tommy john is in my hall of famer collection

with jim kaat's induction into cooperstown, i've decided to move tommy john into my hall of famer collection. here's his 1999 fleer sports illustrated greats of the game autograph collection card which represents him the collection:

and here's the back:

because it shows john as a dodger (which is mostly how i remember him), this is the second version of this card in my collection.

i recognize that kaat was elected by the "golden era" committee and john was previously subjected to the "modern era" committee (it wasn’t clear to me whether john would be considered today under the "classic baseball era" committee or the "contemporary baseball era" committee as 1980 is the dividing line between the two but the recent announcement from the hall of fame noting that john would be on the classic era committee’s ballot next month makes it clear now) but to me they were peers who pitched for a long time and fell short of the magic 300-win milestone. nolan ryan is the only person whose career spanned more seasons than john's, and only ryan and john had longer careers than kaat. both john and kaat lost some time to injuries during their primes, and both bounced back (john from the revolutionary ligament replacement surgery that bears his name) to excel at the highest level.

over the course of their careers, john won 288 games and kaat 283, although john remained a starter to the end while kaat spent the last few years as a reliever. john had fewer losses and a lower era even though he pitched about 180 more innings than kaat, while kaat had more strikeouts and complete games. both received cy young consideration at times, with john twice placing second in the voting. looking at modern analytics, john has kaat bested in both bwar and fwar.

considered independently, john is a hall of very good pitcher who pitched for a long time and has a unique place in baseball history as a guinea pig of sorts. i didn't see him as a hall of famer unlike, say, bert blyleven, who also fell short of 300 wins but retired with the third highest strikeout total in history. however, with kaat's election, i believe that the door is open for john and am not really sure what the criteria would be to keep him out at this point other than the subjectivity of era committee voters. time will tell, as even 35 years after a career came to an end there is hope.

remember, you can find my hall of famer collection in its entirety here at my want list site.