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Our long national nightmare is over. On Wednesday at 2 p.m., the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened its doors to Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven, two overwhelmingly qualified candidates who missed gaining entry from the BBWAA last year by a combined 13 votes. Both cleared the mandatory 75 percent threshold with room to spare, with Alomar drawing 90 percent of the record 581 votes cast during his second year on the ballot, and Blyleven garnering 79.7 percent in his 14th year of eligibility. They'll join Pat Gillick on the dais in Cooperstown, New York on July 24.

Alomar had the largest gain of any player on the ballot, adding 16.3 percent to last year's showing. His 90 percent was the highest of any second-ballot player since 1966, when the BBWAA switched back to an annual vote, eclipsing the 85.6 percent Yogi Berra received in 1972. In fact, it was the 21st-highest voting percentage of that period as well. It's not difficult to read the message in that pattern; the voters overwhelmingly felt he was a Hall of Famer, but deprived him of the honor of a first-ballot entry, penalizing him for the 1996 incident in which he spit on umpire John Hirschbeck after being ejected for arguing balls and strikes.

Blyleven gained 5.5 percent over last year's share, the fourth-highest gain, but the bigger news is that he became the first player ever to gain entry on his 14th ballot. More so than any other candidate of the past 15 years, his election is the result of a long grassroots campaign, waged primarily on the Internet, and owing a great debt to the way an advanced statistical lexicon—developed both here and beyond—has heightened the appreciation of his accomplishments after he was snubbed, or at the very least overshadowed, in his heyday.

In the hours before the announcement, I dug up the first piece I ever wrote advocating for Blyleven's election, written for my Futility Infielder site back on January 6, 2002. My site had been up for nine months at that point, and I'd been blogging regularly for seven of them. I had yet to come up with JAWS, and I'm not even sure I was aware of WARP, so in the piece, I used ERA+, strikeouts, and Win Shares—the bleeding-edge total value metric taken from the just-published New Bill James Historical Abstract—to argue for the election of Blyleven, who in the previous election cycle had received just 23.5 percent of the vote. I also discussed the distinction between career and peak, though the rest of my rudimentary analysis is something of a mixed bag; I cited won-loss records and argued for Tommy John and Jim Kaat, but tabled an initially favorable discussion of Morris until his Win Shares were published and the underlying system critiqued.

In any event, Rich Lederer receives and deserves a lot of credit for the great work he did in advancing Blyleven's cause, but I take pride in having preceded even that effort, nine years and 10 election cycles ago, long before I came to Baseball Prospectus. I'm elated for Blyleven (whom I've never met), and happy I played a small role in convincing voters both directly and indirectly that Bert Belongs. Sabermetrics is the search for objective truth about baseball; those of us who backed Blyleven uncovered plenty of it over the last decade and turned what appeared to be a lost-cause candidacy into a successful one.

Blyleven's election should give hope for other candidates languishing further down on the ballot, starting with Tim Raines, who received exactly half of what he needs to gain entry, 37.5 percent. While it's disappointing that he's still not receiving his due as the fifth-best left fielder in baseball history, he received a 7.1 percent jump over 2010, this year's third-highest gain, and he's hardly whupped yet after four ballots. Bruce Sutter (27.5 percent), Duke Snider (26.6 percent), Blyleven (23.5 percent), and Bob Lemon (16.5 percent) all received considerably less love in their fourth-go rounds, yet rallied to gain entry via the BBWAA, with two of those four successes coming via the last six ballots. For those looking for a new cause célèbre, Raines is the obvious choice, and the bandwagon still has plenty of seats open.

Likewise Edgar Martinez, even though he actually lost a bit of ground this year, falling from 36.2 percent to 32.9 percent. He's about even with Gary Carter (33.8 percent) and Luis Aparicio (32.2 percent) as second-year candidates go, and ahead of Sutter, Don Drysdale, and Snider, who were all below 30 percent. Indeed, while I don't intend to partake in similar campaigns on behalf of second-year candidate Fred McGriff (17.9 percent) or first-year candidate Larry Walker (20.3 percent) unless JAWS can convince me that they're similarly worthy, the chilly initial reception that Blyleven, Snider, and Drysdale received (21 percent or less in their first year) or that Blyleven (14.1 percent) and Lemon (12.0 percent) got in their second years means that it ain't over 'tll it's over even for them.

Further up the ballot, Barry Larkin posted the cycle's second-largest gain, adding 10.5 percent on top of his already-strong debut (51.6 percent) to reach 62.1 percent and put him within immediate striking distance of the Hall. There's an easy parallel to make between him and Ryne Sandberg, who received 61.1 percent of the vote in his second try and proceeded to sail in the following year. While Sandberg had the potential impediment of 3,000 Hit Club member Wade Boggs' first year of eligibility to contend with—those wily voters sometimes like to keep the stage clear, see—Larkin won't have anyone who could potentially outshine him joining the ranks; the top candidate hitting the ballot next year is Bernie Williams, who's  hardly a lock to gain entry at all, let alone in his first year. The fear of the BBWAA otherwise pitching a shutout could motivate holdout voters to tilt in favor of Larkin, who's overly qualified both on the traditional merits and the JAWS ones.

More ambiguous is the news for Jack Morris. Despite a considerable amount of noise from the "you had to be there" crowd frustrated by Blyleven's advancement and clinging to a narrative which privileges Morris' greatness in one game ahead of entire bodies of work, he gained just 1.2 percent to finish with 53.5 percent on his 12th turn. With a stronger showing, he too could have seized upon the dearth of qualified new candidates next year, but with just three strikes remaining, he's in trouble given the impending arrivals of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mike Piazza, Sammy Sosa, Curt Schilling, and Craig Biggio (2013) and Greg Maddux, Frank Thomas, Tom Glavine, Jeff Kent, and Mike Mussina (2014). In Morris' favor is the fact that with the exception of Gil Hodges, every other player who's topped 50 percent on the ballot at any time has gotten in eventually, either via the writers or the Veterans Committee.

Also stagnating is Lee Smith, who lost two percent to fall to 45.3 percent instead of crossing that all-important 50 percent rubicon in his ninth year of eligibility. Among other ninth-year candidates, the lowest mark of anyone who got in is Sutter, who at 50.4 percent was just on the other side of the line; seven other players with lower voting percentages gained entry via the Veterans Committee.

Receiving the top percentage of any newcomer on the ballot, albeit considerably less than his case should have netted on merit, is Jeff Bagwell at 41.7 percent. As noted before, Bagwell rates as the fourth-best first baseman of all time according to JAWS, but any real consideration of his accomplishments was drowned out by a dismaying level of innuendo connecting him to the usage of performance-enhancing drugs, this despite the fact that he never tested positive, never was linked to a PED-related investigation, didn't turn up in the Mitchell Report, and wasn't leaked as one of the 104 supposedly anonymous positives from the survey test. Instead of his being presumed innocent in the absence of any credible proof, some voters judged him guilty by chronological association with PED-linked teammates (Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Ken Caminiti) and competitors, a shortcoming that says more about those voters' own shortcomings of character than it does of his. It's as though Bagwell woke up one morning having turned into the waterboy for the collective failure of the players' union, the owners, the commissioner and the media to address the problem coherently while he was still active.

Be that as it may, Bagwell's debut showing is actually a rather solid one; no less than 14 players have debuted with less than 50 percent and gained election via the BBWAA, 10 of them with percentages significantly lower (Rich Gossage, at 33.3 percent, leads that group). Hoyt Wilhelm got 41.7 percent in his debut as well, and Sandberg, Andre Dawson, and Carter all received slightly higher percentages and then got in. If there's a cautionary tale, it's that of Steve Garvey, who received 41.6 percent in his first try and then vacillated between the high 30s and low 40s before falling into the 20s after a decade on the ballot.

Among the 19 newcomers, only two others even received enough votes to come back for a second try, suggesting that the BBWAA needs to winnow the field more efficiently prior to sending off the ballots. Forget Lenny Harris (I already have), there's not a whole lot of constructive purpose for crowding the ballot with guys like Carlos Baerga and Raul Mondesi and Bobby Higginson whose careers were once so full of promise but who flamed out spectacularly, well short of Cooperstown standards. The two newcomers who received enough votes to come back for seconds are the ones who are probably the least welcome to the party, the PED-connected Rafael Palmeiro (11 percent) and Juan Gonzalez (5.2). The former sounded about as humbled and conciliatory as he ever has since testing positive for steroids when he told SI.com's Mel Antonen:

"I hear some voters talk about how they'll probably vote for Barry Bonds because he was a Hall of Famer before he (allegedly) took steroids… Well, why can't they do the same thing for me? I had one bad mistake at the end of my career.

