Red Sox: Hall of Fame voting fallout
By Sean Penney
What the voting results for the Class of 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame mean for players with ties to the Boston Red Sox organization.
The votes are in and the tally reveals that baseball’s Hall of Fame will be inducting two new members this summer.
This year’s class is headlined by Ken Griffey, Jr., who appeared on 437 of the 440 ballots in his first year of eligibility for a record 99.3 percent of the votes. Griffey’s 630 career home runs are the sixth most all-time, which is made all the more impressive given that he was one of the few power-hitting stars of the steroid era whose reputation was never tainted by steroid accusations. This is why many believed that Junior had a chance to become the first ever unanimous selection, until he ultimately fell short by three votes. We can debate the logic of the three writers that inexplicably left Griffey off their ballot or the flawed voting process that will likely prevent anyone from being a unanimous selection, but does it really matter? All that matters is that he got in, with the honor of a record percentage of the vote serving as the icing on the cake.
Junior will be joined in Cooperstown this summer by Mike Piazza, who received 83 percent of the votes in his fourth year on the ballot. Viewed as the greatest offensive catcher the game has ever seen, Piazza is the career leader at the position in home runs (427) and OPS (.922). Piazza’s name has been dragged into the steroid scandal by those that assume he was cheating based solely on his powerful physique, despite that he never failed a drug test or had any substantive accusations made against him. His selection this year shows that more voters are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, which bodes well for other unfairly accused sluggers such as Jeff Bagwell, who narrowly missed the cut this year with 71.6 percent of the votes.
While baseball fans from all over can appreciate the accomplishments of these great players regardless of the team their allegiance is to, this year’s class doesn’t carry the same weight with Red Sox Nation as last year’s did, when Pedro Martinez stealing the show at the induction ceremony became one of the highlights of the year. While we won’t see a player enshrined wearing a Red Sox cap this year, there are several takeaways from the voting results that a relevant to players with ties to this franchise.
Next: Roger Clemens