The Los Angeles Times recently published an article citing the injustice of denying baseball’s great labor leader a booth in the Hall, but they do not answer the question of “why.”
There certainly is no legal obligation to vote him in, despite the fact that he changed the game forever and the owners as well as players are doing extremely well.
Perhaps the answer lies with changing American society. Only a small number of the labor force is unionized now and maybe it looks a little too “blue collar” for the “blue bloods” of the game.
My father was a teamster and proudly so. The new film “Captain Phillips” has one character entoning that he was “25 years a union man” and proud of it. Tom Hanks, playing the captain, threatens to get him off the ship in Africa, all as per union rules. I used to ask prospective jurors about union membership, but have not for years, as so few are members nowadays. Thus, the voters may have deemed his relevance “so five minutes ago.”
For all those who tolled before free agency and for all those who now benefit, how sad to ignore baseball history. In the meanwhile, the players themselves are left to honor his contributions.