I made the phone call again.
I’ve made this call way too many times.
There were all the times I voted for Dale Murphy for the Hall of Fame, and he didn’t make it in, and there was the first time the newly formed “Modern Day Committee” considered his candidacy, and he still didn’t make it in, and there was that one time when I phoned him while he was driving on a snowy mountain road in Utah, and he answered, and he nearly veered into a snowbank. He survived. But he didn’t make it in.
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“I remember that,” Murphy said from his home outside of Salt Lake City. “So why are you calling me again? Don’t you have anything better to do? It’s better than being here, shoveling snow.”
Murphy — a two-time MVP, five-time Gold Glover, four-time Silver Slugger, seven-time All-Star and Roberto Clemente Award winner — remains a Hall of Famer without a plaque. The Modern Baseball Era Committee, a splintered group from the old Veterans Committee, squashed Murphy’s Hall candidacy for the second time last week. This follows the former Braves great’s inability to gain induction when he was on the writers’ ballot.
The wait continues. It’s like standing outside a club, in the cold, on the other side of a red velvet room, and the door opens just long enough for you to look inside and think, “Wait a minute. He got in, and I didn’t!”
Murphy did not express outrage Thursday. But he’s hurt. He’s surprised, if not by the result, then by the voting breakdown. He and his family were gathered Sunday night when the voting was announced, and as the old song goes, “If the phone doesn’t ring, you know it’s me.”
The Hall of Fame didn’t call Utah. I called Utah.
“You’re told that if you get in, they’ll call you about an hour before the official announcement to let you know,” Murphy said. “So you just kind of sit there by the phone and wait, until it gets too close to the announcement, and you know, ‘OK, I didn’t make it.’”
Even more insulting than being snubbed: Murphy was named on only “three or fewer” ballots out of 16, a presumed drop from two years ago, when the Hall of Fame said he was named on “fewer than seven” ballots. Ted Simmons received 13 votes, Marvin Miller 12. Eight others were below the 75 percent (12-vote) mandate.
The decline in votes surprised Murphy.
“If there’s one thing that caught me off guard, I thought I’d move forward,” he said. “I really thought I’d move forward.”
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This is when reality settles in. It’s one thing when Murphy can’t collect enough votes on 30-plus-man ballots with the writers for induction. But when he can’t come close to the required 12 out of 16 votes on a subcommittee and support declines, the future looks bleak.
The last time this committee voted in 2017, three of the 12 voters had Braves ties: Bobby Cox, John Schuerholz and Don Sutton. Murphy still didn’t get in. A new panel in 2019 — comprising Hall of Famers, executives and writers but no Atlanta connections — offered little hope for the next vote in 2022.
“I’ve always been pretty philosophical about my chances,” said Murphy, who has written baseball opinion pieces for The Athletic. “There’s two things I’ve said before: I think there’s a spot there for me, and I knew it would not be a first-ballot situation, that it would take a long time. So I’m still optimistic for the future.
“You raise your feelings about it when you get on the ballot, and then people start debating your career But I get it — it may not happen.”
I voluntarily gave up my vote for the Hall of Fame a few years ago because of the endless circle of debate about whether players who used performance-enhancing drugs should get in. Executives from the Baseball Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball declined to provide clarity or guidance on the subject. Without that, it wasn’t worth it for me to continue, my respect for the greats of the game notwithstanding.
But on the subject of PEDs: If several notable players are being kept out because of juicing, shouldn’t extra consideration be given to those who produced at a high level and did so while staying clean? The most prevalent argument against Murphy is he did not produce at a high enough level for a long enough period during his 18 — 18! — seasons. But for a while, he was either the best player in the game or in that discussion, and he spent most of his career with a miserable team and little support in the lineup.
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Schuerholz, a recent inductee in Cooperstown as a longtime Braves executive, declined to comment on why Murphy hasn’t made it in. But he said of the former player, “He’s highly regarded and always has been, both in terms of his playing ability, his MVP status and even more than that, his persona. How he represented this organization, this community and the game of baseball was universally admired. … I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to comment publicly (about the vote) because I have been a member of that voting body. But I think you can probably glean how I feel about him.”
Mike Mills, the former member of R.E.M. and a longtime Braves fan, wrote a song in honor of Murphy, titled “To The Veterans Committee,” with the group “The Baseball Project.” Included in the lyrics:
“Two MVPs and five gold gloves,
Atlanta fans’ undying love,
And though he heard the voices like the rest,
He stayed out of the vipers’ nest,
He chose to play with just his best,
And that’s why I feel good to say,
I want to see Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame …
Forget about the liars,
All the Sosas and McGwires,
I want to see Dale Murphy in the Hall of Fame …”
The entire Murphy family — Dale, wife Nancy, their five children and spouses — has dinner together every other Sunday. This past week’s dinner coincided with the night of the vote. Hopes were elevated.
“I think Ted had 11 votes last time, so I was thinking he would go in and maybe there would be a couple of more guys,” Murphy said. “Being active on social media, I know I have some loyal fans, and you read stuff, and you get positive vibes, and you start to think, ‘Maybe it’s going to happen this year.’”
Did anybody get demonstrative when the call didn’t come?
“They’re all Murphys. We’re not very demonstrative,” he said.
If Murphy makes it back onto the ballot, he’ll do this again in three years, waiting by the phone. Hopefully, it will be somebody other than me calling.
(Photo: Pouya Dianat / Atlanta Braves / Getty Images)
