Cooperstown-bound? The 10 best Baseball Hall of Fame candidates with Sacramento ties

With baseball’s postseason concluded, Hall of Fame voting season looms.

The Hall of Fame announced ballots Friday for its Early Baseball and Golden Days era committees, highlighted by candidates such as Buck O’Neil and Dick Allen. Meanwhile, Hall voting will soon get underway for the Baseball Writers Association of America, which considers more-recent retirees.

Cooperstown hasn’t had an inductee with strong ties to the Sacramento area since Pat Gillick in 2011. It’s unlikely to be this way forever, though. Here are the 10 best candidates with local links.

Dusty Baker

Baseball’s second-winningest active manager, the 72-year-old Houston Astros skipper moved to the Sacramento area as a teenager, attending Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks and then American River College. He maintains local connections, living in Granite Bay in the offseason and owns West Sacramento-based Baker Family Wines.

With the 12th-most wins in MLB history as of this writing, Baker has reasonably good Hall of Fame chances and will be eligible six months after he retires. But this might be a little while more, with Baker telling reporters after the Astros’ recent World Series loss he has “unfinished business.”

Stan Hack

A Sacramento native, Hack was a four-time All-Star third baseman with the Chicago Cubs in the 1930s and ‘40s. Perhaps Hack’s strongest argument for Cooperstown is that he ranks better by sabermetrics than his era’s most-celebrated third baseman and longtime Hall of Famer Pie Traynor.

That said, Hack, who died in 1979 at 70, has struggled to build momentum for Cooperstown, drawing a few votes seven times from the BBWAA and making the Veterans Committee ballot in 1989. Not among the 10 candidates announced for the Early Baseball ballot, it will be another 10 years before Hack can be up for consideration again.

Manny Ramirez

The only Baseball Hall of Fame candidate with Sacramento ties likely to be on the writers’ ballot this year is unlikely to be inducted anytime soon. Still, it’s not impossible.

With two failed tests for performance-enhancing drugs, the former River Cat might seemingly have no real shot at Cooperstown. But Ramirez had support through five appearances on the writers ballot, drawing 28.2 percent most recently.

Ramirez’s greatest case might be that lots of players used steroids without hitting 555 home runs or .312 lifetime. The ice might thaw a bit, too, if and when Steroid Era greats such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez are inducted.

Dustin Pedroia

Pedroia appeared on-track for Cooperstown before injuries curtailed his career. The Woodland High School graduate might still have a chance, though.

It will come down to how much voters value Pedroia’s peak: playing a key role on two World Series-winning Boston Red Sox teams, as well as collecting an MVP, Rookie of the Year and four Gold Gloves. We’ll know more when Pedroia becomes eligible with the writers in the fall of 2024.

Babe Pinelli

Despite lackluster interest, the Hall of Fame makes umpires eligible. Pinelli, who played for the Sacramento Senators in 1919, umpired 22 years in the majors, capping his career by working Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

While the Hall of Fame releases scant details about how its committees vote, Pinelli is known to have made the ballot in 1976, ‘77, ‘82, and ‘91. Umpires sometimes take a long time to get in Cooperstown, with the the most recent induction, Hank O’Day in 2013, first nominated in 1953.

Josh Donaldson

Sometimes when Hall of Famers are inducted, it’s players like Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, or Derek Jeter who were never anything but top prospects. Other times, it’s former journeymen minor leaguers like Donaldson, who logged nearly 1,000 at-bats with the River Cats before finding stardom.

As a Cooperstown candidate, Donaldson could be up against the clock, not becoming an MLB regular until he was 26. But he’s showing few signs of slowing as he approaches his 36th birthday and might wind up in range of Cooperstown.

Artie Wilson

Last December, Major League Baseball opted to include Negro League statistics from 1920 to 1948. These stats are still being compiled by baseball researchers, though Wilson’s known batting average currently sits at .367.

Where Wilson could fall short is the Hall of Fame requires players have 10 seasons and Wilson had six: five in the Negro Leagues and a brief 19-game stint with the Giants in 1951, followed by several years in the Pacific Coast League, including with the Sacramento Solons in 1957.

Still, the Hall could relax the 10-year rule with Black MLB pioneers, who had little margin for error and sometimes got stuck in the minors.

Ken Keltner

Keltner, a seven-time All Star third baseman for the Cleveland Indians who had a Solons stint in 1951, gained some traction as a Hall of Fame candidate in the 1980s. This led researcher Bill James to develop a 15-question Keltner List in his book “Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?” to ferret out similar candidates.

Pepper Martin

Martin comes up a little short statistically. But it’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Stats, with Martin, a core member of the Gashouse Gang St. Louis Cardinals of the 1930s (and manager of the Solons in their only championship season, 1942.)

Dick Bartell

Another former Solons manager and a standout National League shortstop before, Bartell made four veterans ballots from 1983 through 1995. Like Hack, Bartell’s long been off the Cooperstown radar, but candidates sometimes make comebacks.

This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 5:00 AM.