Being a part of selecting the Hall of Fame is always an incredible honor, and each year I find that the selection seems to get more and more difficult.
Now, there are many problems with how the Hall of Fame gets selected (Antonino De Rosa covers quite a few of them in his recent editorial). It is incredibly frustrating, for example, to try to research the resumes of potential Hall of Fame members, and not be able to see in the data whether they were on National Teams (something that would seemingly be important), whether they played in or won Masters Series events (winning a $25,000 WotC tournament seems important), or what their suspension history is (being suspended for cheating several times seems important). Hell, how many events did each player win? But despite the flaws, selecting a member of the Hall of Fame is a worthwhile task, and incredibly important. These players carry the torches of the game’s history, and they are people that are important in what has made the Pro Tour an enduring institution. Taking it lightly, or gaming the system (as some people did in not voting for Finkel a few years back) doesn’t respect what the Hall of Fame means.
The Hall of Fame as an institution of the game does not have a uniform meaning. The people that are a part of the selection committee and the player committee all have different ideas of what the Hall of Fame should mean, and not everyone is going to agree on what is important, particularly as the number of people involved in the selection process has grown over time.
What we each do, as a part of the history of the game, is represent what it means to us. Hopefully, collectively, we can get some sense of the full meaning of the Pro Tour. I might not agree with what Mark Rosewater or Mike Flores or Richard Hagon or Sheldon Menery think that the Pro Tour is, but I will nudge it ever so slightly in the direction I see is correct, as will each of them.
To me, one of the things that makes the Hall of Fame the Hall of Fame is the membership’s collective history representing the players of the game. Thus, for me, resume is always going to be a huge part of who I select. Resume, of course, isn’t the only measure. A player’s involvement in the community of the game is also something that weighs in, certainly, but not something that I think should have nearly the same weight as resume.
The integrity question is, of course, a big one. Some have repeatedly advocated for certain players to be included in the Hall of Fame, and cite the inclusion of Maher and Ruel (who have both been suspended) as a reason to include people who have been suspended. Personally, I’m not willing to lower the bar for the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame means too much to include people whose past includes suspension for cheating. For my purposes, I’m putting the line at suspension, and not DQ, if only to highlight the utter seriousness with which the DCI felt the violation had been committed. Their inclusions will always be a stain on the Hall, and just because some have made the Hall doesn’t mean that the mistakes of the past should be compounded. Personally, I definitely feel Maher deserves his place; not only was he not suspended for cheating, but the DCI pointed out that Maher was the one who blew the whistle and gave the DCI the evidence in the ratings fraud from which he benefitted. As far as I can tell, none of the other suspended players turned themselves in, and all were involved in in-game cheating that got them suspended. We can decide we don’t want to listen to the DCI’s official history of what happened if we want, but I’d prefer to use that as my standard rather than some fully arbitrary, hearsay driven set of judgments. As such, you’ll never see Mike Long or Saito on a ballot of mine, this year, or next year.
With all of that said, using the resume and integrity measures as the first cut, I came to the following list:
Gabriel Nassif
Scott Johns
Anton Jonsson
Ryuuichi Arita
Eugene Harvey
Tsuyoshi Ikeda
William Jensen
Mark Justice
Benedikt Klauser
Nicolas Labarre
Bram Snepvangers
Marco Blume
Patrick Chapin
Willy Edel
Justin Gary
Brian Kibler
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Chris Pikula
Jeroen Remie
This is still a pretty hefty list. One of the second delimiters for me has always been something simple: winning major events. For this, GPs just don’t do it for me until you get into Alex Shvartsman territory, with so many GP wins it approaches the absurd. Here we get:
Gabriel Nassif
Scott Johns
Eugene Harvey
William Jensen
Mark Justice
Marco Blume
Justin Gary
Brian Kibler
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
This does mean that some favorites like Bram Snepvangers and Chris Pikula have been cut. For someone like Snepvangers (who wouldn’t surprise me by being voted in regardless), I’m actually quite confident that he’ll win a major event sometime soon, at which point he would definitely make my cut. All of these measures are somewhat arbitrary, but it is the base-line that I’m working with.
From here, I just have to go with my gut…
#1 — Gabriel Nassif
This one is basically a no brainer. Nassif is among the top players in the game’s entire history, arguably fourth behind Finkel, Budde, and Maher. His state within the game today makes him well-known to most players, so I won’t belabor the pick.
#2 — Mark Justice
Mark Justice was the first Magic superstar. More modern players don’t remember him, but he was probably the first player to deserve the moniker of “Best Player in the World.” Justice was the first U.S. National Champion, and the leader of the first team to win the Team Championship at the World Championship (making an Individual Top 8 at that same event). He wrote some of the early books on the game. And while he didn’t play for long, his stats are seriously incredible.
His median placing at the height of his career was thirteenth. That’s right; for three years, his median place at Pro Tour was thirteenth. Yes, I just repeated it; that stat is so incredible. His average over his short career: 28.5. His expected finish in the Top 8 of an event is only bested by two players in the game’s history: Jon Finkel and Olle Rade, both already in the Hall of Fame.
This was a player so good that, back in the day, everyone aspired to be as good as him. As the first “best player,” the one before Finkel and Budde, he’s definitely on my ballot, and, for you undecided voters, if he’s not on yours, you should seriously consider including him.
#3 — Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
In the history of the Pro Tour, there wasn’t really the modern “Pro Tour Player” until Steve OMS (and Alex Shvartsman) came around and started globe-trotting in earnest. Steve showed other people that it could be worth your time to go to all of the events of note, everywhere, and that it could be a lifestyle.
On top of that, Steve OMS was the master of what is widely considered the game’s hardest format: Rochester Draft. One of the huge casualties of the game in its current incarnation is that we no longer have format-specific events at the PT level, and so we can’t actually say who is the greatest drafter or Constructed player with any real accuracy. That isn’t the case here, where Steve O was the undisputed king.
#4 — Scott Johns
Five Pro Tour Top 8s is nothing to sneeze at. When you add on top of that his stellar contributions to the game itself, at the community level, Scott Johns is an easy person to include on a ballot. Johns didn’t just win a Pro Tour with Gary Wise and Mike Turian, but he was basically one of the most important gatekeepers in the game when it comes to its history.
There was a time when MagicTheGathering.com didn’t have content of note. Scott Johns made it his mission to change that. Manning the helm at the Mothership, he changed the trajectory of the way that we all consumed Magic articles. No other person who has written and edited as many Magic articles as Scott Johns has anywhere near the tournament resume that Scott Johns has; even when you make it all Magic players in general, you can say basically the same thing.
#5 — Justin Gary
Justin Gary is not just one of the all time great players, but he also was a part one of the legacies of the game: Team YMG. Like Justice, Gary is a U.S. National Champion. He is a two-time U.S. Nationals team member, and his second go around he lead the team to a Team World Championship.
With three Pro Tour Top 8s, two Nationals team memberships, a World Team Championship, a Grand Prix Championship, and a Pro Tour Championship, Gary is one of those fixtures of the game who wasn’t just a terrific player, but a terrific competitor. A paragon of the game, Gary’s integrity was incredibly respected, and his inclusion seals up the enshrining of Team YMG as one of the most important and competitive groups of Magic players in the history of the game.
…
And there it is. My ballot for the Hall of Fame. It’s not perfect, but I don’t think that something like this can be. Any set of choices is going to be neglecting some element of the rich history of the game. Not selecting from the many other impressive candidates is always hard, but I only get five votes.
My best for everyone in the running. And thanks for reading.