History
The Veterans Committee can be traced back to 1939 when Commissioner Landis formed the Old-Timers Committee to put players from the 19th century in the Hall of Fame. In 1939, the committee selected five players. In 1944, after Landis' death, they put him in the Hall. After Landis, they put twenty-three additional players in the Hall.
In 1953, the Veterans Committee met for the first time under the name Committee on Baseball Veterans. With 11 members, they elected six players in their first vote in 1953. Starting in 1955, they would meet to elect up to two players in odd numbered years.
In 1962, they went back to annual elections to the Hall of Fame, with the continued mandate to elect up to two players a year.
The Hall of Fame suffered in the 1970s, when Frankie Frisch was a major voice on the committee. The old Hall of Famer, backed by former teammate Bill Terry and sportswriters J. Roy Stockton and Fred Lieb, who covered Frisch's teams, managed to get five of his teammates elected to the Hall by the committee. Additionally, in the three years after his death, two more teammates were elected.
After Frisch died and Terry left the Committee, elections were normalized. In 1978, membership increased to fifteen members, five Hall of Famers, five owners and executives, and five sportswriters. The members would meet in Florida during spring training to elect a player or two every year.
The Veterans Committee mandate of up to two players was increased briefly from 1995 to 2001. In these years, the committee could elect one extra player from the Negro Leagues and one from the 19th century in addition to the two regular players.
During much of its existence, the Veterans Committee consisted of 15 members selected by the Hall of Fame for defined terms. A six-man subcommittee of this group met as a screening committee to determine who would be on the ballot. The committee met annually to consider candidates in four separate categories:
- Players
- Managers
- Umpires
- Executives
The Veterans Committee met privately, and its ballots and voting results were generally not revealed prior to 2003. From the mid-1970s until 2001, the top candidate in each category was elected to the Hall of Fame if he earned at least 75% of the committee's votes.
Read more about this topic: Veterans Committee
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“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)