"Voters are putting too much weight on the one incident… I wish they would look at my whole career. If they want, why don't they use throw out the last season of my career? I would still have Hall of Fame numbers.''

"I had one bad mistake" is as close as Palmeiro's ever come to taking responsibility for his positive test, which almost counts for something until one considers that the saga is about more than just "one incident." It's a tragic fall in three acts, from the finger wag in front of Congress, to the test itself, to the deflection of the blame to teammate Miguel Tejada for supplying an allegedly tainted supplement. In any case, his future on the ballot doesn't look bright, but it's still brighter than that of Gonzalez, who with one fewer vote would have fallen off completely—a shocking fate for a two-time MVP regardless of the merits of those particular wins. Elsewhere in the PED Zone ($1 to Buster Olney), even an outright admission of use didn't help Mark McGwire, who saw his share of the vote slip from 23.7 percent to 19.8 percent.

As for the rest of the bunch, the only one qualified according to JAWS is Alan Trammell, whose 24.3 percent is still less than one-third of what he needs, but who nonetheless gained 1.9 percent to reach his highest level in 10 years on the ballot. The sad fact is that nobody who's been this low this late in the game has gotten in by any method; VC selections Bill Mazeroski (30.3 percent), Phil Rizzuto (32.3 percent), and Red Schoendienst (34.3 percent) are the lowest of the modern voting era.

Two holdovers dropped off the ballot in Dave Parker, whose 15-year eligibility ran out with his receiving just 15.3 percent, and Harold Baines, who after four years of barely clinging to the ballot around six percent lost a handful of votes and fell to 4.8 percent. Two more appear destined to remain in sub-20 percent purgatory for the rest of their times on the ballot, namely Don Mattingly (13.6 percent in his 11th year) and Dale Murphy (12.6 percent in his 13th year).

Of the newcomers who won't be invited back, John Franco (4.6 percent) fell just three votes shy. That wasn't terribly surprising except that he beat out Kevin Brown (2.1 percent) and John Olerud (0.7 percent), two players whose sorta-close-but-no-cigar JAWS showings and one-and-done ballots were prefigured by those of David Cone, Dwight Gooden, and Orel Hershiser on the one hand, and Will Clark on the other. Twelve other newcomers combined to receive just 18 total votes, with ESPN editor Barry Stanton alone responsible for two of the more bizarre ones in B.J. Surhoff and Tino Martinez, along with more understandable votes for Edgar Martinez, Mattingly, and Morris.

Those are the 2011 results, and unless you're hankering for more chatter and patter from me, it's time to pack up this tent after devoting some 24,000 words to the topic over the past two exhausting and exhilarating weeks. On the heels of my own election to the BBWAA—no, I don't have a Hall vote for another 10 years—this has been by far the most rewarding of the JAWS series I've written in terms of a direct dialogue with voters and a feeling that at least some of what I've spent the past eight or nine years saying about these candidates is sinking in.

Hell, when you awake on New Year's Day and find that a shout-out from Joe Posnanski cuts through your hangover like a knife through butter, or find that writers you've occasionally exalted (or in your weaker moments, mocked) are suddenly following you or even debating you on Twitter, you realize you're no longer on the sidelines of this great debate, you're fully in the fray.

Thank you, one and all, for your support in getting to that point. 

Thank you for reading

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mikebuetow
1/06
Nice work, Jay. But please be careful of the percent vs. percentage points use.

Alomar's vote total was 16.3 percentage points, not percent, greater than last year. (By the percent totals, he was up 22.1% over 2009's vote.)

Likewise, Trammell's vote total was 1.9 percentage points higher.

bozarowski
1/06
I'd be curious to see your brief thoughts on Bernie Williams' candidacy. My gut (and fWAR and rWAR and WARP) tells me that Bernie is nothing more than a Hall of the Very Good guy destined to get 20% or so on the ballot. That is unless he gets a hell of a lot of Morris-esque support for his big postseason moments. Mike Cameron and J.D. Drew (Drew more by WAR than WARP) have produced similar career value and I doubt either of them would receive even 5% of the vote. Does JAWS have a quick take?
thesonofhob
1/06
JD Drew was a RF, so he kinda doesn't belong in a discussion with center fielders, not to mention his lack of health. Cameron with a TAv of .276 to Bernies .291 isn't a great comparison either. Bernie also has .040 points of OBP on Cameron, not to mention the more traditional numbers like career totals greater than 2000 hits and 1000 RBI, both of which Cameron lacks.

