Davey Concepcion should be in the Hall of Fame

I've changed my mind

I was born too late to watch the Big Red Machine. By the time I became a big baseball fan as a child, I was surrounded by the stories adults told of the 1970s Reds, and then Pete Rose and Tony Pérez (and, later, Ken Griffey) returned home and a link was established to the greatest teams in franchise history. One key player on those teams, however, never left. He was my link to the Machine.

The stories and my childhood eyes agreed on Dave Concepción. Davey always made defense look easy. He glided across the diamond, barehanded sloops and bullets alike, and then — sometimes, for extra flair (or utility) — he bounced the throw off that green artificial turf right into Tony’s waiting glove at first (or Pete’s, by the time I got to watch him play). He gets far too little credit for his role in making the Big Red Machine hum right along — and he did it quietly, reliably, and for a very long time. But if we’ve learned anything from the repeated Hall of Fame debates and the swirling controversies of the Veterans Committee, it’s that sometimes you can glide through a great career, even help drive one of baseball’s greatest dynasties, and still find yourself stranded on the outside of Cooperstown.

I’ll be transparent here. For many years, I argued against Concepción’s case for inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I love the guy, I would say, and he was very good! But it’s not the Hall of Very Good players. As much as it pained me, I had to concede that his career was probably not good enough.

I’ve changed my mind.

In many ways, Davey was the perfect shortstop of his time — and, yes, there’s a very good argument that he really was the best shortstop in baseball during his prime. Johnny Bench has hinted that Concepción’s growth from gangly teen to team anchor was the key to taking Cincinnati from a strong contender to a perpetual champion. “The other people move away,” Bench said, “and all of a sudden you notice the antique work of art in the corner.” Long after their careers were over, Joe Morgan called him the greatest shortstop he’d ever seen. Sparky Anderson marveled at his arm, his range, and the way Concepción seemed to get to every single grounder hit anywhere in the ZIP code of Riverfront Stadium.

So how does a player with nine All-Star appearances, five Gold Gloves, two Silver Slugger Awards, two championship rings, and a good bit more home-run power than the more celebrated Ozzie Smith end up standing outside the Hall’s closed doors, year after year? Let’s explore the case for Dave Concepción — and why it has perhaps never been more timely than it is right now.

---

Modern fans think of shortstops like Alex Rodriguez, our beloved Barry Larkin, Cal Ripken Jr., Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Jeter — players who can slug a dozen (or two dozen) home runs and anchor the middle of a lineup. That wasn’t the world Dave Concepción inhabited when he took over at short for the Reds as a 21-year-old kid in 1970. Shortstops back then were supposed to save runs, not drive them in. The bar for offensive performance was almost subterranean: Think Larry Bowa, Bud Harrelson, Don Kessinger — all-field, no-hit guys who rarely even sniffed 20 extra-base hits in a season.

Within that context, Concepción was something special. He did all the typical shortstop things — flashed the leather with jaw-dropping range, coordinated the infield, turned double plays like a ballet dancer — and he could also provide surprising pop: 101 career home runs, 950 RBIs, a .267 lifetime average, for those who care about such things. Over a 19-year career, most of it in the era before modern shortstops started slugging at corner-infield levels, he posted a higher career OPS than Ozzie Smith. Concepción even stole 20 or more bases in six consecutive seasons. He was, in short, a jack-of-all-trades: not the big bopper of the lineup, but never an automatic out like most shortstops in his era.

He led the left side of the Reds infield for almost two decades, an institution in the Queen City. As Hall of Fame shortstop Pee Wee Reese once put it: “[N]o one does everything as well as Concepción. It’s possible that no one ever has.” On one of the greatest teams ever assembled, the shortstop was never the headliner, no, but no one doubts Concepción’s steadiness made the Big Red Machine a truly unstoppable force.

---

Let’s begin here with a quick tally of Concepción’s awards and accolades.

• Nine All-Star Games: Including the ASG MVP award in 1982.

• Five Gold Gloves.

• Two Silver Sluggers: Proof he wasn’t a liability with the bat.

• Two World Series championships: Part of the legendary 1975 and ’76 squads, which rank among the best teams in baseball history.

• 40.1 WAR: It’s not elite, but it’s right in the neighborhood of or better than some Hall of Famers, including the widely debated Harold Baines, who got the call with a (lower) 38.8 WAR and zero rings or awards.

The deeper you look, the more you uncover greatness, even if some of that is tied up in intangibles (a word that I don’t love because I can’t measure it, as you’ll know if you’ve read my writing for any length of time). Concepción did things you could see — I’m thinking at the moment of that high-hopper to drive in the tying run in Game Two of the classic 1975 World Series against Boston. (I recently rewatched that game on DVD.) But he was also was the one who swiped an improbable stolen base here, a flawless backhand pick there, keeping the Reds afloat through countless crucial moments. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to suggest that Davey was, in short, the glue of the Big Red Machine.

