A Racial Inequity of Hall of Fame Proportions?

Every year since he has become eligible, Alan Trammell has received a significant enough amount of votes to remain on the Hall of Fame ballot, though he has not been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This includes appearing on 36.8 percent of the ballots this year. Meanwhile, the ballplayer whose name very prominently complemented Trammell’s through almost the entirety of Trammell’s career, Lou Whitaker, did not receive the five percent needed to remain on the ballot during his first year of eligibility back in 2001, when his name appeared on just 2.9 percent of the ballots cast.

As I grew up in the 1980s, Trammell and Whitaker were seemingly inseparable amid baseball discourse. Both came up, with Trammell at shortstop and Whitaker at second base, for the Detroit Tigers in 1977, and both played nearly their entire careers together for the Tigers, mostly as the team’s starting double-play tandem, through Whitaker’s retirement after the 1995 season. Trammell retired one year later.

In the end, their statistics look very similar. Whitaker played in 2390 games and had 8570 at bats, while Trammell played in 2293 games and had 8288 at bats. Whitaker scored 1386 runs and drove in 1084 RBIs, while Trammell scored 1231 runs and drove in 1003 RBIs. Whitaker had 2369 hits, of which 420 were doubles, 65 were triples, and 244 were home runs. Trammell had 2365 hits, of which 412 were doubles, 55 were triples, and 185 were doubles. Whitaker walked significantly more than Trammell (1099 vs. 874), but he also struck out significantly more than Trammell (1197 vs. 850). Trammell stole significantly more bases (236 vs. 143) and had a significantly higher batting average (.285 to .276), but Whitaker had a higher on base percentage (.363 to .352) and a higher slugging percentage (.426 to .415).

At the time of Whitaker’s retirement, he ranked as follows all-time among second basemen: ninth in hits, fifth in home runs, eighth in runs score, ninth in RBIs, ninth in doubles, fourth in walks, and seventh in at bats. All of those are higher than where Trammell ranked all-time among shortstops at the time of his retirement. Trammell’s rankings were tenth in hits, sixth in home runs, fifteenth in runs score, fifteenth in RBIs, eleventh in doubles, thirteenth in walks, and fifteenth in at bats. Trammell’s ranking of 26th in stolen bases does significantly outperform Whitaker’s ranking of 71st. Also, Trammell ranked 18th in average and 11th in slugging percentage among shortstops, while Whitaker ranked 30th and 12th, respectively. Both were ranked seventeenth in on base percentage, and neither ranked particularly high in triples, though Whitaker did rank higher among second basemen than Trammell did among shortstops. In other words, at the time of retirement Whitaker ranked higher against his positional peers than Trammell in more of the most prominent statistical categories than Trammell ranked higher than Whitaker.

In the time since these two retired, some second basemen have passed Whitaker and some shortstops have passed Trammell. Still, Whitaker remains more highly ranked among second basemen than Trammell does among shortstops on all from the above statistics that he did at the time of retirement except hits, where Trammell is now ranked twelfth among shortstops while Whitaker is ranked thirteenth among second basemen. Meanwhile, Trammell remains more highly ranked in batting average among shortstops than Whitaker does among second basemen (23rd to 42nd), and Trammell is now barely ranked higher among shortstops in on base percentage than Whitaker is among second basemen (20th to 21st), but Whitaker is now ranked slightly higher among second baseman in slugging percentage than Trammell is among shortstops (19th to 20th).

Meanwhile, to make this about at least a little more than batting statistics, Whitaker has a lifetime fielding percentage of .984 (all at second base), while Trammell has a lifetime fielding percentage of .977 at shortstop (along with 944 in 9 games in the outfield, .950 in 11 games at second base, and .950 in 43 games at third base).

All of this considered, there is a strong case to be made that Whitaker actually outperformed Trammell. At the very least, it suggests that there is anything but a clear-cut case of Trammell outperforming Whitaker. Still, the results of a little over a decade of Hall of Fame voting provide a different story, as indicated in my first paragraph above.

In the end, I can’t help but wonder if race is playing a role here, given that Trammell is white, while Whitaker is African American. There are well-documented histories of stereotyped depictions of black athletes as more naturally gifted than white athletes alongside overly generalized characterizations of white athletes as scrappier and more intelligent than black athletes. These characterizations have helped produce a history of Major League Baseball folks seeing white athletes as more fit for managerial and coaching roles than black athletes, and perhaps that has played a role in the fact that Trammell has gone on to become a major league coach and manager, while Whitaker has not. It would seem like these racialized perceptions could also easily lead Hall of Fame ballot holders to give Trammell more credit for his performance than they give Whitaker and thus produce the inequity of these two players’ ballot results.