Ted Simmons got screwed. It’s not clear why or what happened, but I suspect we’ll never get an answer much in the same way we will never know why Jim Edmonds got similarly screwed. But the theories abound. He was on a stacked ballot - Steve Carlton, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro, and Orlando Cepeda’s last year eligible. The excellent Ted Simmons profile by Jay Jaffe highlights some potential issues: he had a contract dispute early in his career, he had long hair at a time when many didn’t, and that he seemed cut from a different cloth than most major leaguers.
Ted Simmons finally makes the Hall of Fame
