Yesterday, Ken Griffey Jr was elected into the the National Baseball Hall of Fame on his first time on the ballot but that isn’t the big story here. The big story here is the fact that Griffey and his 83.6 career Wins Above Replacement did not get unanimously voted into the hall.
Out of the 440 total voters, 437 voted for Griffey to get into the hall, which yes is a record and does indeed make him a hall of famer like he should be but it should have been unanimous. For the three voters who said no to Griffey, how could you? The man played 22 seasons, was cooler than the other side of the pillow, hitting for an average of .284 while also knocking 630 balls out of the park and amassing 1,836 RBIs. While yes, Griffey never won a World Series and of course you can’t possibly be great if you never won a World Series although we all praise Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout, both of whom also haven’t won a World Series, Griffey did go to a whopping 13 All-Star games and won the 1997 American League MVP.
Griffey is not the first player to be robbed of a unanimous decision however, Tom Seaver when he got in with the 1992 class only had 98.84% even though in Seaver’s 20 year career, he won 311 games and had a 2.86 career ERA while also winning three Cy Young awards and the 1969 World Series with the New York Mets, he was not unanimous. Neither was Nolan Ryan, the GREAT Nolan Ryan widely considered to be the best pitcher in the history of baseball, the same Nolan Ryan who won 324 games over a massive 27 year career including a MLB record 5,714 strikeouts and seven no-hitters but Ryan only got 98.79% of the vote.
I would love to know who the three voters who voted against Griffey were but to say it is surprising is a stretch, baseball is heavy in tradition and that extends out to the writers who will never let anyone in unanimously. In the next 10 years we have Jeter, Mariano Rivera and it wouldn’t shock me if Yadier Molina retires in the next few years so throw him in also. We will never know who the three against Griffey were, due in part to cowardness but also because they know that baseball fans from all over the nation would instantly hate on them on social media and social media is of course the most important measure of how much someone is liked these days.
Beyond The Grandstand 