Old News: Original Hall of Fame Announcement

Below these words — and craftily procured from an unnamed library database — is the announcement of the first Hall of Fame ballot, courtesy of the December 24, 1935 edition of the New York Times.

As the reader can see, this was a bit of an exciting notion at the time — and free of the armchair philologizing that comes with many contemporary discussions of the Hall and candidacy for same (i.e. “It’s the hall of fame, therefore it makes sense to pick the most famous players”).

Below are the five players ultimately selected. One weird thing is how much talk there is of an “immortal ten” when, in fact, only five players were selected.

Name		Votes	% of Ballots
Ty Cobb		222	98.2
Babe Ruth	215	95.1
Honus Wagner	215	95.1
Chri. Mathewson	205	90.7
Walter Johnson	189	87.6

Now here’s the article: