Campaign Helped Arky Reach Hall of Fame

Richard Tourangeau never saw Arky Vaughan play baseball. At 38, Tourangeau was 5 years old when Vaughan drowned in a fishing accident in a Northern California lake.

“I was familiar with the name, familiar with the fact that he was a ballplayer for Pittsburgh in the ‘30s with a high lifetime batting average,” Tourangeau said. “I knew he was the first player to hit two home runs in an All-Star game. That was it.”

But it was Tourangeau who became one of Vaughan’s most devoted fans, and is at least partly responsible for Vaughan ending up in Cooperstown, where many believe he belonged years ago.

Tourangeau spent countless hours combing the Arky Archives, and wondering why Vaughan had not been inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. He was picking up where another fan, an insurance agent in Dallas named Wiley Thornton, left off. Thornton began a letter-writing campaign to get Vaughan into the Hall in the late ‘70s.

“He did it a lot longer and on a lot wider scope, but he didn’t make it to the end,” Tourangeau said. “He died just about the time I got involved.”

Tourangeau, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and a certified baseball nut, formed a committee to keep the campaign going. It consisted of Patricia Johnson, Vaughan’s daughter; Lt. Col. Michael Stevenson, an air force officer who’s father was a friend of Arky’s brother, Bob, and Tourangeau.

The group targeted the 18-member Hall of Fame Veterans Committee, which had the power to elect Vaughan to the Hall of Fame because a rule which had barred his entrance was overturned. Before this year, there was a rule which stated that any player who played after 1945 must have received 100 or more votes in at least one BBWAA election to be considered by the Veterans Committee. The rule was instituted in 1970 and was designed to keep out unworthy candidates. The most votes Vaughan had received during his eligibility was 82.

“We wrote letters to members of the Veterans Committee, telling them we thought Arky’s time was overdue,” Tourangeau said.

“We mailed the material out in January, in plenty of time before the March election. We contacted every member of the committee.”

On March 6, three days before what would have been his 73rd birthday, the Veterans Committee voted to include Arky Vaughan in the Hall of Fame. He was inducted along with Hoyt Wilhelm, Enos Slaughter and Lou Brock on July 28 in a ceremony at Cooperstown.