I have decided to pick the three players I most feel merit induction into the Hall of Fame and truthfully as someone mentioned, my third choice is more of an accumulator than a great player.
My first choice would surprisingly be Minny Minoso who played from 1949 through 1964, with publicity appearances in 1976 and 1980. Minoso's ML career is not super long but he accomplished a lot in that time. The argument that he can't make it because he played part time in the old Negro leagues and not enough in the ML's does not stand up because the Hall has already elected numerous black players who didn't play in the ML at all and shouldn't penalize a player who was a star in both for a considerable time. I don't think modern fans realize how good an overall player Minoso was in the context of his time. Really impressive was his lifetime .848 OPS. This is impressive in any era.
Despite collecting "only" 1963 hits, he led the league in hits once, triples three times, stolen bases three times, doubles once and HBP an incredible 10 times. His lifetime average was .300 on the button until an injury plague final full season and small parts of others knocked it down to .298. He scored 100 five times but over 89 RS in a season ten times. He batted in 100 RBI's four times. He also won three Gold Gloves as a left fielder. All accounts of that time list him as an incredibly exciting player who batted third or leadoff on his teams. He ended up with 1136 RS and 1023 RBIs as well as 201 SB's and 186 HRs. He accomplished all this playing in an era when hitting was not at its highest levels by any means.
My second choice and its a close second at that is Ron Santo. There is a tendency to lump Ken Boyer and Santo together but Santo was clearly the superior player offensively and they were both Gold Glove quality third basemen. This is not meant to downgrade Boyer as he was a fine player, even an MVP once but I feel Santo is the more worthy of the two.
Third basemen are somewhat underrepresented in the Hall of Fame and Santo's numbers would be even more impressive if he just wouldn't of chosen to play almost all his career in the worst era for hitters since the early 1900's. Santo compiled 2254 hits with 1138 RS as well as being one of the leading RBI guys of the 1960's with 1331. He knocked in 100 or more four times with 83 or more for eleven consecutive years, most of the time over 90(eight times). He hit over .300 four times and led in BB's four times on top of this. So he accumulated a nice OPS for this time with an .826. His 342 HRs is nothing to sneeze at during these times and for a third baseman. Add in his five gold gloves and you are talking about a very durable and consistant player for a twelve or thirteen year period. I know for a fact during those years he was a big run producer who is also hurt by the fact that the Cubs couldn't quite get to the World Series losing out to the Mets in 1969 in a famous race.
My third choice would be Jim Kaat whose 283 wins is his best arguement although he did win twenty or more games three times and had six seasons of seventeen or better. He pitched 31 shutouts and 180 complete games which dwarf modern numbers due to a change in the way starters are used. The argument against Kaat could include that he wasn't a great strikeout pitcher and didn't lead the league in much of anything. His 3.31 ERA was rather pedestrian in the era in which he pitched from 1959 to 1983. He also had 237 losses and a 1-2 World Series record. He did win numerous Gold Gloves as one of the finest fielding pitchers ever. One last thing against him was his nickname "Kitty Kaat". That really hurt!
