BASEBALL'S 2015 GOLDEN ERA COMMITTEE BALLOT: ARE THERE ANY HALL OF FAME PLAYERS LEFT?

Executive Decision: Bob Howsam

The tenth candidate for the Golden Era Committee ballot is the only non-player: Bob Howsam actually straddles two professional sports, baseball and football, and his actions helped to shape the course of both sports. We are of course concentrating on baseball here, and thus we will have to merely touch on how Howsam's desire to bring a National Football League franchise to his native Denver, Colorado, actually helped to create the American Football League in 1960 when Howsam, his father, and his brother founded the Denver Broncos, and with the owners of seven other teams they created the AFL. The upstart league was a rival to the NFL, and its growing influence led to the establishment of the first Super Bowl in 1967 to determine which league had the best team, a challenge that became non-existent when the AFL was folded into the NFL in 1970 although that championship game lives on as Super Bowl Sunday has become tantamount to a national holiday in the United States.

Actually, Howsam got involved in football only because his plans to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Denver fell through. He had helped to found the Continental League, which never played a game but served notice to MLB to seriously consider expansion, which it did in 1961 although Denver was not yet chosen as a location. The Howsams, though, had already built a major-league caliber ballpark, Bears Stadium, that was too lavish for the Denver Triple-A team the Bears (an affiliate of the Yankees), but with renovations Bears Stadium became Mile High Stadium, the home of the Broncos for four decades.

Prior to the Yankees, the Bears had been an affiliate of the Pirates, which is how Howsam first met the legendary Branch Rickey, the champion of the minor-league farm system who also helped to integrate baseball with Jackie Robinson, and the two kept in touch; Rickey had been the president of the abortive Continental League. When Howsam sold the Broncos, he returned to baseball courtesy of Rickey, semi-retired but now a top advisor to St. Louis Cardinals' owner Gussie Busch; Rickey reputedly recommended Howsam to Busch for the Cardinals' general manager's position in the midst of the 1964 season.

The Cardinals won the NL pennant following the Philadelphia Phillies' epic collapse (see the summary in the Dick Allen segment above), and they went on to beat the Yankees in the World Series. Howsam, though, claimed responsibility for the Cardinals' turnaround, which did not sit well with many of the players. The Cardinals dropped back to average in the next two seasons, with Howsam dealing away veterans such as Ken Boyer (also outlined above) and acquiring former stars Orlando Cepeda (included in our sample of Golden Era Hall of Fame first basemen) and Roger Maris. Although the Cardinals would return to the World Series in 1967 and 1968, winning it again in 1967, Howsam had already lit out for greener pastures.

In 1967, Howsam became the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, a position he held for 11 years, the period when the Reds became the "Big Red Machine," winning four National League pennants and two World Series during that time. Although Howsam had inherited several players already with the Reds or in the farm system—including future Hall of Famers Johnny Bench and Tony Perez as well as putative Hall of Famer Pete Rose—he helped to build the dynasty. First, Howsam brought in a new manager, Sparky Anderson, who would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Then he cultivated minor league prospects such as Dave Concepcion, Ken Griffey, Sr., and Ray Knight. Finally, he traded for both George Foster and especially Joe Morgan. Foster would crush 52 home runs for the Reds in 1977, becoming the only player to hit 50 or more home runs between the time Willie Mays hit 52 round-trippers in 1965 and the time Cecil Fielder hit 51 long flies in 1991.

But Morgan was the jewel in the crown. The slick-fielding second baseman who could hit for power, get on base, and then steal a base won back-to-back MVP awards in 1975 and 1976—not coincidentally the same two years in which the Reds won the World Series—as the literal keystone in the Big Red Machine; Morgan was voted into the Hall of Fame on his first ballot in 1990.

The 1976 Reds were a juggernaut: They won 102 games to clinch the NL Western Division by 10 games over the Los Angeles Dodgers; they swept the Phillies in three games in the NL Championship Game; then they swept the Yankees in four games in the World Series, with Johnny Bench being named the Series MVP. Five Reds starters made the 1976 NL All-Star squad, with two more in reserve. As noted previously, Joe Morgan was the NL MVP. The 1976 Reds are considered one of the greatest teams in baseball history, listed along with the 1908 Chicago Cubs, the 1927 New York Yankees, and the 1970 Baltimore Orioles.

