SUNDAY TALK: The Hall of Fame Is Not the Same as Immortality

There is something I have thought about for a long time when it comes to the Baseball Hall of Fame: not every Hall of Famer is created equal. That is not meant as disrespect. Getting elected to Cooperstown should remain one of the greatest individual honors in American sports. There are players who were tremendous for 15 or 20 years, players who accumulated impressive numbers, won championships, collected awards, and absolutely deserve to have a plaque hanging in the Hall of Fame. But then there is another class entirely.

There are players whose names do not simply belong in baseball history. They define baseball history. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Ted Williams. Stan Musial. Willie Mays. Hank Aaron. Cy Young. Walter Johnson. Sandy Koufax. Bob Gibson. Nolan Ryan. Those names feel different because their numbers feel different. Their accomplishments did more than earn induction. They became part of baseball’s mythology.

That is why I believe Cooperstown should have something beyond the Hall of Fame itself: an Immortals Gallery. A separate room, a separate designation, and a place reserved for the players whose accomplishments became part of the architecture of the sport. There should be a difference between being a Hall of Famer and being immortal.

The current Hall of Fame voting system does not really make that distinction. A player receiving at least 75 percent of the vote is elected, and once he gets in, he ultimately carries the same basic title as every other inductee: Hall of Famer. Yet history does not treat everyone equally, and neither do fans. There are players who get elected after years of debate, players who barely cross the threshold, and players whose candidacies are essentially formalities. There should be room to recognize that difference.

Some players are instantly identified by a number. Cy Young finished with 511 wins. Walter Johnson threw 110 shutouts. Ted Williams hit .406. Hank Aaron finished with 755 home runs. Those numbers are no longer merely statistics. They are baseball shorthand. Cy Young also threw 7,356 innings and completed 749 games. Walter Johnson won 417 games and completed 531. These are numbers that are not really being chased anymore. They exist almost like monuments.

The same is true when looking at hitters from baseball’s past. Rogers Hornsby hit .424 in 1924. Not .324. Not .354. He hit .424 while collecting 227 hits in 143 games. Two years earlier, he had already hit .401. Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941 and posted a .553 on-base percentage. Three of his prime seasons then disappeared because of military service during World War II. He did not play a major-league game in 1943, 1944, or 1945. Then he returned in 1946, hit .342 with 38 home runs, reached base at a .497 clip, and produced another MVP-caliber season. He simply resumed being Ted Williams.

Stan Musial also lost an entire season to military service and returned in 1946 to win the National League MVP. Willie Mays lost nearly all of 1952 and all of 1953 while serving in the military, then returned in 1954 and won the MVP. Hank Greenberg lost three full seasons to military service and still came back to hit 44 home runs with 127 RBI at age 35 in 1946. These were not athletes taking carefully planned breaks with specialized training staffs monitoring every movement. These were men losing valuable years of their athletic primes, then returning to baseball and continuing to dominate.

Then there is Lou Gehrig. In 1927, Gehrig hit .373 with 47 home runs, 173 RBI, a .474 on-base percentage, and a .765 slugging percentage. Somehow, he was not even the most famous power hitter on his own team because Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs that year while scoring 158 runs and driving in 165. That is what baseball immortality looks like. It is not simply one great season. It is a level of production that continues to sound unbelievable generations later.

The difference becomes even more dramatic when we look at pitchers. Bob Feller lost three full seasons to military service during World War II. He returned late in 1945, and in 1946 he threw 371⅓ innings, started 42 games, completed 36 of them, threw 10 shutouts, struck out 348 batters, and finished 26-15 with a 2.18 ERA. In the 2025 season, the Major League leader in innings pitched threw just over 207 innings. Nobody in baseball completed more than two games. Feller completed 36 in one season.

That comparison is not meant to insult modern pitchers. It is meant to show just how much the sport has changed. Justin Verlander entered 2026 as baseball’s active career leader in complete games with 26. Feller completed 36 games in one season. The responsibilities of a starting pitcher today are almost entirely different from the responsibilities of a pitcher in Feller’s era.

Sandy Koufax’s 1965 season is another example. He went 26-8 with a 2.04 ERA, threw 335⅔ innings, completed 27 games, threw eight shutouts, and struck out 382 batters. Bob Gibson went 22-9 in 1968 with a 1.12 ERA and 13 shutouts. Denny McLain won 31 games that same season, threw 336 innings, and completed 28 games. Nolan Ryan struck out 383 hitters in 1973 and eventually finished his career with 5,714 strikeouts and seven no-hitters.

Many of those numbers are not merely difficult to reach in today’s baseball. The game itself makes them almost impossible to pursue.

That is an important distinction. I am not saying players from the past were automatically more talented than players today. Modern athletes are stronger, more specialized, better trained, and supported by technology that players from previous generations could never have imagined. They have access to nutrition programs, biomechanics, strength staffs, video analysis, advanced scouting, recovery technology, and enormous databases filled with information about nearly every opposing player.

