50 Greatest Baseball Players Not in the Hall of Fame, Part 1

A blog called Baseball Past and Present is asking its readers and other baseball writers to vote on the 50 best players not enshrined in Cooperstown, not including those who haven't been retired long enough to be eligible. The latter condition means this includes all players who haven't played since 2005.

Ballots are due by December 1, and I just learned about this yesterday, so I've got my work cut out for me. As a result, I'm not going to do an in-depth analysis, but instead I'm going to come up with a list of the 50 players who jump out at me as deserving of the Hall of Fame or of serious consideration for the honor.

However, I'm going to do this in stages, beginning with the easy choices. That is, the players who, in my opinion, should already be in the Hall of Fame. In some cases, these are the players who would already be so honored if not for factors preventing them from getting in. It will be pretty obvious who I'm talking about once you see the list.

Since they're asking for players who haven't played since 2005—rather than 2004—this means that players who are eligible for the first time this year are included. So, technically there's one player on the following alphabetical list of my first ten choices whose Hall of Fame candidacy hasn't yet been voted on.

Dick Allen
Roberto Alomar
Jeff Bagwell
Bert Blyleven
Joe Jackson
Barry Larkin
Dan Quisenberry
Tim Raines
Pete Rose
Ron Santo