1960s Blog Hall of Fame Results (#1)

The results have been tabulated, and the inductees for the first 1960s Blog Hall of Fame are:


The inaugural election includes 16 names. The plan was to elect 1 player at each position, except for 3 outfielders, 4 starting pitchers, 2 relief pitchers, and 2 managers. At first base, Harmon Killebrew jumped out to a commanding lead early on, but Willie McCovey slowly caught up and tied Killebrew in the last few days. Both players will be inducted, and to keep the class at 16 names, manager Red Schoendienst (who finished a distant 2nd to Walter Alston) will not be inducted this time.

When the entire 66-name list is sorted by percentage of the vote received, the 16 inductees shown above are also the 16 with the highest percentage of the vote. The combined results:


Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson received an amazing 96% and 92% of the votes. Willie Mays and Hank Aaron also received a high number of votes (well ahead of #3 outfielder Roberto Clemente). At other positions, Pete Rose received more than 3 times the votes of runner-up Rod Carew.

I was surprised to see how few votes were received by Carl Yastrzemski, Al Kaline, Fergie Jenkins, and especially Lou Brock.

All names receiving less than 15% of the vote will be dropped from the next ballot (although they may be added to a future ballot). This leaves 15 holdovers for the next ballot, who will be joined by some new players (such as Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford, who were inexplicably left off this first ballot by the nominating committee).

Some of the winners seem to have less-than-impressive voting percentages in the 40% to 60% range, but I think this was a result of each position being on a separate ballot, and voters having to choose between one or another player. Future ballots will have all names in a single list, and multiple names can be selected without regard to their position.