1947 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

rdf:langString 1947 Baseball Hall of Fame balloting

rdf:langString Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 1947 followed yet another round of reform. The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) continued to vote by mail but the Hall of Fame Committee had revised the procedures for that election and reduced its historical jurisdiction relative to the Old-Timers Committee. The BBWAA now considered major league players retired no more than 25 years. The reform seemed to work, as it elected four: Mickey Cochrane, Frank Frisch, Lefty Grove, and Carl Hubbell. In the wake of the successful BBWAA election, and perhaps in deference to those critics who believed that the 21 selections by the Old-Timers Committee in the previous two years had been too many in such a short time, the Hall of Fame Committee did not meet in 1947 to make further selections from among the players of the era before 1922, or to add names to the Roll of Honor. It was believed, with some optimism, that further revisions in the election process were currently unnecessary. The new members of the Hall were formally inducted in Cooperstown, New York, on July 21, 1947, along with the previous year's 11 selections by the Old-Timers Committee, with National League president Ford Frick presiding. Ed Walsh, elected in 1946, was the only inductee to attend the ceremony; all four 1947 inductees were still living, as were four of the 1946 selectees.