The Road to Cooperstown: A Critical History of Baseball’s Hall of Fame Selection Process

The selection process for the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, has been the same for sixty years. Two sets of electors are used, both of which vote each year using subjective criteria that inevitably cause errors of selection and omission. One group, the Baseball Writers Association of America, votes by mail using a pre-selected list of retired players that meet eligibility requirements. The second group of electors is the Veterans Committee, comprised of former players who are Hall of Fame members plus retired baseball executives and sportswriters who meet in Florida during spring training and base their votes on the merits of candidates no longer eligible for election. In this work the author combines an irreverent critique of the voting process with an analysis of the biases that have fostered questionable choices in Hall of Fame voting. The result is a comprehensive, statistically founded survey of the factors which influence election.