I almost wonder if Bernie would be taken more seriously if Griffy Jr. wasn't around, as his closest contemporary greatly overshadows him.

In the end like his teammates Pettitte and Posada, Bernie probably is a hall of very good candidate, but I'd like to see him in the discussion and hang around for a while.

I think his short career probably does him in, as he's missing some more impressive counting numbers like 2500+ hits or 300+ home runs. It's funny that an illness like Glaucoma excuses a short career for Kirby Pucket (whom Bernie blows away stats-wise), but just wear and tear on the body doesn't provide the same excuse for a player like Bernie or countless others.
jjaffe
1/06
I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment - there will be plenty of time for that - but Bernie comes up significantly short on JAWS. He's doomed by his mid-30s falloff and early end; following his career closely as a Yankee fan, he seemed very reluctant to learn the skills that would have kept him around through the remainder of his 30s - playing the corners adequately, playing first base, pinch-hitting. He didn't want much part of any of those things, and IIRC, he didn't exceed 1.0 WARP in any of his last four seasons.
bozarowski
1/07
That he was reluctant to do the things that would keep him around longer is an interesting take and I had never quite thought of Bernie's career that way. I guess I'd tended to think of him as simply a bit delusional about the state of his abilities at the end (even after the '09 WBC he still seemed to think of himself as a Major Leaguer). Figured JAWS wouldn't exactly love Bernie...
bozarowski
1/07
First of all, I say everything as a Yankee fan who would easily list Bernie Williams as one of his all time favorite players.

Griffey isn't the only contemporary CF with a more legitimate case for Cooperstown. Off the top of my head both Andruw Jones, Kenny Lofton and Jim Edmonds all seem to have noticeably stronger cases than Williams.

The thing you're leaving out of your analysis is that, especially in CF, defense is an enormous part of the equation. We can quibble all we want about the precise accuracy of each defensive metric, but the consensus (regardless of the Jeter-esque Gold Gloves) is that after 1995 Bernie ranged from being below average to historically awful in the outfield. Poor defense seriously diminishes the value of a CF. I grant that a good deal of, say, Cameron's value comes from defense - but when the totality of his career accomplishment exceeds Bernie's by most metrics it has to diminish Bernie's candidacy.

Bernie had a superb offensive stretch from '95 to '02 (wOBA of .385, .397, .407, .423, .412, .403, .387, .396); strong enough that his offensive numbers, clutch moments, undeserved Gold Gloves, batting title, 5 AS games and clean PED history will probably get him some solid consideration from old school voters. Unfortunately, and as much as I wish it wasn't the case, Bernie really doesn't seem to have a legitimate argument for the Hall of Fame when you consider the total value of his career. That doesn't diminish that it will still be a nice afternoon when the Yankees retire #51 someday down the line.
MichavdB
1/06
Thanks for the great series of articles on this year's HOF ballot. I enjoyed it a lot!
BillJohnson
1/06
I take the liberty of asserting that if a metric claims that "Bagwell rates as the fourth-best first baseman of all time," there is something wrong with the metric. Bags deserves to be in the Hall, for sure, but ranking him ahead of Jimmie Foxx, Johnny Mize and (probably) Willie McCovey looks just bizarre, and that's without getting into the first basemen of the distant past (Connor, etc.). There is just too much of a "sniff test" problem with this one.
jjaffe
1/06
People tend to cling to these notions that the heroes of the '20s and '30s and '50s are infinitely superior to modern day ballplayers because their legends are so large, and because it took so long for new ones to come along and approach their totals, and that any metric which says otherwise is wrong.

The reality is that the level of play has risen TREMENDOUSLY since World War II with integration and internationalization and nutrition and training methods. We've got whole chapters about it in Baseball Between the Numbers, and Dan Fox did great work on the topic in the time that he was here. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5813

Having said that, JAWS is not intended to be a one-stop be-all/end-all ranking service for the whole of baseball history. It's convenient to say someone ranks as the fourth-greatest according to JAWS, but there's obviously a lot that JAWS doesn't capture, and I acknowledge that all over the place in the annual series.

