COMMENTARY : THERE'S NO RHYME TO THE HALL VOTERS' REASONING.

Byline: Joe Gilmartin Phoenix Gazette 

Some random thoughts on the Baseball Hall of Fame voting:

First, in case you somehow missed them, the results in a nutshell: Phil Niekro got in. Don Sutton and Tony Perez didn't. Niekro was pleased, Perez was angry, and Sutton was baffled.

You assume Perez was angry because he raised the possibility he was passed over again because of anti-Hispanic bias. Or, as he put it, ``It might just be because my last name is Perez.''

You have to be pretty angry to even raise such a far-fetched possibility.

I'm not saying there is no such thing as racism in this country, or that if there is baseball writers are much too noble to stoop to it. That's another whole argument.

What I am saying is that in his playing days, Perez, unlike many of his contemporaries, was a media favorite. And that if there was any prejudice involved, logic suggests it likely was in his favor.

But where the Hall of Fame is concerned, logic has precious little to do with anything.

As Sutton put it in discussing his disappointment, ``This requires an analysis other than a logical one. There's so many interpretations of what it takes to get in. . . . Maybe that's the hang-up. There is no standard.''

Bingo!

That's as good an explanation as any why Niekro, who won 318 games, is in, whereas Sutton, who won 324, isn't, and Nolan Ryan, who also won 324, will be in the minute he's eligible.

Even Niekro had trouble with this math.

``Here's a guy who won more games and had a better earned-run average than I did,'' he said. ``I thought sure he'd get in before me.''

Ryan pitched enough no-hitters and struck out enough people to get in by acclamation. And he made a lot more headlines than Sutton.

But is fame a factor? And how do you weigh spectacular achievements against overall effectiveness? Is where you pitch as much of a consideration as how you pitch?

Does whether you pitched (or played) for good teams or bad ones come into the picture?

How about your play-by-play announcer? Did having his entire career described by Vin Scully help Don Drysdale get into the Hall of Fame?

Silly questions?

Maybe. But no sillier than some of the results of Hall of Fame balloting.

Yet, of all the Halls in sports, baseball's is far and away the most prestigious.

Basketball's until recently was a joke (and is still a pretty good giggle). Football's, by the very nature of the sport, has a lot of people in it nobody ever really heard of even when they were in their heyday. And hockey's is cluttered with hockey players.

But baseball, by virtue of being the most individualistic of the team sports, and thus blessed with real statistics that are the envy of every other one, has a big edge in the enshrinement dodge.

But that doesn't mean its selection system makes any more sense.

If anything, it subjects it to more scrutiny. And none of the selection processes in any sport can stand a whole lot of scrutiny.

Leonard Koppett, the one-time sports savant of The New York Times, felt it was unseemly for baseball writers to participate in Hall of Fame elections, or any other elections or polls, for that matter.

He thought journalists should confine their activity to observing, reporting and second-guessing (although Leonard called it analyzing).

And when asked how baseball would elect Hall of Famers without writer participation, he would shrug, ``That's baseball's problem.''

While getting writers out of the Hall of Fame business may improve journalism, it wouldn't noticeably improve the selection process. Whenever given the opportunity, managers, coaches and players have demonstrated their votes don't make any more sense than those of the media.

For the record, by the way, had I been eligible, I would have voted for Sutton and Perez, but not Niekro.

But I would have voted for Roger Maris every chance I got, too.