The Veterans Committee met in San Diego yesterday to decide if any of 10 possible candidates would enter the Hall of Fame next summer, and came away with no one making it in.
This was the "Golden Era Committee," and they look at candidates from the era of 1947-1972. Gil Hodges and Luis Tiant were among the ten, and the two I was pulling for the most. 16 members made their choices (7 were MLB Hall of Famers), and Dick Allen and Tony Oliva missed each by just a single vote. (12 was needed for election, as that would be 75%.)
Jim Kaat missed by just two votes. Both Hodges and Tiant received less than four votes. The Golden Era Committee did not say exactly how many they got, my guess as to not embarrass the candidate if he should receive none. Follow this link to see the complete results.
I fear this will be the last time both Hodges and Tiant will have a good chance to get in. They will not be considered again until 2017, and the committee considers different eras every year. (Next year will be the ones from after 1972, and in 2016 it will be those players from the pre-integration era.) And the fact they did not garner much support doesn't help either Hodges or Tiant's cause.
There was a major push to get Gil Hodges in, as there is a Facebook group called "Gil Hodges Belongs In The Baseball Hall of Fame" that gathered over 2,000 signatures on a petition to call attention to it.
The election by the writers will be announced on January 6th, and it figures that a number of worthy candidates will be elected, such as Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, Mike Piazza and Craig Biggio all having excellent chances of going in this summer.
It's just a shame that worthy men such as Gil Hodges and Luis Tiant will be on the outside looking in for the foreseeable future, and may ultimately never get in.