COOPERSTOWN — With a windshield-wiper mentality, the Na

Star photo by Anita Briggs Former Negro League player Buck O’Neil points at the crowd Sunday during a special 2006 Induction Ceremony presentation at the Clark Sports Center.

tional Baseball Hall of Fame quickly whisked away the memories of 17 deceased inductees Sunday.

The largest Hall of Fame Class in history featured 17 Negro leagues pioneers who were honored with little more than fast-food service Sunday. Seventeen plaques were read on stage at the Clark Sports Center, leaving little time for anything else.

Including the standard photo ops after each reading, the Hall dedicated all of 36 minutes, 36 seconds to acknowledge the impact these 17 people had on the national pastime.

McDonald’s would be delighted to serve 17 customers in that amount of time. But these people deserved more.

I’ll be honest. When I first heard that 18 people were Hall-bound this year, my first thought was, "Do you know how lo[an error occurred while processing this directive]ng that’s going to take? We’re going to be in Cooperstown all day."

And had the Hall done this one the right way, giving equal time to each inductee, we might still be there.

Instead, the Hall lumped all 17 together into a thanks-for-coming-and-thanks-for-leaving formality.

Hall chairman Jane Forbes Clark explained how this day of black history came to be:

"Their election is part of a landmark study commissioned by Major League Baseball," she said on a sunny, 80-degree afternoon. "In the year 2000, over four years three historians led a team of 50 researchers who put together the most comprehensive study of Negro League baseball ever.

"That study led our board of directors to recommend having an election to view the candidacy of those who played in the Negro leagues and those who played before the leagues were formed ... The board appointed a committee, completely independent of the Hall of Fame, and elected 17 deserving candidates to be enshrined here today."

But why did they all have to go in on the same day?

The Hall easily could have spread their inductions over a 5-year period, thus giving ample time for each of the 17 to be properly honored for their contributions.

Ask me — or virtually anyone else who attended Sunday’s ceremony — who Ray Brown was two weeks from now and you’ll get a shoulder-shrug in response. Brown is a Hall of Famer, one of the 17 enshrined Sunday.

Actually, I won’t remember any male Hall of Famer inducted Sunday other than Bruce Sutter (who got roughly 23 minutes of face time, by the way).

And the only reason I’ll remember Effa Manley is because she became the first woman inducted into the Hall.

The last part of Clark’s quote — "... 17 deserving candidates to be enshrined here today." — should be questioned, too.

Here’s a sampling of the bios that don’t scream "Hall of Fame!"

• Brown played for the Homestead Braves from 1931-45. He had 105 victories, 13 shutouts and a 3.20 ERA.

• Andy Cooper spent 19 seasons in the Negro leagues. He had a 116-57 record and was the Negro National League saves leader with 29.

• Biz Mackey had a .329 career average over 24 seasons as a catcher and finished sixth in career RBIs with 412.

• Cristobal Torriente played 17 professional seasons and hit .300 or higher eight times, including .432 in 1920. He was 11th in Negro League history with 309 RBIs.

Now, as Brad Horn — the Hall of Fame’s director of communications — said Sunday, the Negro leagues did not play anywhere near the number of official games we see today.

Horn said some seasons, teams played 30 to 40 league games. The Kansas City Monarchs went 62-17 in 1929.

Horn also said teams played almost as many exhibition games as league games. The exhibitions did not count toward their career numbers.

So I’m not sure if the four players’ stats listed above are Hall of Fame caliber. Do they belong with the likes of Mays, Aaron, Ruth, Koufax, Carlton or Gibson?

It’s certainly debatable.

One thing’s for sure, when I take my grandchildren to the Hall 30 years from now and they ask who Joe Morgan was, I’ll tell them he was one of the most complete players of his generation.

If they ask about Mackey, again, I’ll shrug my shoulders.

And that’s perhaps the biggest injustice of Sunday’s Induction Ceremony. We weren’t allowed to get to know these guys. How much can you learn about someone when the time allotment on stage is about two minutes per inductee?

Thankfully, Buck O’Neil provided a memorable speech — the best of the five speakers Sunday.

"All you needed was a bus, and we had rode in some of the best buses money could buy," O’Neil said. "Yeah. And a couple sets of uniforms. You could have 20 of the best athletes that ever lived, and that’s who we are representing today. It was outstanding."

That’s perspective, but there was far too little of it Sunday.

Rob Centorani is a sportswriter for The Daily Star. E-mail him at rcentorani@thedailystar.com.