Loading ...hall of skill
One of the things I love best about blogging is watching a conversation take off. Last week’s Hall of Fame ballot got the prolific ladies blogging their views about who should (and shouldn’t) be associated with the selection process, on the ballot or inducted into the Hall of Fame. Last week I ran into Eunice Rosen at the bridge club and we discussed it some, this week Stan and I bounced some thoughts around too.
Judy Kay-Wolff, blogging’s grande dame, summed her position up like this:
I believe the time has arrived to put a halt to the absurd defamation of the ACBL Hall of Fame and honor it by the induction of only OUR VERY, VERY BEST — emulating the superb judgment exercised in the sports field to revere their legendary all-time greats mentioned in my introduction. To do otherwise and elect even one player with credentials substandard to those of our top bridge heroes and heroines would undermine the lofty ideals of its founders!
Everyone agrees that truly exceptional players should be granted entrance to the hallowed Hall, but deciding which exceptional players can prove tricky indeed. Judy looks to Cooperstown for a shining example of a properly administered and appropriately selective Hall of Fame. Linda Lee over at BridgeBlogging, weighing in from Canada, also looks to baseball as a good example of a process for selecting honorees that’s better than ACBL’s.
Though I’m a big fan of the game, I don’t know the first thing about baseball’s Hall of Fame — but reading the ladies’ take on ours made me curious. Does it surprise you to learn that Baseball has, on occasion, inducted into its Hall of Fame personalities of “substandard” baseball skill whose contributions to the game (in other capacities) were nevertheless spectacular? I browsed this list and found several Hall of Famers who weren’t inducted for their player records. Like Harry Wright from Sheffield, England who broke into the majors at age 41, played two seasons and went on to be elected into the baseball Hall of Fame as an “Executive” by virtue of being the man credited with professionalizing the game at the end of the US Civil War.
The Sporting Life later gave this assessment of Wright’s contribution to baseball and the country: Every magnate in the country is indebted to this man for the establishment of baseball as a business, and every patron for furnishing him with a systematic recreation. Every player is indebted to him for inaugurating an occupation by which he gains a livlihood, and the country at large for adding one more industry to furnish employment. (Geoffrey C. Ward, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1994), 23.)
In my opinion, the players who didn’t excel on the field of play but went on to be winning managers and valuable back-office contributors — like Wright, or Bill Veeck, or Kenesaw Landis — shouldn’t be shut out at voting time in Baseball or in Bridge. Does this have anything to do with seeing my beloved on the ACBL’s ballot? It does not — we had a lot of this same conversation last year (vis a vis Rose Meltzer). We’ll probably have it again next year. For the record though, I’m with future-hall-of-famer Fred Gitelman: “It is the Hall of Fame — not the Hall of Skill.”
January 21st, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I don’t know the answer as to who should be included or based on what criteria, but I wouldn’t attach too much weight to the word ‘fame’. After all, they were never going to call it the ‘Hall of Skill’ or ‘Hall of Excellence’ even if that was a better description. Plus I suspect fame in bridge can be acquired more easily by writing books and magazine articles than by winning at the table, or serving as an administrator or NPC.
Definitely people who wouldn’t qualify based on their playing record alone should be eligible if they have contributed in other ways. Even someone who has never played the game at a high level could be in there, though this is more likely in baseball than bridge. I don’t know that Veeck or Landis deserve to even be in the same sentence as Harry Wright but that’s another story.
January 24th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Yeah, I agree that one ought to be eligible for the Hall Of Fame even if you aren’t a great player. If you developed influential thinking (books, teaching, bidding systems, tournament structures, rules, etc.) then you may deserve to be elected even if your playing skills aren’t sufficient on their own. Take someone like Tommy John in baseball where his contribution to the game is more than just his pitching.
Also the idea that the baseball hall of fame is only the elite players is pretty silly. The writers keep the bar pretty high, but there are lots of not quite worth players who get in through the veterans committee.
January 30th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I completely agree that it is fine to have people, even non-players who have made a contribution to the game in a Hall of Fame. My favorite exhibit in Cooperstown is Abbott and Costello (Who’s On First). They were not voted into the hall of fame but they have a place there. I would treat those who do something special seperately from those who are great players.
Veterans committee can select players for other contributions – not the players committee. But the two groups are permanently segregated.
I am interested in other sports too. For example, what do they do in tennis where women and men play seperately. Would we want to do that in bridge?
March 10th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
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April 14th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
I miss your blog.
April 19th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
well, just in case you check this, thanks George, hundreds echo your sentiment, it’s such a neat blog, but what I wanted to say is CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! What an accomplishment! We all noticed, did you hear the shrieks? that you came in 2nd (almost 1st) in the Noeth American Women’s Teams. A grueling 2 days, but you did it. God Bless
May 26th, 2010 at 9:45 am
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