Veterans Committee Hall of Fame Selects Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons

If you are a baseball fan you are probably aware that the Baseball Writers' Association has elected both Derek Jeter and Larry Walker for 2020 induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame. What didn't get much press was that the Veterans Committee, now called the Eras Committee, elected both Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons as well.

If you like that baseball has free agency, then you are probably a fan of Marvin Miller. Miller was the Executive Director of the Major League Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966-1982. Before Miller, the only way a player could change teams was to be traded or released. Each year players could only negotiate with their existing teams for a new contract. Minor league players had to wait for positions to open up on their major league team as they had no rights to free agency either. Miller negotiated baseball's first collective bargaining agreement in 1968. During the sixteen years he served as Executive Director, the average baseball salary rose from $19,000 to $326,000. In 2007 Miller had this to say about how he would feel getting into the Hall of Fame, "Would be nice, but when you're my age, 89 going on 90, questions of mortality have a greater priority than a promised immortality." Miller was put on the ballot in 2003, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, and 2018 before getting in this year.

Ted Simmons was a perennial all-star in the seventies and early eighties. He didn't receive much recognition because his career overlapped that of Johnny Bench and Gary Carter, the top two catchers by WAR in the HOF. His first time on the Hall of Fame ballot came in 1994 when he received only seventeen votes less than the minimum to be put back on the ballot in 1995. He was actually out voted by Pete Rose that year who received nineteen write-in ballots. Though Ted Simmons had a twenty-one-year career he didn't put up the big career totals of hits, home runs or runs batted in that the voters of that era looked for. The switch hitting catcher did manage to bat over .300 in seven seasons, hit twenty or more home runs for six seasons and had ninety or more runs battled in eight times. His lifetime 50.3 WAR total puts him ahead of the following notable hall of famers Orlando Cepeda, Nellie Fox, Sandy Koufax, Ralph Kiner and Lou Brock.