Whitaker was a second baseman for the Detroit Tigers from 1977 to 1995. Along with teammate Alan Trammell, Whitaker was part of the longest running "double play" combination in Major League history. Whitaker was declared ineligible for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America when he did not receive the required five percent of the votes in his first year of eligibility (in 2001). Despite having statistics comparable to other second basemen in the Hall of Fame (including contemporary Ryne Sandberg, a third-year inductee), Whitaker was dismissed from the ballot after receiving only fifteen votes, or 2.9%. This surprised many observers, including Bill James,[10] who named Whitaker the thirteenth-best second baseman of all time in The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Whitaker (and other players who played during the "Today's Game" era of 1988 to the present) could've been considered by the Veterans Committee in 2018, but he was not one of the ten that made the ballot. (His old Detroit teammates, Trammell and Jack Morris, did make the ballot and both were elected.) The "Today's Game" electors will meet again in 2021 and 2023.