Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Dunlap On Original Hall Of Fame Ballot

Since I haven't beaten the dead horse in awhile:

So the original plan for the Baseball Hall of Fame was to select ten players from the 1900-1935 era and five players from the nineteenth century. A player had to get seventy-five percent of the vote from the BBWAA to be inducted and, as the story goes, no nineteenth century player met that threshold so they dropped that part of the plan. Both of the original ballots are rather interesting and worth taking a look at.

But, lo and behold, who was one of the second basemen named on the original nineteenth century ballot? None other than Fred Dunlap. Dunlap and Ross Barnes were the only two second basemen on the original nominating ballot. So whoever put the ballot together, whether it was Henry Edwards, the secretary of the American League's Service Bureau, or a committee, certainly considered Dunlap to be one of the two best second basemen of the nineteenth century.

It would be rather interesting to see how the vote on the nineteenth century players went and how much support Dunlap received.


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