Furthermore, a good bit of why Bagwell ranks as high as he does has to do with defense, particularly relative to the names you list. Defense is hard to measure accurately, open to wider uncertainty, and hard to account for in our mental shorthand comparisons over time given how much more certain we are about offense. It's very easy to sit here and say Bagwell has 50 or 100 less homers than some of these guys so no way could he be more valuable, even after you adjust for scoring levels. It's harder to appreciate that his defense might be superior, because it's not as though we have a whole lot of web gems from Foxx and McCovey. Bagwell rates at +62 in the iteration I have at the moment. Foxx (-17), Mize (+5), and McCovey (-68) all lose ground on both career and peak. There's certainly a margin for error there which could throw the relative rankings into flux, but that doesn't change the fact that Bagwell is well above the standards among Hall of Fame first basemen, and right now, that's really the only element of the argument that I'm concerned with.

Even so,
jjaffe
1/06
Disregard that "Even so," as it's a fragment. No more thoughts on that forthcoming at the moment.
BillJohnson
1/06
Thanks for the response. Let me be clear that I am not challenging Bags' worthiness for the Hall. He belongs, and the silliness about guilt-by-association is an indictment of the lack of professionalism of the writers who practice it. Let's hope they're over that by the next time votes are cast.

This said, you've put your finger on one problem that I have with JAWS, namely the fact that it evaluates past players according to current metrics -- which are based on the prejudices of this day (well founded or not) about value, rather than addressing the way the game was played formerly. Foxx, Mize and McCovey played in a time when the first baseman's job was to hit the snot out of the ball, and let the small, quick guys who played the "defensive" positions chase the grounders. That is not the way the modern game is played, and I agree, the quality of baseball today is better for that (and for many other things). However, to penalize those guys for not creating the sabermetric equivalent of webgems is to overlook that they were not EXPECTED to create them.

How does Bags' defense stack up to that of, say, Keith Hernandez, Jay? Mex is the one pre-2000 first baseman whose HoF candidacy was buffed up by pointing to his defense when his offensive contributions didn't hack it. It didn't get him into the Hall, nor, IMO, should it have. Bagwell, of course, was much superior to Hernandez at the plate, but arguing that "a good bit of why Bagwell ranks as high as he does has to do with defense" seems to call for the comparison to be done.
mikebuetow
1/06
Just so I understand, are you suggesting that the era in which first basemen were allowed to be sloths in the field provided they hit a ton has come to an end?
jjaffe
1/06
Remember, not every team had a big bopper at first base, and Foxx and Mize and Willie Mc weren't always the standard. The game also had its share of contact hitters who were regarded as good glove men, guys like Mickey Vernon, Cecil Travis, Ferris Fain and even later, Vic Power and Hernandez.

The latter was 96 runs above average in the field, and he's a few points above the JAWS standard at first base (see http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12628), albeit far behind Bagwell. He got almost no love from the writers; despite lingering on the ballot for nine years, he topped out at less than 11 percent. As ever, guys whose value comes in large part due to OBP and defense get screwed by the writers.
jjaffe
1/06
Cecil Travis was a shortstop. Brainfart.
jjaffe
1/06
It was Joe Judge, a Senator from an earlier era, that I was thinking of. He hit .298/.378/.420 over the course of a 20-year career.
crperry13
1/06
Bill, I agree with your 2nd paragraph in principle, but how were the 80's and early 90's not an era where the first baseman's job was to hit the snot out of the ball, defense be darned? Arbitrarily looking at the 1994 season, prominent 1B's include Palmeiro, Cecil Fielder, Fred McGriff, Frank Thomas, Mo Vaughn, Tino Martines, and Andres Galarraga in addition to Bagwell.

I don't have their defensive stats on hand, but that's not a list that passes the smell test as being known for defensive wizardry.