---

So why hasn’t he been enshrined in the Hall of Fame? Why is Dave Concepción still stuck on the outside? The other leading lights of the Big Red Machine — Bench, Morgan, Pérez — long ago took their rightful places in Cooperstown. Pete Rose is an entirely different conversation. It’s Concepción who is left to watch from the other side of the velvet ropes.

1. He Played in the Shadow of Flashier Names
   Ozzie Smith was mesmerizing, and he arrived in the National League at the perfect time to overshadow an older Concepción, winning 13 consecutive Gold Gloves (starting in 1980). Concepción’s own wizardry went underappreciated once “The Wizard of Oz” started doing backflips on national TV.

2. Offensive Benchmarks Have Shifted
   Concepción played shortstop during a transitional time. Once Cal Ripken Jr. redefined the position, followed by a wave of power-hitting shortstops, Concepción’s career batting totals started looking pedestrian in hindsight. But compare him to the shortstops of his actual prime, and he’s arguably the best of the lot.

3. His Own Team’s Star Power
   The Big Red Machine was flush with future Hall of Famers who dominated headlines and overshadowed Concepción’s day-to-day brilliance. Bench blasted home runs while Morgan racked up MVPs. Concepción was the steady heartbeat, but heartbeats don’t sell as many newspapers. To be sure, Bench, Morgan, Pérez, Rose were all simply better players than Davey. I’m not arguing otherwise.

---

If the Veterans or Contemporary Era committees are in the business of reevaluating borderline candidates (see Ted Simmons and Jack Morris, for example), then Dave Concepción should be next in line. And here’s where we bring up Harold Baines — who was never a top-tier star, never won any major hardware, got limited support from the BBWAA, and yet now stands in the Hall.

Don’t get me wrong: Baines was a terrific player for a very long time, and longevity is no small skill. But it seems to me that Baines’s induction signaled a shift — a lower bar, perhaps, or at least a different perspective on the long, consistent career. It certainly was the driving force in changing my mind about Davey’s case for enshrinement. If the Hall can find room for a consistent DH who rarely made headlines, how can it continue to lock the door on Concepción, who was arguably the best defensive shortstop in the National League for a decade, earned more All-Star nods, earned more Gold Gloves, and actually helped lead his team to multiple championships?

Even if you believe a strong Hall has strict standards, how do you justify ignoring Concepción while celebrating Baines? If we’re going to accept that the Hall can’t be a museum only for the Ruths, Cobbs, and Koufaxes, then Dave Concepción’s candidacy demands a fresh look.

---

If you stroll through Great American Ball Park these days, you’ll see Dave Concepción’s retired No. 13, shining in close proximity to the field where he once made the extraordinary look routine. He’s in the Reds Hall of Fame. He’s in the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame. His story — a slight, 155-pound shortstop signing from Ocumare de la Costa, thrust into an All-Star lineup, becoming that lineup’s unsung hero — is one that resonates.

But baseball has a short memory, and it’s easy to forget that before Ripken, Jeter, and A-Rod, someone like Davey Concepción roamed the diamond, combining next-level defense with a quiet but crucial offense. Look back closely, and I think you’ll see a player who reinvented what shortstops could do — who paved the way for so many Venezuelan shortstops after him, standouts like Omar Vizquel and Ozzie Guillén.

In a game forever obsessed with the next big thing, Concepción remains the perennially overlooked star. He played in a different era, content in the background, never complaining that Rose or Bench were on the magazine cover instead of him. And yet, I suspect that if we were able to talk to any of the luminaries of the ‘70s Reds they would tell us: No Davey, no Big Red Machine. Maybe that’s overstating the case. Perhaps I’m engaging in a bit of hyperbole to make the point. You can be the judge of that. But the guy was a legit star during his day.

---

Again, I’ve changed my mind. Now I believe players of Davey’s caliber are absolutely deserving of induction into the Hall of Fame. I guess we can keep ignoring these old legends, letting them fade into the footnotes of baseball’s storied past. We can keep forgetting that in the 1970s, a shortstop who could bat .280, swipe 30 bags, and still lock down the left side of the infield like Fort Knox was a genuine revelation. Or we can look at the big picture: Dave Concepción was a top-tier shortstop in his era, won plenty of awards, helped define a historic franchise, belongs among the game’s elite, and absolutely deserves that plaque in Cooperstown.

If Harold Baines’s induction stands for anything, it’s that the Hall is willing to recognize the value of a long, steady, quietly excellent career. Concepción had that in spades — and he did it while playing one of the game’s most demanding positions at an all-time level. The Big Red Machine wouldn’t have run nearly so smoothly without him. It’s time the Hall of Fame recognized that, too.