Three of Baseball's Most Suspect Hall of Famers

George "High Pockets" Kelly

This article originally appeared in Here's the Pitch, the newsletter of the Internet Baseball Writers of America Association (IBWAA). 

Recently three Hall of Fame worthy players fell off the Hall of Fame ballot, basically because off the field they were Hall of Fame jerks. There can be no question that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling have the on-field qualifications to earn a plaque in Cooperstown. The baseball writers who hold the ballots, however, have determined that cheating by using performance enhancing drugs (Bonds and Clemens) or loudly proclaiming repugnant political beliefs and disdain for those writers (Schilling) are disqualifiers.

Former major league player, Doug Glanville, has made a persuasive argument for the exclusion of Bonds and Clemens in an article for the ESPN website, “Why I’m Ok with Barry Bonds Not Being Elected to the Hall of Fame,” and I will defer to him on this issue. The current Hall of Fame, however, is full of bad actors and players of questionable merit, so it seems odd to exclude anyone based on some vague and unevenly enforced moral code.

While the Hall balloting was taking place, I was researching an article for the SABR BioProject on 1920s Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand. Sand’s most notable achievement in baseball was that he turned in a fellow player who offered him a bribe.

On Saturday, September 27, 1924, with the New York Giants locked in a battle for the pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Giants were set to play the Phillies in a critical end of season game. Sand was standing on the field while the Phillies took batting practice, when he was approached by Giants utility outfielder Jimmy O’Connell. O’Connell offered Sand $500 to avoid “bearing down” in the game. Sand replied, “Nothing doing,” and later reported the incident to Phillies manager Art Fletcher. Fletcher informed Phillies officials, who reported the incident to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The reported bribe was the biggest gambling scandal in baseball since the Black Sox threw the World Series of 1919. With the World Series getting underway, Landis acted quickly. He interviewed O’Connell, who immediately confessed to the bribe attempt and said that Giants’ coach Cozy Dolan had instigated the bribe. He also told Landis that three star players on the Giants team, Frankie Frisch, George “High Pockets” Kelly, and Ross Youngs all knew about and approved the scheme.

Landis interviewed everyone implicated in the bribe attempt and came down with a quick decision. O’Connell and Dolan were banned from baseball for life. O’Connell, because he had confessed, and Dolan, because his denial was confused and not believable. Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs, who flatly denied any knowledge of the scheme, were completely exonerated. No one ever discovered who was putting up the $500.

It is interesting that Landis was swift to condemn two marginal major leaguers like O’Connell and Dolan, while star players like Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs got a free pass. Landis never answered why he fully accepted O’Connell’s confession as it related to his own actions and to those of Dolan, but not as it related to the other Giants O’Connell implicated. In Mystery and Tragedy: The O’Connell-Dolan Scandal, SABR author Lowell Blaisdell painstakingly reviews all the evidence and concludes, “it seems fairly likely” that Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs were supporting players in the bribe attempt.

Flash forward to 1947. Frankie Frisch, after a 19-year career as a second baseman, four World Series appearances, a long managerial career, and a stint as a popular radio broadcaster, is elected to the Hall of Fame. No question that based on his career as a player and manager he deserves the honor. His alleged involvement in the O’Connell-Dolan affair is a distant memory. His official biography for the Society of American Baseball Research makes no mention of it.

Flash forward again to 1972. The affable and popular Frisch is now on the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee. That year, he shepherds the candidacy of his old teammate, and alleged co-conspirator, Ross Youngs through the committee and Youngs is elected to the Hall of Fame. In 1973, Frisch advocates for the election of another former teammate, you guessed it, George “High Pockets” Kelly. Baseball scholars generally agree that Youngs and Kelly are among the least qualified players ever inducted. No less an eminence than baseball scholar Bill James has called Kelly, “the worst player in the Hall of Fame.”

Gambling on games has been the third rail in baseball since the Black Sox scandal in 1919. The magnificent Shoeless Joe Jackson, a possibly unwitting participant in that scandal, was banned from baseball for life and has never been considered for the Hall of Fame. Four generations later, the great Pete Rose suffered the same fate. Yet, Frisch, Kelly, and Youngs reside in the Hall alongside Lou Gehrig and Henry Aaron and Mike Schmidt and Greg Maddux as if they are in the same class. It might be the right thing to keep cheaters like Bonds and Clemens out, but let’s not pretend that the Hall is a repository for a group of players of exemplary character.

Afterword: Cozy Dolan, who had been a close confidant of Giants manager John McGraw, settled in Chicago after the scandal and operated a string of night clubs on Chicago’s north side. He died in 1958, one week after the shortstop he allegedly tried to bribe, Heinie Sand. Sand had a mediocre six-year career as the Phillies shortstop and finished his career playing several years with Baltimore in the International League. Jimmy O’Connell, a young player with a promising future, wound up playing for the Ft. Bayard, New Mexico team in the outlaw Copper/Frontier League with other disgraced players like Hal Chase and Chick Gandil. He died in Bakersfield, California in 1976.