Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog: Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame update

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame update - 2008

Last year, I wrote about a Detroit Tigers Hall Of Fame we have been creating at MotownSports. After many months of research, debating and voting, 65 members have now been inducted. Officially named the Bluhm Memorial Detroit Tigers Hall of Fame, the project is led by Dave Troppens (known on MotownSports as DTroppens) and Alan Chichester (DT34456884), two excellent writers and long time contributors to MotownSports. For those who don't know, Brian Bluhm was one of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings in April. He was a very avid Tigers fan, a friend to many of us in the Tigers online community and one of the most active participants in this project.

We currently have around 25 voters, many of whom have been on the project since the initial election. In each election, each voter is allowed to vote for as many as five players. Managers, executives and broadcasters are also eligible. Any player receiving 75% of the votes gets into the Hall of Fame. That first election included players who finished their careers with the Tigers by 1915. The second election included all players who ended their Tigers careers between 1916 and 1920. Each week, we had an election including players from a new five-year period. In June, 2007 we conducted the voting for players who ended their careers between 2001-2005 and this completed the first phase of the project.

Later in the year, we held special elections for the Detroit Wolverines (a National League team from 1881-1888) and the Detroit Stars (a Negro League team in the 1920s and 1930s). There will also be annual elections for newly retired players and for players who received a significant portion of votes but failed to get inducted in earlier elections. This week we concluded one of those elections and three new players have been added to the Hall of Fame: Bobby Higginson, Mike Henneman and Tony Phillips.

If you go to the second link above, you'll see a profile of each of the 65 members elected so far. A brief summary is included in the Table below.

Name	Position	First Year as Tiger	Last Year as Tiger
Ed Killian	Pitcher	1904	1910
George Mullin	Pitcher	1902	1913
Sam Crawford	Outfielder	1903	1917
Bill Donovan	Pitcher	1903	1918
Hughie Jennings	Manager	1907	1920
Donie Bush	Shortstop	1908	1921
Bobby Veach	Outfielder	1912	1923
Ty Cobb	Outfielder	1905	1926
Hooks Dauss	Pitcher	1912	1926
Harry Heilmann	Outfielder	1914	1929
Frank Navin	Owner,Executive	1903	1935
Mickey Cochrane	Catcher, Manager	1934	1938
Charlie Gehringer	Second baseman	1924	1942
School Boy Rowe	Pitcher	1933	1942
Rudy York	First baseman	1934	1945
Hank Greenberg	First baseman	1930	1946
Tommy Bridges	Pitcher	1930	1946
Wish Egan	Scout	1907	1951
Dizzy Trout	Pitcher	1932	1952
George Kell	Third baseman	1946	1952
Walter Briggs, Sr.	Owner, Executive	1920	1952
Ty Tyson	Broadcaster	1927	1952
Hal Newhouser	Pitcher	1939	1953
Fred Hutchinson	Pitcher	1939	1953
Virgil Trucks	Pitcher	1941	1956
Ray Boone	Third baseman	1953	1958
Harvey Kuenn	Shortstop	1952	1959
Jim Bunning	Pitcher	1955	1963
Vic Wertz	Outfielder	1947	1963
Rocky Colavito	Outfielder	1960	1963
Frank Lary	Pitcher	1954	1964
Denny McLain	Pitcher	1963	1970
Dick McAuliffe	Second baseman	1960	1973
Willie Horton	Outfielder	1963	1973
Al Kaline	Outfielder	1953	1974
Norm Cash	First baseman	1960	1974
Jim Northrup	Outfielder	1964	1974
Mickey Lolich	Pitcher	1963	1975
Bill Freehan	Catcher	1961	1976
John Hiller	Pitcher	1965	1980
John Fetzer	Owner, Executive	1956	1983
Lance Parrish	Catcher	1977	1986
Willie Hernandez	Pitcher	1984	1989
Jack Morris	Pitcher	1977	1990
Chet Lemon	Outfielder	1982	1990
Jim Campbell	GM, Executive	1962	1990
Paul Carey	Broadcaster	1973	1991
Lou Whitaker	Second baseman	1977	1995
Kirk Gibson	Outfielder	1979	1995
Sparky Anderson	Manager	1979	1995
Alan Trammell	Shortstop	1977	1996
Cecil Fielder	First baseman	1990	1996
Travis Fryman	Third baseman	1990	1997
Ernie Harwell	Broadcaster	1960	2002
Turkey Stearnes*	Outfielder	1923	1931
Edgar Wesley*	First baseman	1920	1927
Andy Cooper*	Pitcher	1920	1930
Sam Thompson#	Outfielder	1885	1888
Dan Brouthers#	First baseman	1886	1888
Charlie Bennett#	Catcher	1881	1888
Billy Rogell	Shortstop	1930	1939
Harry Coveleski	Pitcher	1914	1918
Tony Phillips	Infielder/Outfielder	1990	1994
Mike Henneman	Pitcher	1987	1995
Bobby Higginson	Outfielder	1995	2005

* Detroit Stars
# Detroit Wolverines

7 comments:

TimMay 6, 2008 07:26 PM
Why in the world is Higginson considered one of the great Tigers of all time? I understand he was the best player when the Tigers were the worst team in baseball, but come on. Higginson may have had 2 good years as a Tiger.

You guys need to be more selective as HOF voters if you want to be taken seriously.

Tim
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tiger337May 6, 2008 07:49 PM
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tiger337May 6, 2008 07:51 PM
Tim,

Higginson had a poor finish to his career. However, he was a Tiger for a long time and had several solid seasons. If he was surrounded by better players and they won more games during the period, he would probably look much better to you. He wasn't a slam dunk but I don't think he was a bad choice at all. I voted for him. I received a similar comment about Travis Fryman but I also believe he was a solid choice.

As far as being taken seriously, all I can say is that most of the voters studied the careers of all the Tigers in the history of the team very carefully. I was pretty happy with the outcome. There are a few people in the group that would enjoy discussing Higginson's qualifications with you in detail.
Just drop by Motownsports.com and go to the History Forum. Comments are very welcome and so are debates!
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tiger337May 6, 2008 07:58 PM
Higginson had more than two good years as a Tiger. His OPS+ (% above league average) was high in the following years:

1996 146
1997 133
1998 114
2000 132
2001 120

He was also a very good outfielder for many years.

You could argue that the end of his career dragged on too long and hurt his candidacy. That's what made him borderline but I consider him a legitimate candidate.
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TimMay 7, 2008 08:25 PM
Ok, so Higgy was good for 5 years. But HOF material I'm not so sure. He was one of the best players on a very poor team. I guess when I think of Tigers HOF I'd like to keep standards really high like the MLBs HOF. That's why I would not vote for Higgy.
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AnonymousMay 7, 2008 08:27 PM
I gotta say, going through this list is kinda fun. I only know player from the 80s on so it's good to have a list like this.

Even thought I disagree with Higgy it's a fun list.
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Lee PanasMay 8, 2008 06:41 AM
Tim, It was hard to decide where to make the cut off. There were about about 30 players who were slam dunk Hall of Famers - Cobb, Gehringer, Greenberg, etc. But I think the project would have been boring if we just made a list of great players. We also wanted to include a certain number of players who played with the Tigers for a long time and were pretty good. Figuring out who to include after the obvious one was what made the project interesting. There have been a lot of debates along the way.
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