Rock will finally get his plaque in Cooperstown.
Long-time Expo and 1996 Yankee World Series champ Tim Raines — nicknamed Rock during his playing days — received baseball’s highest honor Wednesday, after the National Baseball Hall of Fame announced the 2017 class. Joining Raines at the Hall’s induction ceremonies this summer will be Astros lifer Jeff Bagwell and former All-Star catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez.
Raines, who was in his 10th and final year on the ballot, got a whopping 86% of the vote. Bagwell and Rodriguez received 86.2% and 76% respectively. Players need 75% of the vote from members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) to gain entry into Cooperstown. Last year’s results — when Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were voted into the Hall — were based upon 440 ballots cast.
Raines, 57, played for 23 seasons, but spent the prime years of his career in Montreal and was a seven-time All Star with that club. The Florida-born switch-hitter had a lifetime .294 average, 808 career stolen bases and collected 2,605 hits. He won a World Series ring in 1996 with the Yankees, and was also part of the 1998 Yankees title team, although he didn’t play in that ’98 Fall Classic.
Bagwell spent his entire 15-year career with the Houston Astros (when the club was still in the National League), and the 48-year-old has both the NL Rookie of the Year (1991) and the NL MVP (’94) on his resume. Bagwell had 2,314 hits and 449 career home runs.
Rodriguez, 45, spent his early career with the Rangers, before bouncing around the majors with Florida (where he won a World Series ring in 2003), Detroit, the Yankees, the Astros and the Nationals. He played 21 seasons and has a career .296 average with 311 home runs, 1,332 RBI and 2,844 hits. Rodriguez was named in former A’s slugger and admitted steroid user Jose Canseco’s 2005 book “Juiced.” Canseco identified Rodriguez as a player who used performance-enhancing drugs, with Canseco writing that he personally injected the catcher nicknamed Pudge. But no other concrete evidence, or failed drug tests, have surfaced linking Rodriguez to PEDs. Major League Baseball began drug testing in 2004.
Steroid-tainted players Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, meanwhile, fell short of being voted into the Hall of Fame for the fifth straight year, although the former Yankees pitcher and home run king gained some ground.Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, received 54.1%, up from 45.2% he received last year. Bonds, who has 762 career homers and is a seven-time NL MVP, received 53.8%, up from 44.3% he received in 2016.
The 54-year-old Clemens, named in the Mitchell Report on doping in baseball when it was released in 2007, was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2010. The burly right-hander was charged with perjury and obstruction of Congress, but he was acquitted of all charges in his federal trial in 2012. Bonds, 52, also went to trial in 2011 in San Francisco federal court, and although he was found guilty of obstruction of justice that spring, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction in 2015.
Former Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Phillies ace Curt Schilling, a three-time World Series champ with Arizona and Boston, failed to garner the necessary 75% of the vote for entry. Many BBWAA writers have publicly voiced their decision to not vote for Schilling because of his social media posts in the last year, including one tweet where Schilling praised a man wearing a T-shirt that advocated lynching journalists. Schilling, who has a career 11-2 postseason record with 120 strikeouts in 12 playoff series, later said he was joking with his comments.
Tags:
mlb
baseball hall of fame
tim raines
jeff bagwell
ivan rodriguez
roger clemens
barry bonds
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Source: NY Daily News Headlines Sports News
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