Counting Bruce Sutter, there are now 261 people in the Baseball Hall of Fame. That includes 195 players, 24 pioneers/executives, 16 managers, 8 umpires and 17 Negro League players.
Of the players, 103 have been selected by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) and 92 were selected by the Veteran’s Committee.
Is that too many? That comes out to less than two inductees per year since baseball began.
Recently, the Veterans Committee was reformatted to make it more difficult for them to put players in the HoF. I think that was a reaction to the group’s overenthusiasm for selecting folks during the 1990s. During that decade, the Veterans group selected 25 new members for the HoF, while the BBWAA chose just 15. During the 1980s, the group had been more restrained, picking just 17 players to the BBWAA’s 18.
How representative is the HoF today?
Currently there are 12 states that have never produced a Hall of Famer:
Oregon; Nevada; Montana; Utah; North Dakota; South Dakota; Wyoming; Colorado; Arizona; Maine; Hawaii; and Alaska.
Texas has produced 13 hall of famers including Rogers Hornsby, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan and Nolan Ryan.
There are just two teams that have never had any affiliation with a Hall of Famer playing for them or managing them at any time - Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
There are nine teams, including the two above, who have yet to have a Hall of Famer choose their team’s logo to represent them in the HoF. The other seven are Anaheim Angels, Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Florida Marlins and the Washington Nationals. The two oldest teams on the list - the Angels and the Astros - could have both been represented by Nolan Ryan, but he chose to wear the Texas Rangers’ cap instead.
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