MLB Showdown Obsession

When the Hall of Fame voting began, there really weren't many rules in place for voting. Now into the 1950's rules were still being fine tuned and tweaked. With the Veterans Committee in place, no one who retired more than 25 years before were allowed on the BBWAA ballot. That limit was extended to 30 years by the 1955 vote. Everything before that (as well as managers, owners and umpires for consideration) were handled by the Veterans Committee. Also, the "wait 5 years" policy was established, meaning that anyone who retired after 1949 had to wait for a shot. 1955 gave us four new HoF members from the BBWAA vote, something that wouldn't be seen again for a long time. The glut of elite players was slowly being worked through and voted in, and it wouldn't be such a large collection of players voted in for another 60 years. The Veterans Committee added another two names to the collection from yesteryear.

 It still feels like the last WBC had just ended, but here we are determining the final teams that will qualify for the 2026 competition. Most teams from the previous run automatically qualified, but the last place team from each round 1 pool dropped out and had to earn their trip back against four hopeful upstarts. China, Taiwan, Nicaragua and Colombia all finished last in 2023, while Spain, South Africa, Germany and Brazil are looking to punch their ticket. Now, this isn't the main attraction, so players in MLB are much less inclined to abandon their parent clubs in the middle of spring training to go compete, so there countries will rely mainly on lower level players and even a few former major leaguers. As a result, the qualifiers have a much weaker appeal without big names to market. There are still some familiar names involved in the showcases, with only China entering play with absolutely zero MLB names, so let's take a look at the players involved who have logged time i...