Ex-Tiger Jack Morris' momentum clashes with ballot

And we all thought baseball's 2012 Hall of Fame ballot was volatile.

Wait until next year.

And the year after.

Jack Morris, who Monday came within eight percentage points of getting a Cooperstown plaque, would expect to continue his latter-years surge and perhaps win election in 2013.

Except there are problems for the one-time Tigers pitching great who finished second to the only man elected this year: Barry Larkin, the enduring shortstop who played so skillfully and steadily for the Reds.

Morris — not to mention another Tigers giant, Alan Trammell — must contend with a thicker ballot in 2013 and 2014, Morris' final two years for consideration by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, which annually handles the Hall of Fame vote (Trammell is safe through 2016).

Under consideration

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, and Sammy Sosa are among next year's eligible Hall of Fame cast.

And no matter how voters sort out the issue of performance-enhancers and how they might have influenced a player's work, the sheer volume of incoming talent could jolt Morris' recent momentum.

Two years from now, Cooperstown's waiting list grows longer. Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Pedro Martinez, Frank Thomas, and Mike Mussina are eligible and are sure to incite at least as much debate and heat as typically is generated by a ballot on which any group of people tends to have its clashes.

Trammell is in potentially deeper trouble.

He managed only 36.8 percent of Monday's vote (75 percent is required for election), which left him far behind Morris (66.7 percent), Jeff Bagwell (56), Lee Smith (50.6), and Tim Raines (48.7).

With expectations Bagwell and Raines will gain more support relatively early in their 15-year window for election, Trammell will be challenging them on the position-player side just as Bonds, Biggio, Piazza, etc., arrive, potentially squeezing Trammell in the same manner Clemens and Schilling (followed by Maddux, Glavine, Martinez, and Mussina) figure to further threaten Morris should he not make it in 2013.

That could leave it to the Veterans Committee years from now to ponder not only Morris and Trammell, but also Lou Whitaker, whose almost-bizarre failure to get five percent of the vote in 2001 has since been viewed as a gross oversight.

Reasons to hope

But there are reasons for Morris to hold hope for 2013.

Ironically, performance-enhancers might be the difference, even if they have been tied not to Morris but to other Hall of Fame contestants.

Should there be resistance to voting next year for Clemens — he is charged with perjury during a 2005 congressional hearings on steroids in baseball — as well as for Bonds, Morris might gain an advantage from their unpopularity and slip into the 75 percentile.

It should be noted, too, that other incoming challengers have their own problems.

Schilling will have heavy East Coast support, but his 216 career victories are few by Cooperstown's traditional victory requirements.

Piazza, rightly or wrongly, is under suspicion for perhaps utilizing some of the same assistance that has tainted many of baseball's benchmark numbers during the past 15 years.

Sosa is viewed as an even longer shot because of doubts he would have hit anywhere near the 606 home runs had enhancers not been so prevalent during his biggest years.

It means there should be openings sufficient for Morris to pick up eight-plus percentage points when he had a 13-point increase in 2012.

That is, if history treats Morris better than it treated Gil Hodges, the only player in history to have received more than 50 percent of the vote in a given year and not win a ticket to Cooperstown.

Morris doesn't need Hodges' company. But to avoid joining a somber statistical group, he needs votes. And with a stream of heavy names on the horizon, those votes are anything but predictable as great careers and an era's ugly influences are all hashed out.

lynn.henning@detnews.com

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