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Third, some of the selections are puzzling. In the first place, five of the 17 selected are baseball executives. The Negro League players are being recognized because they would have been in organized baseball absent discrimination. Can the same be said of the Negro League owners and executives? They did not possess the necessary capital or connections to be part of the big show. If owners and executives are part of the pool, shouldn't one of the very first electees be Gus Greenlee, the owner of the dominant all-star like team, the Pittsburgh Crawfords? Greenlee not only presided over the Negro League New York Yankees of their time, but he was also an organizer and president of the Negro National League. And most importantly, Greenlee was the major organizer of the Negro League East-West game in Chicago, which showcased black talent in the white world in World War II days. Another even more troubling omission is that of Buck O'Neil, who gained fame as part of Ken Burns' documentary, Baseball. Curiously the category assigned to him in the electoral process was that of manager. O'Neil was a good manager, but he had relatively little service. He was also a good player, but not at the level that is normally required for the Hall of Fame. But as an ambassador for baseball as well as the Negro Leagues, O'Neil has no living rival. Why he could not have been considered as a "pioneer" – a separate and unequivocally legitimate category for election – defies explanation.  Newark Eagles co-owner Effa Manley is the first woman elected to the hall. These examples spotlight another problem, which is particularly perplexing: The lack of transparency in the process. Of course, as with the writers and veterans, the ballots are secret. But those who choose to reveal their vote and reasoning both in terms of selection or omission are free to do so and do so frequently. Yet former Commissioner Fay Vincent, the non-voting chairman of the committee said: "I don't think the individuals are going to be willing to discuss their individual votes. We agreed we would not do that." Given the lack of any such agreement among writers and veterans, it is difficult to see why this would be the case. Says Negro League expert and author Joe Riley: "I think that they don't want to speak because they would be exposed as not expert on what they are supposed to be expert about." As in 1971, when the great Satchel Paige was inducted, the past can never be remedied. Baseball is to be commended for attempting to do so. But the process and substantive results could have been much better. One hopes that it will be in the future. William B. Gould IV is an author, professor emeritus at the Stanford Law School, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board and lifelong lover of the game.
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