Outstanding, and truly deserved.
By User Keith Allison on Flickr – Originally posted to Flickr as “Mariano Rivera”, CC BY-SA 2.0
Mariano Rivera stands alone in National Baseball Hall of Fame history as the only player ever voted in unanimously by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. But he’ll be far from alone on the induction day dais, as the BBWAA has selected four players for entry into the hallowed Hall.
Rivera, Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez and Mike Mussina were revealed Tuesday night as the third four-man BBWAA-voted Hall of Fame class in the past five years but only the fifth in history. Combined with the selections of Harold Baines and Lee Smith by the Today’s Game Era Committee in December, it’ll be a six-man class for the July 21 induction ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y. — the second six-man group in as many years and the third this decade.
The late Halladay (363 votes, 85.4 percent) joins Rivera as a first-ballot entrant, just one year after his tragic death in an airplane crash. They are the 55th and 56th players voted in on their first ballot. Martinez (363 votes, 85.4 percent), on the other hand, has been elected in his 10th and final year on the BBWAA ballot, and Mussina (326 votes, 76.7 percent) made it on his sixth try.
But the man named “Mo,” universally regarded as the greatest closer the game has ever seen, achieved something unprecedented by getting the check mark on all 425 ballots cast. Prior to Rivera, the player who had come closest in a voting process that dates back to 1936 was Ken Griffey Jr., who appeared on 437 of 440 ballots cast in 2016.
Though traditionally stingy when it comes to Hall passes, the BBWAA has now voted in 20 players over the last last six years — the largest total of any six-year span. As always, to be elected, players had to be included on 75 percent of the ballots submitted by voting members of the BBWAA, who had a maximum of 10 slots to fill.
Beyond the entrants, some notable numbers from the 2019 results include a surge in support for Larry Walker (from 34.1 percent last year to 54.6) in his penultimate year on the ballot, and for Curt Schilling (from 51.2 percent to 60.9) in his sixth appearance. Controversial candidates Roger Clemens (from 57.3 to 59.5) and Barry Bonds (from 56.4 to 59.1) saw a slight uptick from their 2018 totals but will have to finish with a flourish in their final three years on the ballot.
Schilling, Walker, Bonds and Clemens were the only non-inductees to appear on more than half of the ballots cast. Fred McGriff finished with a 39.8 percentage in his last year on the ballot.
The Hall of Fame now has 329 elected members, including 232 players, of which 132 have come through the BBWAA ballot.
That’s the best ballot the writers have had in years. It not only makes up for the ridiculous committee selection last month, it also goes a long way towards clearing the logjam and making future votes less fraught. I couldn’t be happier for the four new inductees. Especially for Mo, one of the best people in baseball. Well done all around. Pinstripe Alley and River Ave Blues have more.