Chick Hafey and the Hall Controversy

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The recent election of Scott Rolen, as it always seems to do when only a small number of Hall of Fame candidates are chosen for induction at Cooperstown, has brought out the usual arguments from all the usual sources not necessarily for those not elected, but for those who have what they claim are less than sterling credentials.

Like Chick Hafey, a man who I have spent much of the past two years researching and writing about.

If there is one thing that I have learned over the past eleven years of writing about the Blue Jays farm system, it’s that statistics always need to be judged in context. A player’s age relative to his level, as well as park and league factors, and a number of other considerations must be made when judging a prospect’s performance. Certainly, the slow creep of advanced metrics to the general public has helped, but a player’s numbers always have to be viewed in context.

The same can be said with comparing players from different eras.

The knock against Hafey is that his career was on the short side, as was his peak. Hafey suffered from vision and sinus issues that limited him to just under 1300 games in a 13 year big league career. Spring seemed to be the worst time of year for Hafey as he adjusted to the cool Midwest (he played for St Louis and Cincinnati in his career) spring.

In 1932, his manager with the Reds, Dan Howley, sent Hafey to the home of his good friend Jim Shaw in Port McNicoll, Ontario, for two weeks in July to recuperate from a nasty bout of influenza (Hafey lost well over 20 lbs during the illness) and escape from a heatwave. Shaw and Howley had become good friends a decade earlier during Howley’s time with the minor league Toronto Maple Leafs.

By the way, if this sounds like a book idea, well - it is. “Severn Sound,” the story of Hafey’s visit to Port McNicoll, will be published this spring. Look for it on Amazon/Kindle, as well as most ebook platforms. You’ll get to know Hafey, Howley, and Shaw very well.

Imagine a big league club sending its most valuable player to some small Ontario town to rehab for two weeks in mid-season today.

Back to Hafey. He made his big league debut with the Cards in 1924, and established himself a regular as St Louis won the 1926 World Series. Over the next five years, he was among the most consistent power hitters in the game, his lowest OPS over that time a .973 mark in 1931. Hafey missed 40 games that year, a large chunk of that because of contract squabbles with Cards’ GM Branch Rickey. Hafey missed spring training while holding out, finally signing as the season was to begin. When he arrived in St Louis to start the season, Rickey told Hafey he was in no shape to play, and sent him to the Three-I League for a month. Rickey also fined Hafey for every day he was not, in Rickey’s view, “ready”. By the time Hafey was recalled, the fines he was levied negated the salary increase he had received. The pair had what could be termed a complicated relationship that went well beyond financial issues. To learn more about that…..order the book when it comes out!

Hafey went on a tear in the closing weeks of that 1931 season, hitting .400 over the final two months - including an incredible .435 in September - to edge Bill Terry by 3 ten-thousandths to win the batting title. Unfortunately for Hafey, the post season problems he had experienced in the past - he was a .205 World Series hitter in four trips to the fall classic - plagued him again that year. Hafey went 4-24 through the first six games of the series, and was benched by manager Gabby Street for Game 7. In fairness to Hafey, Connie Mack’s A’s likely pitched around Hafey, but luckily for the Cards, 27 year old rookie Pepper Martin, hitting behind Hafey, collected 11 hits over the first five games and was named the series MVP in a Cards’ victory . The following spring, perhaps tiring of Hafey’s April troubles (his .278 average for the month was the lowest of his career), contract squabbles, and post-season struggles, Rickey dealt Hafey to lowly Cincinnati.

Manager Howley rode Hafey hard - likely with Hafey’s blessing - over the first two months of the ‘32 season, Hafey posted a .959 OPS, and played in every Reds game over the first six weeks. But after a 1-4 performance against the Pirates on the last day of May, Hafey was in and out - mostly the latter - of the lineup over June and July, and played in only 83 games. When asked by reporters what happened to the Reds, Howley responded, “When Chick went out with the flu, our chances crawled right under his bed and went to sleep with him.” The Reds finished last after reaching as high as 3rd place, 5.5 games out of first on May 31st. They were 19-34 in one-run games; there’s no telling how many more they might have won with the difference-making Hafey in the lineup.

