1945 Hall of Fame Election

In the 1945 Hall of Fame Election, the BBWAA held a ballot for the first time since 1942, as it was only voting every three years. There was such a backlog of good candidates, and no way for voters to focus on particular players to bring over the two-thirds threshold, that no one was elected. The top candidate, Frank Chance, fell 7 votes short. This was not due to a lack of viable candidates; in fact, the top 33 vote-getters from that year would all make it, all the way until Johnny Kling, who received 12 votes, but who is the top name on that list who has not been enshrined in Cooperstown. A large number of candidates who finished behind Kling would also eventually gain induction.

It should be noted that there were no clear rules regarding elibility either: those receiving votes included some managers and a number of still active players (e.g. Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio).

BBWAA Vote

186 of 247 votes needed for election

Player	Votes	Result
Frank Chance	179
Rube Waddell	154
Ed Walsh	137
Johnny Evers	134
Miller Huggins	133
Roger Bresnahan	133
Mickey Cochrane	125
Jimmy Collins	121
Ed Delahanty	111
Clark Griffith	108
Frankie Frisch	101
Hughie Jennings	92
Pie Traynor	81
Wilbert Robinson	81
Hugh Duffy	64
Fred Clarke	53
Rabbit Maranville	51
Joe Tinker	49
Mordecai Brown	46
Herb Pennock	45
Joe McGinnity	44
Chief Bender	40
Eddie Plank	33
Ray Schalk	33
Bill Terry	32
Lefty Grove	28
Frank Baker	26
Carl Hubbell	24
Addie Joss	23
Ross Youngs	22
Dazzy Vance	18
Dizzy Dean	17
Bill Dickey	17
Johnny Kling	12
Charlie Gehringer	10
Nap Rucker	10
Lefty Gomez	7
Babe Adams	7
Edd Roush	5
Kid Nichols	5
Harry Heilmann	5
Sam Crawford	4
Ted Lyons	4
Bill Donovan	3
Bobby Wallace	3
Hank Gowdy	3
Hank Greenberg	3
Bill Carrigan	3
Deacon Phillippe	2
Casey Stengel	2
Eddie Grant	2
Kid Elberfeld	2
Gabby Hartnett	2
Bobby Lowe	2
Bill McKechnie	2
Jesse Burkett	2
Branch Rickey	2
Zack Wheat	2
Harry Davis	1
Wid Conroy	1
Earle Combs	1
Danny Murphy	1
Bill Sweeney	1
Jesse Tannehill	1
Van Lingle Mungo	1
Max Carey	1
Howie Camnitz	1
Donie Bush	1
Cy Williams	1
Ginger Beaumont	1
Steve Yerkes	1
Johnny Vander Meer	1
Joe Gordon	1
Sherry Magee	1
Herman Long	1
Duffy Lewis	1
Tony Lazzeri	1
Pepper Martin	1
Eppa Rixey	1
Charlie Root	1
Bob Meusel	1
Heinie Groh	1
Jack Dunn	1
Amos Rusie	1
Joe DiMaggio	1
Pat Moran	1
Dickie Kerr	1
Cy Seymour	1
Claude Ritchey	1
Jimmy Sheckard	1
Kid Gleason	1
Billy Southworth	1
Mike Donlin	1
Bill Dineen	1
Charlie Grimm	1

Old-Timers Committee

The ancestor of today's Veterans Committee met after the BBWAA vote and under the shadow of the baseball writers' failure to do their job and elect anyone. They remedied this by selecting some of the most popular and uncontroversial candidates from that year's vote and some figures from the previous entury, and granting them election. The group included the following ten persons: Roger Bresnahan, Dan Brouthers, Fred Clarke, Jimmy Collins, Ed Delahanty, Hugh Duffy, Hughie Jennings, King Kelly, Jim O'Rourke and Wilbert Robinson. Five of these - Bresnahan, Clarke, Collins, Jennings and Robinson - had received significant support in the just-concluded ballot. The five others - Brouthers, Delahanty, Duffy, Kelly and O'Rourke - were players from the 19th Century who were not under consideration by the writers. These were all very defensible selections and the decision helped to get the pipeline of candidates moving again. In future years, however, the newly-empowered committee would make some very questionable additions to the Hall.

The ten persons elected did not benefit at the time from a formal induction ceremony. World War II travel restrictions were still in effect, and their names were just added to the membership list without further hoopla, as Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby had been in previous years. This oversight was finally remedied in 2013 when the Hall of Fame held a special belated induction ceremony for these twelve members, as part of what was otherwise a rather light induction week-end (there were only three new members that year, all of them figures from the 19th century or early 20th Century, and all long-dead).

Further Reading

• Steve Gardner: "Lou Gehrig may be the biggest name at this summer's Hall ceremony", USA Today, January 9, 2013. [1]