Baseball Hall of Fame voting lost some mystique when Ryan Thibodaux began tracking votes.
His @notmrtibbs Twitter account has helped bring more transparency and organization to the voting process for sports’ already most organized and transparent Hall of Fame voting procedure.
But when this year’s voting totals were released, there was still a little mystery.
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Namely, who were the two people who voted for Kerry Wood?
Wood, who isn’t without a sense of humor, had joked to the Chicago Tribune’s Phil Thompson he wasn’t expecting many ballots with his name marked.
“If I get one vote, we’re having a blowout party,” he told Thompson. “I’m going to call the guy who voted for me, whoever voted for me, and apologize. If they voted me they’re probably losing their credential.”
On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers Association of America released a chunk of public ballots, including some not tracked by Thibodaux, and we got a partial answer as one of those ballots included a vote for Wood, who finished a star-crossed, 14-year career with a very impressive 1,582 strikeouts in 1,380 innings, a 3.67 ERA, two All-Star appearances, a Rookie of the Year award, an NLCS home run, an 86-75 record and a lot of simulated games.
The voter in question was Alan Hoskins, an 81-year-old former sports editor and columnist for the Kansas City Kansan (now an online-only outlet) and current part-time sports information guy at Kansas City Kansas Community College. (Hoskins is a Hall of Famer at the school.)
I emailed him about the vote and he called me back within minutes.
“Well, let’s be honest, his career didn’t amount to a Hall of Fame one,” Hoskins told me at the beginning of a 10-minute phone conversation.
So why vote for him, then? How about kindness.
“I didn’t want to see him go without a single vote,” he said. “I didn’t know if anybody else would vote for him and so I wanted to give one of my 10 votes for him. It’s pretty simple.”
Former Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood, now a special assistant to president Theo Epstein, waves to fans before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch prior to Game 6 of the 2016 NLCS. (Jerry Lai/USA TODAY Sports)Hoskins said he met Wood once after a game in Chicago early in Wood’s career — “I thought he was a nice guy,” he said. — and like many people, has fond memories of Wood’s record-tying 20-strikeout game against the Houston Astros in 1998.
“I think it’s the greatest game that’s ever been pitched,” he told me.
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Is one special game worth a Hall of Fame vote? Probably not. And given his current job status and the new rules for voting eligibility, I was surprised Hoskins still had a vote.
But Hoskins’ ballot is otherwise strong and for a man of his generation, very open-minded. He voted for winners Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones and Jim Thome, along with Edgar Martinez, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Sammy Sosa.
Hoskins said he doesn’t see the point in penalizing PED abusers retroactively for what they did in baseball’s lawless, homer-happy era. He noted that doing what earns you a 50-game suspension today (or like four games if you’re in the NFL) shouldn’t equal a lifetime ban in the Hall of Fame for the likes of Bonds, Clemens or Sosa. You might not agree with him, but there’s logic to his argument.
“The penalty doesn’t fit the crime,” he said.
Hoskins isn’t a day-to-day, or even week-to-week, baseball writer anymore, but he still gets out to Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals on occasion and checks out the Cubs on his MLB TV package. In a funny moment, he told me he was just trying to sign up for The Athletic to stay up to date on the Cubs, but was having problems signing in. (I told him I’d have our support staff send an email.)
Voting transparency comes with the expectation of criticism. We love to make fun of bad HOF ballots, dumb MVP votes and in general, illogical thoughts different from our own. So I give credit to Hoskins for putting his ballot out there. And I have to say, I found the vote for Wood, and the reasons for it, endearing. I don’t think Wood would have had his feelings hurt if he went vote-less like his old rotation mate Carlos Zambrano, but who wouldn’t want a HOF vote in their only year of eligibility?
“I hope I didn’t abuse my privileges,” Hoskins said. “But I just thought it didn’t hurt anybody else in the voting and I just wanted Kerry to get a vote. That [20-strikeout] game was so overwhelming, it was unbelievable.”
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If you haven’t guessed by now, yes, 81-year-old Alan Hoskins grew up a Cubs fan. According to the community college website, he’s from Zearing, Iowa and went to the University of Iowa, where he was the sports editor of the Daily Iowan. He worked as a reporter in Iowa until joining The Kansan in 1976. He’s worked at the community college since 1983 — while still writing on the side.
“The Cubs were the only team we got on the radio,” he said of his childhood. “This is before TV. My parents were big Cubs fans too. I can remember in 1945, they asked me if I wanted to listen to the World Series. … I’ve been following the Cubs ever since.”
And now he’s a very minor part of Cubs lore.
(Top photo: Ron Vesely/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
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