There’s No Dying in Baseball: Cultural Valorization, Collective Memory, and Induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to determine how the collective memory of a baseball player’s contributions to his sport changes posthumously. We seek to examine if levels of veneration accorded to an athlete depend on whether he is alive or deceased, the timing of his death, and type of death he experienced. Building upon theories of cultural valorization, we propose that collective efforts to remember retired athletes are greater if those athletes have passed on. More explicitly, we argue that a player’s death supplements his lifetime achievements in posthumous efforts to construct and maintain his memory. We analyze the history of voting conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) on players eligible for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The results suggest that a variety of performance and recognition measures affect the amount of votes a player receives. As predicted, dying and age of death exert a powerful influence on votes received toward entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. However, when hitters and pitchers are analyzed separately, we find partial support for our propositions.