SALT LAKE CITY — Dale and Nancy Murphy gathered with five of their eight children in the couple’s Alpine, Utah, home Sunday afternoon. They shared a family dinner of pasta, hoping their father would finally get the news he’s awaited for the past 21 years, ever since the two-time MVP first became eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
In the 1980s, Dale Murphy was an icon, swatting home runs and manning center field for the Atlanta Braves. Since the Braves were owned by Ted Turner, who owned TBS, the Portland, Oregon, native was a fixture on national television, even though the team lost more games than it won in that decade. He was also the consummate nice guy, never suspected of juicing, respected by teammates and opponents alike.
And he’s still one of baseball’s most beloved stars. As former New York Mets pitcher Ron Darling told the New York Times last week, “You could never get mad at him when he hit a home run. If there’s an opposite of bat flipping, it would be Dale Murphy on all the home runs he hit.”
Now 63, Murphy still looks fit. He’s still square-jawed and smiling under a full head of gray hair. And he still shrugs off the praise of his character. “It’s a great compliment and I’m very thankful for that,” he told the Deseret News Tuesday evening, after spending the afternoon in meetings aimed at making baseball more affordable for American children.
As questions swirl about the Hall of Fame fates of steroid-era behemoths like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, or players with controversial reputations like Curt Schilling, Murphy’s case for enshrinement presents a different quandary: Should character play a decisive role? Should it be more than a disqualifier amid what ESPN writer Wright Thompson called, in a 2018 profile of Murphy, “a culture that still believes in bad people but no longer believes in good ones”?
Murphy played from ’76 to ’93, but his career crested from ’82 to ’85. It’s hard to imagine a more dominant run than those four years, when he won two National League MVP awards and earned a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and All-Star Game selection in each. He also twice led the league in home runs (’84, ’85) and RBIs (’82, ’83). His career line: Seven-time All-Star. Five Gold Gloves. Four Silver Sluggers. Over 2,000 hits.
Off the field, Murphy won some of baseball’s top sportsmanship honors, including the Lou Gehrig Memorial Award and the Roberto Clemente Award. Sports Illustrated named him 1987’s baseball “Sportsman of the Year.”
Still, he’s not quite an obvious Hall of Famer. Atlanta made the playoffs only once during his reign (1982) and was swept in the National League Championship Series. He ended his career with losing seasons in Philadelphia and Colorado. So despite his individual success, he never won any rings. The case against Murphy’s induction, as summarized by Cooperstown Cred’s Chris Bodig, also includes relatively low career home run totals (398 rank him 60th all-time); playing most of his career in a hitter-friendly ballpark; poor defensive metrics (despite his Gold Gloves); and a relatively low 46.5 WAR — an advanced statistic meaning “wins above replacement,” which attempts to quantify his value on the field compared to an average player at his position.
But consider the Hall of Fame’s full induction criteria: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.”
Notice the not-as-discussed dimensions; the three components — integrity, sportsmanship and character — that form baseball’s so-called “character clause.” Despite checking all three boxes with a particularly dark mark, they’ve made little difference for Murphy.
“I think they either need to apply it to my dad’s situation,” said Jake Murphy, a former University of Utah tight end and one of Dale’s seven sons, “or get rid of it.”
Murphy, who briefly attended BYU but was drafted out of high school and never played for the Cougars, first appeared on baseball’s Hall of Fame ballot in 1999. He received 96 votes — well short of the required 75% of 497 ballots. He reappeared for the next 14 years — the maximum allowed on the main ballot — and never dropped below 5%, which would have removed his name. But he also never got above the 23% he tallied in 2000.
Sunday marked Murphy’s second appearance before the veterans committee — a group of 16 selected by the Hall of Fame’s board of directors. Among other duties, the committee serves as a kind of backstop for deserving Hall of Fame candidates who have fallen between the cracks of the normal ballot. Twice every five years, it votes on a group of 10 candidates from the “Modern Baseball era” of 1970 to 1987. Like the standard Hall of Fame procedure, election by the veterans committee requires 75%, or 12 votes.
Take a look at the 2013 election — Murphy’s last on the main ballot — to see how much the character clause really matters.
