Ward was analyzed in these threads:

1900 Ballot Discussion

Shortstops Positional Thread

Pitchers Positional Thread

If you know of any others, please let me know.

Trivial curiousity:

Ward was only 12 years older than the retail entrepreneur Aaron Montgomery Ward and the retail/mail-order company was not founded until the HOF-er was already 12 years old. John was from Bellafonte, PA and Aaron was originally from Chatham, NJ. I find it interesting that two famous Ward's both had the ended up with the same middle name before they became famous. Were they somehow related? Or was there some other reason that people named Ward would pick the middle name Montgomery?

Just curious. :-)

Or was there some other reason that people named Ward would pick the middle name Montgomery?

I think C. Montgomery Burns was already 30 when Johnny Ward was born; maybe that's the namesake?

According to Brian di Salvatore's biography of Ward, his middle name came form some friends of his parents who lived in the Bellefonte area. However, by coincidence, the two Montgomery's were distantly related. Their great grandfathers were brothers.

Di Salvatore also says that Ward hated his middle name and would style himself "John M Ward" in correspondence.

I would recommend the book ("A clever Base-ballist") as an interesting insight into a baseball polymath.

Question: if and when we go back to do a HoM for nonplayers, are those elected to the HoM as players eligible to be considered all over again (Spalding, Ward, Frank Robinson, Torre, and so on)? And in the eyes of all of you who were stumping for Marvin Miller a couple of weeks ago, does Ward look like a serious candidate?

if and when we go back to do a HoM for nonplayers, are those elected to the HoM as players eligible to be considered all over again

Yes, but totally for their non-playing careers.