Five former Cardinals are among 10 former players and managers for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Golden Days Era ballot which will be voted on Dec. 5 in Orlando, Florida, at baseball’s winter meetings.
The group is headed by third baseman Ken Boyer, the Most Valuable Player in the National League in 1964 when the Cardinals won their first World Series in 18 years. Boyer, who hit a grand slam in Game Four, played 11 of his 15 big-league seasons with the Cardinals, hitting .348 in the seven All-Star Games he played out of 11 selections and driving in 1,141 runs for his career. He is third on the Cardinals’ list for home runs at 255, behind only Stan Musial and Albert Pujols, and he won five Gold Gloves for the Cardinals.
The other former Cardinals are lefthanded pitcher Jim Kaat, who was a member of the 1982 World Series champions; first baseman Dick Allen, who hit 34 homers in his lone season with the club in 1970; outfielder Roger Maris, who played in two World Series in two seasons with the Cardinals in 1967-68 after coming from the New York Yankees, where he had set the single-season home record; and outfielder Minnie Minoso, who played here in 1962 after spending most of his career in the American League.
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The other five on the Golden Days Era (1950-69) ballot are Gil Hodges, Brooklyn first baseman and World Series-winning manager for the New York Mets; Los Angeles Dodgers base-stealing shortstop Maury Wills; Minnesota outfielder Tony Oliva; Chicago White Sox lefthander Billy Pierce; and two-time World Series-winning manager Danny Murtaugh of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Any Golden Days Era candidate who receives votes on 75 percent of the ballots cast by a special 16-member committee will earn election to the Hall of Fame and will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 24 of next year. At the same time in Orlando, another 16-person committee will consider 10 candidates from the Early Baseball Era ballot.
Seven Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues legends and three American League/National League stars comprise the Early Baseball Era ballot, which features candidates whose primary contribution came prior to 1950.
The Early Baseball Era ballot includes outfielder Lefty O’Doul, a two-time National League batting champion; Yankees righthander Allie Reynolds, who was on six World Series champions; and infielder Bill Dahlen, who had a 21-season playing career in the National League.
From the Negro Leagues era the seven candidates are John Donaldson, Bud Fowler, Vic Harris, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, Buck O’Neil, Dick “Cannonball” Redding and George “Tubby” Scales. All of these candidates are deceased. Kaat, Wills and Oliva are alive from the Golden Days Era ballot.
The Post-Dispatch’s Rick Hummel served on the Hall of Fame’s Overview Committee, which put both of the December ballots together.
