on that ballot, here are the players who were elected to the Hall:
- 2013… nobody
- 2012… Barry Larkin
- 2011… Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven
- 2010… Andre Dawson
- 2009… Ricky Henderson and Jim Rice
- 2008… Goose Gossage
- 2007… Call Ripken and Tony Gwynn
- 2006… Bruce Sutter
- 2005… Wade Boggs and Ryan Sandberg
- 2004… Paul Molitor and Dennis Eckersley
- 2003… Eddie Murray and Gary Carter
- 2002… Ozzie Smith
- 2001… Dave Winfield and Kirby Puckett
- 2000… Carlton Fisk and Tony Perez
- 1999… Nolan Ryan, George Brett, and Robin Yount
- >> In the six years prior to Murphy appearing on the ballot, only 5 players were elected!
Many players had to wait their turns as the writers were notably stingy with their ‘Aye’ votes in this era.
In fact, even though they enshrined 3 players in 1999, five other eventual Hall of Famers had to wait for later years to make their speeches. In 2002, there was a ‘backlog’ of six additional HOF players, yet only 1 – Ozzie Smith – was elected on that ballot.
So players like Murphy had to wait for a turn that never came.