When the First Five Were Chosen

The abstract concept had been around for a couple years by the winter of 1936, so the public was not surprised when the official announcement came.

But when the world learned on Feb. 2, 1936, that Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, a new classification arose for future players, managers, umpires and executives. And a new national dialogue – one that burns brightly today – was born.

On that day – three-and-a-half years before what was then called the National Baseball Museum opened in Cooperstown – the words “Hall of Famer” truly came to life.

The inaugural Hall of Fame election of 1936 considered players labeled as “moderns,” or candidates whose careers began after 1900. A total of 226 ballots were cast by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, with 170 votes needed for election. Ballots needed to be postmarked by Jan. 25, 1936, and started trickling in via the U.S. mail. By Wednesday, Jan. 29, all of the votes had been received, and an official Baseball Writers’ Association of America tally sheet from the Hall of Fame Library Archive lists the final total from that day.

“Most importantly, that’s the day when the player finds out – and you become a Hall of Famer the day that both you and the world learn that you have been elected.” The primary reaction was elation when the world did learn about the election of the first class, which seems appropriate given the high stature and accolades accumulated by each of the five players during their careers. But there was also a hint of bewilderment upon further examination of the vote totals, sparking a discussion that has been a hallmark of virtually every Hall of Fame election held over the next 80 years and counting. “The amazement in this corner is not the ballots that these leaders received but the gap where X failed to mark the spot,” wrote columnist John Kieran in the Feb. 4, 1936 edition of The New York Times. “It remains a mystery that any observer of modern diamond activities could list his version of the ten outstanding baseball figures and have Ty Cobb nowhere at all in the group. Four voters accomplished that amazing feat.”