Hafey came back to play in a career high 144 games in 1933, and 140 the following year; even though he produced respectable numbers, he was clearly on the decline.

Bill James has created a set of definitions for the Hall that I’ve always found useful:

A- any player who could be reasonably argued to be the greatest ever at the position he played (eg., Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Willie Mays)

B- a player who is one of the greatest ever at his position, usually the biggest star on a pennant-winning team (hello Joe Morgan, Al Kaline, Willie McCovey)

C - a player who was consistently among the best in the league at his position (Billy Williams, Willie Stargell, Billy Herman)

D- a player who rises well above the level of an average player, a player who would be capable of contributing to a pennant-winning team.

Hafey did not make it into the Hall during his initial eligibility period, topping out at a surprisingly-low 11% of the vote in 1960, his next-to-last season on the ballot. The Veterans Committee, headed by Hafey’s former teammate Frankie Frisch, enshrined Hafey in 1971. There was controversy and suggestions of cronyism at this inclusion; do a quick Google of “Chick Hafey+Hall of Fame” and you’ll see it hasn’t died down all that much in the past half century.

Was Hafey, in my opinion, a Hall of Famer? That’s a very difficult question, but on balance I say…..yes.

One could certainly point to his career numbers (164 HRs, 1466 hits), his inability to stay in the lineup, and his post-season woes and say no with some degree of certainty. On the other hand, Hafey was regarded as one of the best hitters in the game in his prime, and if not for the tight-fisted Rickey, he might have appeared in more than 4 World Series. A notorious pull hitter (Hafey took up golf in retirement and with his slice, noted “I’m starting to go the opposite way now”), Hafey had the misfortune of playing in two parks (Sportsmen’s Park in St Louis: 351 ft down the LF line, 422 to CF, Redland Field in Cinci) that were poor home run environments for his line-drive hitting profile. But he also hit in a then-record 10 consecutive ABs in 1929, and was selected for the first All Star game, in 1933, recording the midsummer contest’s first hit with a second-inning single. Hafey was also an outstanding defensive outfielder. In a crucial stretch-run game in Boston against the Braves late in the 1931 campaign, Hafey made a throw from the left-field corner that arrived in the air to the catcher to nab a runner at home with the potential game-winning run in the bottom of the 9th. The Cards would go on to win in extras, and Hafey’s teammates were still marvelling at the toss at a team reunion thirty years later. He had a cannon for an arm, and after recording 19 assists in 1927, runners all but stopped trying to take the extra base on Hafey.

Rickey himself said that if not for his sinus and vision issues, Hafey might have become the “greatest right-handed hitter of all time.” Legendary skipper John McGraw went a step further, suggesting had he been healthy, Hafey could have been the greatest player period. Perhaps that’s a stretch, but if we follow James’ definitions, a case for Hafey could definitely be made under “C” and/or “D.” In the 4 Series appearances the Cards made during the half dozen years Hafey was a regular, it could be argued he was the best player on the team. As one columnist pointed out, Hafey may just have been born too early; born before All Star games became a yearly event, before the MVP award voting systems of today were in place, and before a player of his calibre could command a salary commensurate with his performance.

Yes, based on the performance of other players ahead of Hafey’s .894 career OPS (placing him 73rd on the all-time list), there may be many more worthy candidates. But as James, advocating permanent rejection of candidates once their eligibility is over, himself said:

Look, I admit to my bias: having combed through newspapers from 1926 to 1936, I have a soft spot for Hafey, and not just because of his visit many years ago to the area in which I grew up. Hafey was a star, maybe underrated for his times (he was in the shadow of a lot of great players during that Golden Era), and perhaps he was a bit of a prima donna (as one of the beta readers of my book felt), but he was a smart dude, both on and off the field - with his World Series shares, he bought some farmland in Northern California that became worth many times more than the purchase price when that part of the state became wine country. He was definitely a feared hitter, a great defensive player, and a guy who persevered through health issues to forge a baker’s dozen years of a big league career.

. Yes, his numbers certainly don’t stack up with the all-time greats, but as I said at the beginning: consider the context.