Circle of Greats Round 36 Results: Rose Picked, Despite Thorny Issues |

Having fallen short of induction by the smallest of margins in the 1941 and 1940 Part 1 rounds of balloting, Pete Rose broke through with the narrowest of victories in the 1940 Part 2 round. After a chaotic finish to the voting, including an unprecedented recount and a barely disqualified late vote, Pete becomes the 36th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Great. More on Rose and the voting after the jump.

Fred Lynn played 17 seasons in the major leagues, and so did Cecil Cooper, so together those guys played in 34 major league seasons. Combined, these two long-time MLB veterans totaled 15,862 regular season plate appearances. Pete Rose by himself had 15,890 regular season PAs.

Since 1897, only seven men have accumulated both 100 or more regular season triples and 100 or more regular season HBPs: Nellie Fox, Sherry Magee, Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, Fred Clarke and Pete Rose. Of that group of seven, only three — Rose, Speaker and Wagner — also accumulated over that period more than 100 home runs.

Pete Rose is the only man to play at least 500 games at first base, second base, third base, right field and left field. Reduce the number to 400 and Pete is still the only one. Also if you reduce the number to 300. Also 200. Also 100. Lenny Harris is the only another player to play at least 75 games at each of those positions. Lenny didn’t reach 500 games at any one position.

There have been six seasons of at least 720 plate appearances and a baseball-reference WAR of less than zero: Neifi Perez (1999), Eddie Lake (1947), Bill Wambsganss (1924) , Joe Kuhel (1935), and two Pete Rose seasons, 1980 and 1982.

Pete Rose and Eddie Collins each played in 34 World Series games, a record for the most such games not with the Yankees, Cardinals or Dodgers. Goose Goslin and Mickey Cochrane also played over 30 World Series games for teams other than the Yanks, Cards and Dodgers.

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26 votes got Pete Rose a tie in the 1941 COG balloting, though he lost in a runoff to Nolan Ryan. Then 25 votes left him a two votes short of victory in the 1940 Part 1 vote, falling short to Jim Palmer. And this round 26 votes was just enough to eke out a 26-25 win over Ron Santo. It wasn’t pretty, but a it’s still a win. Seems rather appropriate for Rose, who wasn’t exactly graceful, on the field or off, but he did grind out a playing career of enormous accomplishments.

This round was also a good one for the born-in-1940 class generally as Willie Stargell and Luis Tiant, in addition to Santo, earned enough support to earn a return engagement on the ballot. We’ll be up to 13 holdovers in the next round, including six candidates “on the bubble”, each needing to appear on at least 10% of the ballots cast to remain eligible.

The full spreadsheet showing this round’s vote tally, after adjustments, is here: COG 1940 Round Part 2 Vote Tally..

The overall vote summary for all Circle of Greats voting rounds is here: COG Vote Summary , with a summary of the raw vote totals on Sheet 1 and a summary of the percentage totals on Sheet 2.

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The Circle of Greats membership thus far (currently being displayed in order of major league regular season games played):
Pete Rose, 3,562 games
Rickey Henderson, 3,081 games
Cal Ripken, Jr., 3,001 games
Barry Bonds, 2,986 games
Robin Yount, 2,856 games
Reggie Jackson, 2,820 games
George Brett, 2,707 games
Paul Molitor, 2,683 games
Joe Morgan, 2,649 games
Ozzie Smith, 2,573 games
Tim Raines, 2,502 games
Carlton Fisk, 2,499 games
Rod Carew, 2,469 games
Wade Boggs, 2,440 games
Tony Gwynn, 2,440 games
Mike Schmidt, 2,404 games
Frank Thomas, 2,322 games
Gary Carter, 2,295 games
Alan Trammell, 2,293 games
Barry Larkin, 2,180 games
Johnny Bench, 2,158 games
Jeff Bagwell, 2,150 games
Larry Walker, 1,988 games
Mike Piazza, 1,912 games
Nolan Ryan, 807 games
Greg Maddux, 759 games
Steve Carlton, 745 games
Roger Clemens, 709 games
Tom Glavine, 709 games
Bert Blyleven, 699 games
Tom Seaver, 677 games
Fergie Jenkins, 665 games
Randy Johnson, 619 games
Jim Palmer, 576 games
Curt Schilling, 571 games
Mike Mussina, 537 games

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Mike L

10 years ago

For the record, Birtelcom, I think the voting irregularities are very suspect here–particularly since it’s Pete Rose we are talking about. Did you require voter identification prior to someone casting their vote? Have you viewed the voter rolls and investigated each individual to be certain he or she isn’t voting twice? Any people trucked in from a Senior Citizen center and “helped” to press “submit comment?” And, let’s talk about the old-fashioned voting machines–how many of us are using the newest equipment? Have appropriate steps been taken to ensure that there’s been no tampering with the computer code that actually… Read more »

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birtelcom

Reply to Mike L

Don’t worry — I’ve asked the consultants who designed the federal health insurance exchange web site to review the voting.

bells

Reply to birtelcom

I was half expecting, when the votes were close, to see several new posters voting for Rose under the usernames ‘PeteR’, ‘CharlieH’, and ‘C Hustle’.

oneblankspace

Rose never played for Chicago. Santo, on the other hand…

Reply to oneblankspace

What was that old saying from the original Daley machine days in Chicago (or maybe even before that)? — “Vote early and vote often”.

Lawrence Azrin

@6/birtelcom,

Yeah, it’s amazing how many voters there reside in graveyards …

David Horwich

Through 36 rounds, we’ve elected 24 position players, 12 pitchers. Exactly half of the electees have gone in on their first ballot; another 7 have gone in on ballots 2-4; the other 11 have waited until ballots 7-15. Electees by birth year: 1968 – Bagwell, Mussina, Piazza, Thomas (still on ballot: Alomar) 1967 – none (still on ballot: Smoltz, Lofton) 1966 – Glavine, Maddux, Schilling, Walker 1965 – none (still on ballot: Biggio) 1964 – Bonds, Larkin 1963 – R Johnson (still on ballot: Martinez) 1962 – Clemens 1961 – none 1960 – Gwynn, Ripken 1959 – Raines (still on… Read more »

Reply to David Horwich

This is great, David. I was thinking about doing something just like this for the next few “red lists” of inductees in the weekly results posts (currently organized by “number of games played” and before that by defensive position). I hope you don’t mind if I incorporate your work that way.

Sure, go right ahead!

Artie Z.

Wait – is that an eBay auction for a signed ball with the inscription, “Pete Rose, Circle of Greats”?

Hartvig

I voted early for Sandburg, Whitaker and Rose and almost immediately started to thing about switching Santo for Rose at least partly because I don’t think any of our holdovers are going to get in during the next decade & I suspect we’ll probably lose a few of them by the time the decade shakes things out a bit. Rose would have at least had some accrued eligibility to keep him on the ballot.

mosc

Reply to Hartvig

I wish we saved our redemption rounds. Going back a couple decades, we’re going to be crying for guys who didn’t last rather than that year’s cream of the crop.

Reply to mosc

I reserve the right to hold more frequent redemption rounds later on if it appears that the voters would prefer to vote for redeemed candidates than most of the choices on the ballot.