That year marked Bonds’ first time on the ballot. He was the game’s home run king, deserving based on stats alone. He had also admitted to using steroids, though he claimed he didn’t do so knowingly. That was probably one reason he wasn’t elected, but he still received a hundred more votes than Murphy. So who deserves to be remembered: Bonds — the all-time great power hitter with a chemical boost — or Murphy — one of the greatest of his era, whose statistical impact was small by comparison, but who played the game right?
“It’s just an unfortunate time for baseball,” Murphy said of the steroid era. “It skews a lot of things. It makes your numbers look small. It’s just one of those things baseball has had a really tough time dealing with.”
Steroid use tarnished baseball’s reputation from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, even incurring congressional hearings. It can be difficult to navigate how to memorialize the tainted period.
“If baseball wants to wash itself clean from steroids,” Thompson wrote, “the best way to do it isn’t to keep Bonds out of the Hall but to let Murphy in. Induct cheaters but also celebrate Dale Murphy for his 398 home runs and for the dozens he did not hit.”
Entering Sunday, neither had been inducted. If it was finally Murphy’s time, he’d get a call between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. ahead of an official announcement at 6 p.m.. One of his sons awaited the news in Los Angeles. Tyson, an art director at Riot Games, admitted that he was never as interested in sports as his brothers. So when it comes to sabermetric arguments against his father’s induction, he’s puzzled.
“More than anything, I get baffled when conversations come up about obscure numbers,” he said. “I’m just like, ‘Why does anybody care about these things?’”
For the gatekeepers to the Hall of Fame, “these things” must be considered, no doubt. But should Murphy’s credentials trump analytics? One way to decide is to ask what the Hall of Fame should be. Jake believes it should be a museum that celebrates baseball’s history — an account of who should be remembered.
“If we’re gonna tell the story of baseball through the Hall of Fame,” he said, “I think he needs to be there to tell the story of the ’80s.”
Any of his kids will tell you Murphy doesn’t see a call from the Hall of Fame as the culmination of his legacy; his family occupies that coveted spot and always has. Yes, he was gone for half the year when he played, but his kids eagerly awaited his return with road trip souvenirs, his son Taylor said. And when he was home, he was home.
That isn’t to say the snubs don’t bother Murphy, or his family. Taylor launched a petition ahead of the 2013 vote and Dale’s wife, Nancy, offered an impassioned defense of her husband’s credentials on Twitter. “It definitely gets to me,” Jake said. “And it gets to me more than him.” But Taylor, Jake and Tyson all agreed their father tries to keep things in perspective amid disappointment.
Sunday, as the clock ticked toward 5:30 p.m., it became clear the call wasn’t coming. Taylor took to Twitter to express both frustration and gratitude. “Here’s a guy who should’ve gotten into the Hall of Fame tonight, but didn’t,” the BYU law and MBA student tweeted with a picture of his father hugging one of his grandkids. “His reaction? Making sure everyone around him was OK.”
Taylor added that in the family’s group chat, amid their unveiled disappointment, Murphy’s main concern was crediting the two men who were elected. Murphy did the same on Twitter — another example of the exemplary sportsmanship that apparently hasn’t helped his case for the Hall of Fame.
Murphy was disappointed by the vote, but buoyed by his family’s support. “I can’t really express how thankful I am and how blessed I feel to have our family,” he said, “and just how much they’re pulling for me and the things they say about me online — it means more than any award I could ever receive.”
Murphy’s name is likely to come up on future veterans committee ballots, each time inviting the question of whose baseball accomplishments deserve preservation, and what we want to remember about the game. Sometimes, that feels like enough to prove he belongs.
“Every time a ballot comes up, I feel hopeful,” Taylor said. “And I think it’s a testament to his legacy that he continues to stay on the ballots.”
But when the next ballot approaches, Taylor’s hope will brighten, and he’ll likely rally supporters once more. He and other advocates will try to persuade voters that Murphy’s impressive baseball accomplishments should be commemorated, as should the way he played and the way he lives — that among the steroid-era titans, an honest man like Murphy is also worth honoring.