Bagwell excelled at a skill (defense) that nobody even had metrics for at the time he played, and that's not something that can be discounted. Learning to play excellent defense is not something he needed to do to become a great ballplayer, but he did anyway and it should be recognized in this discussion.
crperry13
1/06
I meant to say 90's and early 00's. Curse me for not proofreading.
BillJohnson
1/06
Oh, it's still their job to hit the snot out of the ball. What has changed, however, is that if they are able to do so but only while playing the kind of defense that Frank Howard or Dick Stuart (possessor of two of my favorite baseball nicknames: "Dr. Strangeglove" or "The Ancient Mariner" -- who stoppeth one in three...) made (in)famous in the old days, they will be politely asked to become designated hitters instead. Most of the crummy fielders on your list did precisely that when their fielding inadequacies were exposed. That's an example of my contention that the expectations for the position are different now than when Foxx, etc., played. (BTW, on your list, Tino would definitely pass the defensive sniff test, and Galarraga and Palmeiro might, the latter's bogus Gold Glove notwithstanding.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that we have not yet found a satisfactory way to measure the real importance of defense at 1B (different metrics give very different results on Bagwell's defensive prowess), nor to account for the impact of the designated-hitter rule on HoF qualifications of players occupying "power" positions like 1B and LF (or DH, for that matter). It may be significant that all of the "good glove men" among 1Bs that Jay lists above were considered unexceptional 1Bs during their lifetime, taken as a whole. Might something similar to Nichols' Law of Catcher Defense have applied until modern metrics, flawed though they may be, were devised? I just don't think the last word has been said on this one, and lacking that word, the sniff test for Bags still looks suspicious to me.
PBSteve
1/06
I don't understand the point being made here. Even if 1Bmen were not asked to play defense in the distant past, which is utterly, completely not true, what would that have to do with Jeff Bagwell?

Meanwhile, non-sluggers like Stuffy McInnis and George Kelly played well into the era of Gehrig and Foxx because of their perceived defensive value. Simultaneously, there were great pure hitters like Zeke Bonura who came up late and finished early because they were felt to be subpar defenders, and Joe Hauser's immobility meant that he stayed in the minor league despite popping 63, 31, 49, and 69 home runs in consecutive seasons (in the competitive American Association).

Still don't know what that has to do with Bagwell, though.
bishopscreed
1/08
It's also worth remembering that Bagwell hit in the Astrodome. A long conversation about defensive value aside, he was an extraordinary hitter, not far, if at all, behind those you mention.
lonechicken
1/06
I agree on Kevin Brown's "close but no cigar"-ness, so question for anyone (Jay?) who has access to query such a thing... Top pitcher winning percentages among non-HoFers with more than 200 wins. Brown's in the top 5 isn't he? And probably with a considerably better career JAWS than the others. Am I right?
lonechicken
1/06
...Well, I'm not counting the guys who retired after Brown: Maddux, Glavine, Moose, Clemens, etc.
jjaffe
1/06
Whoops, Orel Hershiser lasted two ballots, receiving about 11 percent in his first year before falling off in his second.
rbrianc
1/06
Jay, great series as 'always! I'll give you a break before next years candidates chances, but I bet the Kingfish, Tim Salmon will look better in comparison than Bernie Williams. Salmon was arguably the best ever never to make an All-Star team. I'm not saying he'll make the cut, but he's likely to be one of the best of next years newbies.
mikebuetow
1/07
Honus Wagner and Cy Young never made the All-Star team.

Of course, it didn't exist then, either ...
ncimon
1/06
And thank you for your work helping to get Blyleven's numbers out front of everyone. Those of us who saw him pitch know first hand what those numbers prove out. He was more than good enough to have a spot in the HOF.
Eusebio
1/08
"Even so, Bagwell was a saint." It's okay, Jay, you can say it.

Serioulsy, the priggishness of certain voters regarding Bagwell et al is downright sickening, with The Verducci types requiring that he renounce the great satan steroids and all his works and what not.
bishopscreed
1/08
I think this line is slightly imprecise:

"It's not difficult to read the message in that pattern; the voters overwhelmingly felt [Alomar] was a Hall of Famer, but deprived him of the honor of a first-ballot entry, penalizing him for the 1996 incident in which he spit on umpire John Hirschbeck after being ejected for arguing balls and strikes."

In this case, the actions of the whole body were swayed by the judgment of 16%. The voters didn't "overwhelmingly" penalize him. Most of the voters agreed with Hirschbeck in forgiving this incident the first time around. :)