I finally had time to tally all of the ballots from the quickie ten-man Hall of Fame thread. There were five incomplete ballots that listed ineligible players (Bonds, Clemens, Maddux, and Rose) or had a joke player on the list; one ballot only had eight eligible names and the other four had nine. I’ve contacted those folks to ask if they wanted to revise their ballots, and I’ll update this post if any of them responds. (UPDATED: Two of the incomplete ballots are now complete, so the list below has changed, although the top ten were unaffected.)
So, out of 63 total ballots, including the partial ballots, here are the results:
| Player | Votes | Percent |
| Babe Ruth | 63 | 100% |
| Ted Williams | 58 | 92% |
| Willie Mays | 58 | 92% |
| Walter Johnson | 55 | 87% |
| Honus Wagner | 46 | 73% |
| Cy Young | 37 | 59% |
| Hank Aaron | 35 | 56% |
| Ty Cobb | 35 | 56% |
| Lou Gehrig | 29 | 46% |
| Mickey Mantle | 26 | 41% |
| Christy Mathewson | 25 | 40% |
| Stan Musial | 23 | 37% |
| Jackie Robinson | 20 | 32% |
| Rickey Henderson | 18 | 29% |
| Rogers Hornsby | 15 | 24% |
| Lefty Grove | 15 | 24% |
| Joe DiMaggio | 8 | 13% |
| Satchel Paige | 8 | 13% |
| Josh Gibson | 7 | 11% |
| Tom Seaver | 6 | 10% |
| Sandy Koufax | 5 | 8% |
| Warren Spahn | 5 | 8% |
| Joe Morgan | 5 | 8% |
| Mike Schmidt | 5 | 8% |
| Yogi Berra | 4 | 6% |
| Johnny Bench | 2 | 3% |
| Jimmie Foxx | 2 | 3% |
| Frank Robinson | 2 | 3% |
| Bob Gibson | 1 | 2% |
| Tris Speaker | 1 | 2% |
| Reggie Jackson | 1 | 2% |
| Hank Greenberg | 1 | 2% |
| Eddie Collins | 1 | 2% |
| Nap Lajoie | 1 | 2% |
| Cal Ripken | 1 | 2% |
| Oscar Charleston | 1 | 2% |
| Nolan Ryan | 1 | 2% |
| Harmon Killebrew | 1 | 2% |
The last column, just in case it isn’t obvious, tells you on how many ballots the player was listed.
Nobody had the top ten vote-getters on his ballot; five different voters listed nine of the top ten. Kevin and Tom had the top nine vote-getters on their ballots, and eleven others had eight. Only five of the players on my ballot ended up in the top ten.
Some quick thoughts:
• I think omitting Mays from my ten was a mistake. As I said in the last discussion thread, it wasn’t deliberate; the point of the exercise was to give ten names that were more or less off the top of your head. I’d probably bump Young off of my ballot, because he was largely an accumulator and did so much of his work in the 19th century and early 20th century, when it was really a different game and much easier for pitchers.
• I was surprised by the general lack of support for Warren Spahn. Even ignoring the 4th-highest-all-time win total, that’s 5200+ innings of a 3.09 ERA in the postwar era. Until Maddux, he was the best pitcher of baseball’s integrated period.
• Just about all of us skewed towards old-timers. When we think “Hall of Fame,” we think of those guys, the ones who are just names and stat pages and old black-and-white photographs. Mike Schmidt is probably the greatest third baseman of all time; Johnny Bench might be the greatest catcher of all time; Joe Morgan was probably better than Rogers Hornsby, whom I listed; yet none of those three guys appeared on 10% of the ballots. In fact, 57 of the 63 ballots didn’t contain a single catcher, and 43 didn’t include a second baseman, even though we all understand where those positions lie on the defensive spectrum.
• I have no idea what to make of Negro League players, so I didn’t list any. I’m just not sure how to compare them to players from the racist era. I feel like we all accept Josh Gibson as the best Negro Leaguer because that’s what everyone says, and in other areas of baseball analysis, we would never be satisfied with that line of thinking.