But all of that information has also changed the way baseball is played. Starting pitchers are rarely asked to finish games anymore. Organizations know exactly what happens the third time through a lineup. They monitor velocity, spin rates, pitch counts, fatigue, and injury risk. A starter may throw five or six innings before turning the game over to a bullpen full of relievers throwing close to 100 miles per hour.

Hitters face a different challenge as well. In previous eras, a batter might get his fourth or fifth plate appearance against a tired starter who had already thrown 130 pitches. Today, that hitter may see a fresh reliever throwing 99 mph in the seventh, another specialist in the eighth, and a closer throwing 100 in the ninth. Every weakness is identified. Every swing path is studied. Every tendency is stored and analyzed.

Analytics did not make players worse. They changed what greatness is allowed to look like.

That is why I think it is unfair to simply compare raw totals across every era without considering how baseball has changed. Today’s pitchers may never approach 300 innings because their organizations would never allow it. They may never win 30 games because they are not given enough decisions. They may never throw 20 complete games because finishing a game is no longer part of the job description.

At the same time, modern baseball has still produced players worthy of consideration for that immortal class. Pedro Martínez’s 2000 season remains one of the greatest pitching seasons ever. He finished with a 1.74 ERA and 284 strikeouts while pitching in one of the most offense-heavy eras in baseball history. Greg Maddux posted a 1.56 ERA in 1994 and followed it with a 1.63 ERA in 1995. Those are seasons that belong in any historical discussion.

Today, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are building the kinds of careers that may eventually force them into the same conversation. Judge broke the American League single-season home run record with 62 in 2022 and has continued producing offensive seasons that separate him from nearly everyone around him. Ohtani has created a completely different category of greatness by becoming an elite hitter and pitcher in the same era, then producing the first 50-home run, 50-stolen-base season in major-league history in 2024.

Those are the kinds of accomplishments that should begin moving a player from great to legendary and eventually, perhaps, to immortal. But there should not be many of them. That is the entire point.

My idea for an Immortals Gallery would not replace the Hall of Fame. It would enhance it. Players who deserve Cooperstown would still receive the honor they earned. Their plaques would remain where they belong. But there would be another section reserved for an even higher standard.

Instead of asking whether someone was good enough to become a Hall of Famer, the question would become whether that player changed our understanding of what was possible in baseball. Did his statistics become permanently connected with the history of the sport? Did he dominate his era in a way that still seems almost impossible decades later? Did future generations begin measuring greatness against him?

That is where Ruth belongs. That is where Gehrig belongs. That is where Williams belongs. That is where Musial, Mays, and Aaron belong. Aaron finished with 755 home runs, 3,771 hits, and 2,297 RBI. Those are not simply Hall of Fame numbers. They helped define what offensive longevity looks like.

That is where Cy Young belongs. That is where Walter Johnson belongs. That is where Koufax, Gibson, and Ryan belong. Jackie Robinson would obviously belong there as well because baseball immortality cannot be defined entirely by statistics. Some players changed the history of the sport in ways that numbers alone could never explain.

There would be debates, of course. Baseball has always been built around debates. But the standard should be extremely high because the word immortal should mean something different from great.

Look at what baseball has become statistically. Rogers Hornsby hit .424 in 1924. Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. In 2025, Aaron Judge led the majors at .331. Bob Feller threw 371⅓ innings in 1946. The major-league leader in 2025 threw just over 207. Sandy Koufax completed 27 games in 1965. The leaders in 2025 completed two. Denny McLain won 31 games in 1968. Nobody reached 20 victories in 2025.

This is not simply older fans romanticizing black-and-white photographs and box scores. The statistical landscape of baseball really has changed. Some records are not just unlikely to be broken. Modern baseball is structured in a way that makes many of them almost impossible to even pursue.

That is why every generation should not necessarily be measured in exactly the same way. Today’s great players deserve recognition for dominating the version of baseball they were asked to play. But we should also resist the temptation to call every new star an all-time legend before the career has truly earned that distinction.

There are not many immortals. There never were, and there should not be.

Judge may eventually get there. Ohtani may be building one of the strongest cases we have seen in generations. Other players will emerge. But most excellent players will finish with excellent careers. Some will become All-Stars. Some will win MVPs and Cy Young Awards. Some will win championships. Some will deservedly reach Cooperstown.

That does not automatically make them Ruth. It does not make them Williams. It does not make them Mays. It does not make them Aaron. It does not make them Gibson, Koufax, Johnson, or Young.

The Hall of Fame should celebrate greatness.

But somewhere inside Cooperstown, baseball should reserve another place for something even rarer: the men whose numbers became legends, whose records became landmarks, and whose careers became the measuring stick for everyone who followed.

Hall of Famers deserve plaques.

Baseball’s immortals deserve their own room.

Sunday Talk is a CrossTalk Media opinion column. Statistical and historical player data referenced throughout this column were researched through Baseball-Reference.