Veterans Committee picks five

Managers Dick Williams and Billy Southworth, commissioner Bowie Kuhn, and former owners Walter O'Malley and Barney Dreyfuss are going to Cooperstown. They were selected by the veterans committee to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

"This is unbelievable," said Williams when reached by phone at his home in Las Vegas. "We've been crying all over the house today. It's the highest honor. I just certainly appreciate that. I'm very humbled by it, if I can ever be humbled because you know me."
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"I'm very happy and he would be very happy," said O'Malley's son Peter, who sold the Dodgers in 1998. "He had the greatest respect for the Hall of Fame. He felt it was so important, not just for baseball but for all sports, and not just in the U.S. but for the entire world."

Do you remember who else was on the owners/pioneers side of the ballot? Michael Baumann does. I've bolded the main point of Baumann's column below.

The election of Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of baseball from 1969-84, will cause more than an occasional raised eyebrow. Under Kuhn's leadership, baseball undoubtedly enjoyed a major growth spurt. And he was known as a principled man who cared deeply about the game's integrity. On the other hand, he was on the losing end of numerous labor disputes. And this is where the real difficulty rests with this election.

By the end of Kuhn's reign, the single largest force in the game was not the commissioner, but the players' union. This is one of the reasons why Marvin Miller, who transformed that union from a mere concept to a full-fledged powerhouse, ought to be enshrined in Cooperstown as an individual who changed the nature of baseball as much as anyone outside of Jackie Robinson.

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Electing Kuhn and not Miller is basically the equivalent of looking at the 2007 World Series and determining that the Colorado Rockies, not the Boston Red Sox, were the champions. If you look at the 15 years of history in question from a labor/management standpoint, Marvin Miller won and Bowie Kuhn lost, hands down, time after time, beyond a shadow of a doubt. But in this election, that result was reversed.

Click on the inductees names for more information about them.

Billy Southworth

Southworth managed parts of 13 seasons in the Major Leagues, including seven seasons over two stints in St. Louis. He was player-manager for 90 games in 1929, then presided over the dominant Cardinals teams from 1940-1945. Those teams won three pennants and two World Series titles, and in Southworth's five full seasons as Cardinals manager, the team averaged nearly 102 wins per year.

Dick Williams

A rookie Major League manager named Dick Williams reported to Spring Training in 1967, developed a no-nonsense approach immediately, and turned a last-place team from the previous season into the American League champions.

It remains as one of the greatest turnarounds in MLB history.

Walter O'Malley

"I remember Jim Cour of UPI in an interview asked Walter what he wanted to be remembered for. Walter spun that cigar and said he wanted to be remembered for planting a tree. As good as the question was, the answer was better. It all had to do with growth, the future and going beyond what currently was.

"Look at the building of Dodger Stadium, his view of television, of marketing, of free agency and the changing game. He just had the ability to see things so clearly."

Bowie Kuhn

During Kuhn's reign, baseball grew from a sport with 10 teams in each league to a multi-divisional format with a round of playoffs preceding the World Series. And as television network involvement and payouts grew, games in the Fall Classic ultimately began to be played in primetime at night to increase visibility and commercial appeal.

Kuhn battled with owners and players alike, suspending Yankees principal owner George Steinbrenner for his illegal contributions to President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign and swatting irascible A's owner Charlie Finley by negating the 1976 multimillion-dollar sales of players Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to Boston and Vida Blue to the Yankees, citing the Commissioner's power to rule "in the best interest of baseball."

Barney Dreyfuss

As an owner of the Pirates, Dreyfuss watched his club win two World Series championships (1909 and 1925), claim six pennants and finish second or higher in the National League 13 times. Though Dreyfuss and the Pirates organization endured a string of frustrating seasons from 1914-1920, he was still always widely recognized as one of the best talent evaluators in the game.

He also remained a shrewd businessman, protecting his players from being claimed by expansion teams and negotiating the structure for the first modern World Series in 1903.