Linkmeister

The People's Hall

Ooh, I like this. Joe Posnanski has created his own baseball hall of fame, called Hall of Fame Jr. to distinguish it from the one in Cooperstown. His rules?

1. These are only people who are NOT in the Baseball Hall of Fame. If they ever get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, they will be proudly escorted out of my Hall of Fame in a touching graduation type ceremony.

2. The Hall of Fame Jr. will be in Hoboken, because that’s where the first semi-official baseball game was played, on Elysian Fields, between the New York Knickerbocker Club and the New York Nine on June 19, 1846. This was almost certainly not anything close to the first baseball game played — baseball, in some form, probably goes back dozens, and maybe even hundreds of years — but this game was probably the first played under the Alexander Cartwright rules, which makes it probably the first semi-modern game played. Baseball, it is fair to assume, was not invented by any one person. It evolved over time. But this is probably as close as we will get to a starting point, and anyway Hoboken has a MUCH stronger claim to baseball’s beginning than Cooperstown.

3. The Hall of Fame Jr.’s only role is to fill the gaps. We make few character judgments and no one is ineligible.

He follows with a list of twenty players (Pete Rose), authors (Jim Bouton), songwriters (the guy who wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"), and even a doctor (Frank Jobe, who invented Tommy John surgery). He then issues a call for nominations, and his readers respond.

So what favorite of yours is not in the big Hall and should at least be in this one?