Bob Howsam was responsible for a good deal of that success. Reputedly, he had a good deal of autonomy in the front office as the club's owners left him in charge of day-to-day operations—he was named team president in 1973—and Howsam also represented the team at owners' meetings. And when Howsam stepped down as general manager at the end of the 1977 season, the Reds were headed for a decline that was not arrested until Howsam returned as club president in 1983, with Sparky Anderson already gone (to the Detroit Tigers, with whom he would win another World Series in 1984); Howsam retrieved Pete Rose, who left via free agency following the 1978 season, and installed him as the Reds' player-manager (and, yes, Rose's betting continued apace).

Free agency, which also spurred the departure of Morgan and pitcher Don Gullett, was something of bugbear for the Reds and particularly Howsam, as he had helped to set the conservative fiscal policies of the club that made it hard for players to resist the lure of free-agent money. Howsam also had little regard for labor relations, having taken a hard-line stance against the Players' Association; during the very first players' strike in 1972, the Reds were among the management most opposed to the strike. Howsam was also a "social conservative" as he oversaw the club's strict policies on player appearance, a stance that earned great resentment among the players.

All of which makes his Hall of Fame case rather intriguing: Based on his executive acumen with the Cincinnati Reds, Howsam has a legitimate case for the Hall. However, one Golden Era Committee member who no doubt recalls Howsam is Joe Morgan, and given Howsam's relative unpopularity among players both in Cincinnati and in St. Louis, could Morgan have been privately lobbying his fellow committee members to not vote for him?

That of course is mere speculation, though not unfounded speculation. As is the case for all nine players on the 2015 Golden Era Committee ballot, who are all borderline candidates, Bob Howsam is also a borderline executive candidate, achieving great success with the Reds over the course of a decade, but with little other baseball merit—in fact, his short stint in St. Louis could be considered a demerit. (At least Howsam, having served on the Colorado Baseball Commission in his retirement, saw a major-league team established in his hometown of Denver: In 1993, the Colorado Rockies began their tenure as a National League expansion team.)

Is Bob Howsam a Hall of Famer? No, he is not.

Are There Any Golden Era Hall of Famers Left?

After all the tables, statistics, history, and analysis presented here, let's boil all this down to one simple question: Are there any Golden Era Hall of Famers left?

The answer is equally simple: No.

At least not on this ballot. Frankly, the nine players on the 2015 Golden Era Committee ballot have been exhaustively evaluated for some time now. All except Billy Pierce have had full, or near-full, terms on the writers' ballots, with Dick Allen and Ken Boyer having been reinstated on ballots while Minnie Miñoso had his clock restarted by dint of a couple of publicity stunts.

These players have been looked at by the writers, the BBWAA. Many have been looked at by previous veterans committees. They have been evaluated by traditional statistics, and they have been evaluated by modern statistics. And in all ways over the decades, the results have been the same: All nine candidates fall short of the Hall of Fame, some just short of the threshold, others by a bit more than that.

Make no mistake: They are all excellent players, with brilliant moments in their careers. Some, like Pierce, have been overlooked, while others, like Hodges or Kaat, have been overrated. I think that Dick Allen and Luis Tiant come closest to the bar, with Minnie Miñoso just behind them, and if any or all of those three do get elected, it will not be a travesty because there have been players at these candidates' respective positions who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame with playing records that are inferior to theirs. The problem is that there are players already enshrined whose playing records are superior to theirs—we have looked at several of them at length—and the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite occasional lapses, has maintained very high standards for inclusion.

That said, though, I do think it is quite possible that the Golden Era Committee will vote for Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, or Minnie Miñoso, or perhaps any two, or perhaps all three. So be it.

Baseball has been concerned about its legacy since the 1930s, when it created the Hall of Fame and even the first veterans committees to ensure that players and others from decades long past would not be overlooked. That sentiment has continued ever since, to the point that by the middle of the second decade of the 21st century (I'm talking about right now), we have picked clean almost all of the Pre-Integration Era and almost all of the Golden Era. Where the hidden Hall of Famers reside is in the Expansion Era, but the previous two eras have been combed repeatedly, and with respect to this 2015 Golden Era ballot, there may be a couple of players whose election, though I believe unmerited, would not be an outrage. But there is no injustice to be righted this year.