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Hall of Merit— A Look at Baseball's All-Time Best
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Herman Long
The original “Flying Dutchman!”
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1. BDCOther candidates might be Rabbit Maranville and Johnny Logan. (The NBJHBA has Long 34th, Maranville 38th, Logan 39th.) Jeff Blauser wasn't terrible, either, but he was not of Herman Long calibre ...
George Wright excepted, I'd agree with that.
1T: Cap Anson
1T: Buck Ewing
3: Willie Keeler
4. Cy Young
5. Ed Delahanty
6. John McGraw
7. Charlie Radbourn
8. Herman Long
9. Mike "King" Kelly
10. Amos Rusie
Why did Herman Long, who last played in 1904, and died in 1909, receive so many votes?
Another question is: what happened to his support?
Yes, the BBWAA voted for old-timers only once.
Germany Long was briefly the active home run leader, during his final offseason, before Hugh Duffy returned to the majors as a player-manager.
Long is the victim in the recent non-murder mystery by G.S. Rowe, Best Bet in Beantown.
http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2014/12/20/herman-longs-unusual-hall-fame-candidacy/
And the post in #9, unfortunately, doesn't explain much of anything. It offers a theory for the 1936 HOF vote -- Long's ex-teammate Clark Griffith influenced the vote -- which is shaky to say the least, considering that a) the committee had 78 members and b) we don't even know Griffith was on it. Then it offers some more evidence that Long was well-respected by his peers... which, if anything, works against the notion that Griffith was the main reason he did well in '36... and still fails to explain why he dropped off the map after that.
So, yeah, I'd be curious to see if anyone can give us details about why Long's contemporaries thought he was so great, as was done for Ewing. (I ultimately found the argument quite convincing with respect to Ewing.)
Obviously no one knew what WAR was. But WAR does a decent job of describing how great a player was. So it seems reasonable that Ewing's legend would have been much more able to withstand contemporaries dying off.
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