'The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection' Review: A Choice of Players

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

A quotation often trotted out this time of year comes from Baseball Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby, who played in his last game in 1937: "People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring."

This winter the virus will put everything baseball into serious doubt, including the ritual countdown to the day in February when pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report to spring training. For those who love the game and its past and have hope for its near- and long-term future, a good companion during this "off" off-season is "The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection," a slim, oversize, heavily illustrated book by James Buckley Jr. Turning its pages is akin to a stroll through the Hall of Fame itself. Mr. Buckley has given us a potent souvenir of that remarkable institution in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The Hall of Fame complex comprises the hall itself, a museum and the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, which includes a library, an archive and a vast photo collection. The center, named after the baseball intellectual who in the late 1980s served as the game's seventh commissioner, is a researcher's dream come true. It can boast, among much else, of a dedicated file containing clippings and other biographical raw material for every major-league player who appeared in any game since 1871.

Between 1982 and 2012, I visited the Hall of Fame and Museum seven times. The most memorable visit was my first, in June 1982, when I did research for the first of 10 baseball-related books I would write over the next three decades. It was a thrill to see the place and enjoy the wonderful Frank Capra ambiance of the town in which it is located. It was during that first visit that the death of Satchel Paige, the first black pitcher to play in the American League, was announced. As befitted baseball's equivalent of Westminster Abbey, the flags on the front plaza were lowered to half-staff and a large portrait of Paige, draped in black crepe, was displayed on an easel inside the main entrance.

Paige's passing capped a movement for inclusion that had begun on July 25, 1966, when slugger Ted Williams was inducted into the Hall. When Williams took the podium, he was tanned and in great shape—one writer said he looked like Rock Hudson and sounded like John Wayne. After thanking a number of people and speaking on the virtue of hard work, he brought up the subject of Willie Mays, who had just hit his 522nd home run, which put him ahead of Williams. "He has gone past me, and he's pushing, and I say to him, 'Go get 'em, Willie.' Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as someone else, but to be better than someone else. This is the nature of man and the name of the game."

After praising Mays, Williams paused. He then swept his hand toward the hall behind him and expressed an unexpected wish: “I hope that some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they were not given the chance.”

This watershed moment sparked a movement to admit into the Hall those who’d excelled in the Negro Leagues, and in 1971 the Hall of Fame’s newly formed 10-member Committee on the Negro Leagues named Paige its first honoree. At first these players were to be admitted only as honorary members whose plaques would be hung in a separate gallery, but in the weeks between Paige’s selection and his induction, the outcry from both press and public against token membership grew so loud that the Hall granted him full membership, and his plaque was hung in the main area.

A few summers later, my wife and I led a three-generational pilgrimage to Cooperstown. It included our two sons, their cousin and my mother, whose interest in baseball was certainly less keen than that of the youngsters. But she was happy to be there because, in ours as in so many other American families, there were meaningful links to the game. In her case, the connection dated back to her childhood and her grandfather, who had been a business associate of Charles Ebbets, of Ebbets Field fame, and by extension a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and baseball. She had grown up with the old man’s own wall of fame, which included photos of Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

If my mother were still with us, paging through “The National Baseball Hall of Fame Collection” would have again reminded her of her grandfather’s wall. The book, though it’s indeed a spur to many wonderful baseball memories, is not without its shortcomings. To start, it lacks an index, which is the only way to tell which of the 333 Hall of Famers are included—or left out. Mr. Buckley, a prolific book packager and writer on sports, profiles only about half of the inductees. Most of the trading-card icons are here, of course, but I found myself asking why 19th-century pitcher James “Pud” Galvin rates a profile and a picture while the Negro and Major League great Monte Irvin doesn’t get even a mention. In addition, some of the photos lack clarity, especially in details of the players’ faces, and a few of those images don’t quite match up on the page with their profiles.

On the plus side, the prose is punchy, and the book is a beckoning call to all fans to make their own pilgrimage to Cooperstown once the vaccine goes to bat against the virus.

Mr. Dickson’s latest book is “The Rise of the G.I. Army, 1940-1941: The Forgotten Story of How America Forged a Powerful Army Before Pearl Harbor.”