Up until recent years, the only real controversy associated with players’ entering — and not entering — the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, revolved around the question of credentials for entrance. Some stars who received the call from the Hall had careers that made their selection for baseball’s highest honor a no-brainer. Ty Cobb? Easy. Babe Ruth. Of course. Willie Mays. What, you kiddin’ me? But there have always been arguments about who perhaps deserves a plaque in Cooperstown who isn’t in (i.e., Gary Carter, Jim Rice) along with the flip side: who’s in who’s not necessarily the cream of the crop (fellow Pittsburgh Pirates Bill Mazeroski and Ralph Kiner, for example).

All this speculation and discussion have always been healthy, enjoyable, and part of the game. Only recently have the political angles — previously talked about solely in terms of enshrinement, similar to the marketing campaigns implemented by motion-picture studios for Oscar candidates — extended into the realm of headwear, namely, the question of which team’s hat a much-traveled Hall of Fame entrant would wear on the plaque that hangs in Cooperstown.

This was never an issue until free agency developed in the ’70s, and the resulting proliferation of baseball mercenaries has led us to this day, when the lucky player gets the call from HOF officials with the news of his enshrinement, and the media’s second question to the player is automatically, "Which team’s cap will you wear upon enshrinement?"

This issue first really came up in 1991, when that year’s class included Rod Carew, the seven-time batting champ who played 12 years for the Twins and his final seven with the California Angels, and Gaylord Perry, the alleged spitballer who played for eight teams over his 22-year career. The same conundrum arose in subsequent years for Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, and Nolan Ryan, among many others, and got particularly dicey around here for 2000 enshrinee Carlton Fisk, who got his start here in Boston but moved on to Chicago for the bulk of his lengthy career after a paperwork snafu in the Fenway executive offices allowed Fisk to leave for greener pastures in 1981. While Fisk was always justifiably angry about having to leave Boston in the first place, a lousy send-off by the White Sox late in his career, coupled with olive branches (and a job offer) extended by John Harrington and Dan Duquette, ultimately mended some fences between Pudge and the Sox. As a result — in what some could say was a tit-for-tat deal — the team bent some rules for retiring team numbers and allowed Fisk’s "27" to be placed alongside Cronin’s, Doerr’s, Williams’s, and Yaz’s in an elaborate ceremony in September 2000. That testimonial fete, not surprisingly, followed by six weeks Fisk’s induction into Cooperstown, where his 20-pound bronze plaque bore a likeness of the brawny catcher wearing the navy-and-scarlet chapeau of the Old Towne Team. At the time, the complicated rules for Boston players’ getting their numbers retired required being a Hall of Famer and finishing your career with the Red Sox (an earlier stipulation — that you had to play your entire career with the team — had to be scrapped because of the realities of modern-day team-hopping). Duquette welcomed Fisk into that elite fold by announcing that because Fisk had been hired as a consultant for the team, he technically had "finished his career" with the Sox.

Last year, a similar bidding war ensued among the six teams for which new Hall entrant Dave Winfield had played in his illustrious career. It eventually came down to the two teams with which Winfield had spent the most time (eight seasons each) and for which he had attained his most notable successes: the San Diego Padres and the New York Yankees. Sure enough, just as Winfield’s career path had been charted by determining which suitor’s wallet opened the deepest, a situation again developed where the lanky outfielder received offers from both teams before making his decision. Published reports at the time indicated that then–Padres president Larry Lucchino — now the Sox’ president — acknowledged that his team had offered Winfield perks to select a Padres cap over New York’s, an offer which potentially included a job offer within the Padres organization. It has never been resolved whether Winfield approached the pinstripers and asked them to match the $200,000 bonus the team gave Reggie Jackson to wear the Yankees’ hat upon his induction, but New York refused to offer Winfield any rewards or quid pro quo. Winfield made his decision, and is now a vice-president and senior advisor in the Padres’ front office, and his number was retired by the team a year ago in a pre-game ceremony (that included a new Mercedes-Benz as a fabulous parting gift). He is the first Hall of Famer to wear a Padres hat on his plaque, though most of the team’s fans probably would have preferred franchise favorite and noted one-team-and-only-one-team Tony Gwynn to be the first.

Since then, the Baseball Hall of Fame announced that it, and not the player, will now determine which cap an inducted player wears. At the time, Hall president Dale Petroskey said, "In Winfield’s case, we gave him the opportunity to be a part of the process since the majority of his career was divided evenly between the Padres [1117 games] and the Yankees [1172]." Later he commented, "History is not marketable. Our responsibility is to communicate history accurately." Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson expounded upon that controversy to the Gannett News Service’s Mel Antonen last year, admitting that "Crazy things can happen in contracts," most likely in reference to Giants’ outfielder Barry Bonds telling people that upon his induction into the Hall, he would wear the hat of the team that signed him to his final contract.

Well, in the coming years, the issue will raise its ugly head on the local front again. As long-time baseball columnist Peter Gammons wrote on ESPN.com last week, "When Dave Winfield essentially auctioned off his Hall of Fame plaque cap to the highest bidder, it forced the Hall to change the rule so that the player will no longer decide what cap he wears into the Hall. As one Cooperstown official notes, this means that no matter what side deals Wade Boggs made with the Devil Rays and Roger Clemens with the Yankees, when they are enshrined in Cooperstown, they will have Boston caps on their plaques. Which means Boggs and Clemens will have uniform-retiring ceremonies at Fenway Park."

As alluded to earlier, the Sox’ rules for retiring numbers are fairly stringent, but methinks they’ll be revised again pretty soon. Otherwise, if Gammons’s theory is correct, in just four years the Chicken Man will come riding in on a white stallion from Fenway’s center-field doorway, World Series ring gleaming in the twilight, ready to offer a heartfelt greeting to all his long-time "fans" and watch teary-eyed as his "26" is unfurled next to Pudge’s. Ah, I can see it now ...

Why do I think that tomato stands in the area will do a brisk business that day and that Chicken Cacciatore will be the blue-plate special?

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com.