Gradishar, Helton pose good question
Two events this month have left me with a question.
First, linebacker Randy Gradishar, the heart of Denver’s “Orange Crush” defense in the Broncos’ first Super Bowl after the 1978 season, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio on August 3.
Then, last Saturday, first baseman Todd Helton, who led the Rockies to their only World Series in 2007, was honored at Coors Field after his enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York last month.
Each is a great honor. Being elected to either Hall of Fame means the player was one of the best in his sport for a long career.
But which “Hall” is harder to get into?
The National Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in 1936. By then, baseball had been played professionally in the United States for more than a half-century.
That Hall was the idea of Stephen Carlton Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune.
Quaint Cooperstown in central New York, once frequented by visitors to the region of early American novelist John Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, was reeling. It was six years into The Great Depression, and Prohibition, which ended in 1933, had left its mark.
Clark’s vision was a new tourist attraction, dedicated to what was then The National Pastime.
The Canton Repository newspaper, meanwhile, is credited with calling for Pro Football’s Hall.
“PRO FOOTBALL NEEDS A HALL OF FAME AND LOGICAL SITE IS HERE,” read the headline in the Repository on December 6, 1959.
It was the start of a campaign by Canton civic groups, and in 1961 the National Football League announced Canton would be the site of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
That HOF opened on September 7, 1963, 43 years after the American Professional Football Association was founded in Canton and 41 years after the APFA changed its name to the National Football League.
The first Cooperstown class—Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson—was elected in ’36 by the Baseball Writers Association of America, as honorees have been selected annually since. But they, and 21 others who were chosen in subsequent years, weren’t formally installed until Clark’s edifice was completed in 1939.
The first Canton class was chosen in 1963. It included 11 former players, including Red Grange, Don Hutson, Bronko Nagurski, Sammy Baugh, Ernie Nevers and Jim Thorpe, plus George Halas as a founder/owner/coach, and five owners: 17 in all.
Pro Football’s selection process is much more complicated than Major League Baseball’s—too involved to summarize in a sentence or two. Between four and nine former players and others, such as coaches and owners, are added each year.
In 88 years, the Baseball Hall of Fame has inducted 346 members, which equates to 3.93 per year. No one was named on the required minimum 75% of votes by BBWA electors in eight of those 88 years, most recently in 2021.
In 61 years, the Pro Football Hall of Fame has added 378 members, or 6.2 per year.
Gradishar waited 36 years and was a finalist three times before he was finally inducted in Canton. He was one of seven in the 2024 class.
Helton was elected in his sixth year of eligibility following the mandatory five-year waiting period after his last season as a player. He was one of four inductees this year.
So, my question: Is it more difficult to be a Hall of Famer in baseball or football, given the disparity in the number of inductees each year and the difference in selectin porcess?
Or does the higher number of football inductees reflect the higher number of starters (22 in football compared with nine, or now 10 including the designated hitter, in baseball)?
Currently, an NFL team has 53 active players, which is roughly double a baseball team’s 26.
Football players routinely make the 53-man roster, and often start, directly after being drafted out of college.
Baseball players almost never go directly onto a Major League baseball team’s roster. Typically, they spend at least two or three seasons in the Minors.
Does this make baseball a more difficult sport in which to perform at a Hall of Fame level?
It might.
Is being a Hall of Famer a bigger achievement in one sport than the other?
I don’t think so.
Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 16 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.