Besides the Babe, there can be little doubt that Cooperstown has plaques of many guys that drank a lot and enjoyed the ladies.
Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are enshrined. Their "after hours" escapades with Billy Martin (and others) are well-documented. Martin never got inducted. While the switch-hitting Mantle was racking up very impressive stats with his bat, and Ford with his left arm (while both likely played many games with a hangover) it seemed Martin's role was that of a spark plug to keep his teammates competing at a high level, but he really wasn't all that good as a player.
That would continue in Martin's career as a manager for several teams after his playing days were over. No one could turn a losing team into a winner quicker than Martin. He would get the most out of everybody. Yet, there were problems with that philosophy. Martin managed like every regular season game was the 7th game of the World Series. Besides retaining his fiery temper, which could often lead to being outright combative with owners, players, the press, and others, he pushed his teams so hard he burned them out. Even back then, the players were only going to tolerate so much out of a manager before they turned on him. Starting pitchers came up with lame arms from overwork. As an example -- while Martin was managing the Detroit Tigers -- starting pitcher Mickey Lolich threw 376 innings in 1971, starting a whopping 45 games. To put that in perspective, current Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander, considered a workhorse himself, and reigning American League Cy Young and MVP winner, pitched 251 innings in 2011, in 34 starts. Does Martin belong in the Hall of Fame? Certainly not as a player. As a manager? Hard to say. He was definitely a winner every place he went, but only for the short term. If he wasn't ticking off his bosses, he was already going to the whip with his horses before they even rounded the first turn.
Joe DiMaggio is most definitely in the Hall. The Yankee Clipper was one helluva a player for a long time, including still holding the all-time record for consecutive games with a hit at 56. Maybe it matters and maybe not, but after that streak was broken, he hit in the next 18 consecutive games. An opposing pitcher once said if he got Joe out the first time at bat, he'd walk him for the rest of the game -- just to be known as the guy that stopped the streak. Joe got a hit his first time up. Will anybody go 57 in a row? Maybe, but yours truly thinks it's highly unlikely.
Joe D is most definitely an American icon, not only for his accomplishments on the field, but his high profile marriage to Marilyn Monroe, though it only lasted less than a year, and happened about 3 years after his playing days were over.
Joe played 13 seasons for the Yankees, the most notable being in 1941 when he set the record mentioned above. That was the same year Ted Williams became the last guy to hit over .400. 401 to be exact. Joe checked in with a measly .357. These days, putting up that number would pretty much guarantee a batting title -- but not back then.
Of course, WWII was raging, and Joe missed 3 seasons to serve his country by enlisting in the military. Some think he was a war hero. They would be wrong. Dimaggio entered the service in 1943. He was stationed in Santa Ana, California, then Hawaii, which 2 years after Pearl Harbor was probably the safest place on the planet, and finally Atlantic City, New Jersey. As a sergeant, Dimaggio was a physical education instructor. Not exactly Audie Murphy stuff. He was finally discharged due to "chronic stomach ulcers" -- which miraculously didn't hinder him from going right back to the the Major Leagues and playing another 6 seasons.
In the late 60s, song-writing genius Paul Simon and his sidekick Art Garfunkel crooned about Dimaggio in a song best known as being associated with the move "The Graduate". Though Joe had been done playing for better than 15 years, the song asked -- "Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio, a nation turns it's lonely eyes to you." At that time, considering America was going through major social upheaval, the likes of which had never been seen before, a new drug culture had made its way onto the scene, the Viet Nam war was raging, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated, and there was rioting in many major cities from coast to coast, it's unclear what Simon's motives were for those lyrics. It would seem America had more important issues to deal with than nostalgia over a retired baseball player. But perhaps that was his point. Returning to the "good old days".
If the nation had indeed turned its lonely eyes to Joe and looked close, they would have discovered that he not only had many of the same vices as Babe Ruth, but that other "lonely" women were turning their eyes to him as well. No one wants to hear about that, of course, and it was hushed up at the time, but some who have probed his history suggest that DiMaggio, while on road trips, and very much married at the time, seemed to have a sailor's equivalent of a girl in every port. He drank booze, smoked, and was known for being rather aloof to not only fans outside of the public eye, but his teammates as well.
Ty Cobb was known for a lot of things. He certainly got a lot of hits in the "dead ball" era, batting over .400 3 times, had a lifetime batting average of .366 over 24 seasons, and his all-time hit record stood for decades until Pete Rose finally surpassed it. Even during his playing career, Cobb was known as a bad guy. Maybe he sharpened his spikes and slid in "high" (never proven), and maybe he did a lot of other things to hurt opposing players as well. Thing is, he was not well-liked -- at all. Most other players, and it seems even many of his own teammates, despised him. He was not a nice man, and didn't care. But Lord, could he hit. Some accounts even suggest Cobb actually killed a man in his younger days, though details remain sketchy, at best.
Possibly including the above, Cooperstown has its fair share of other drunks, womanizers, and possibly even a murderer, and nobody cares. There's no such thing as "unenshrining" someone who's already there, even when some sordid details about their lives emerge later. That's understandable. It might be akin to finding out a decorated soldier buried in Arlington National Cemetery had committed a few war crimes while on duty. Should he be dug up and reburied elsewhere? That would be quite a can of worms to open up.
Expose the truth, take remedial action, or leave the past alone and let bygones be bygones? All depends on how how one wants to look at it.
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