A unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame . . . it's about time!
Mariano Rivera speaks to the press at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan on Jan. 23, 2019, after being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Credit: Corey Sipkin
One of the stupidest traditions in sports mercifully ended this past week when Mariano Rivera became the first unanimous selection to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The closer, baseball’s all-time saves leader, was named on all 425 ballots returned by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America electorate.
“Something I never thought I would see,” BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell said of the unanimous vote during Wednesday’s Hall of Fame news conference at the St. Regis in Manhattan.
The accomplishment was rightly celebrated. By Rivera, of course – the reaction of the pitcher and his family as they got the call from O’Connell, followed by their celebration upon learning that he had gone 425-for-425, quickly went viral – but also by those tired of the enduring embarrassment that there had never been a unanimous vote for a candidate.
History! Mariano Rivera is officially the first player in MLB history to receive 100% of the votes! Truly remarkable experience for myself and his family! pic.twitter.com/WMrbFRsVAb
— Martino Puccio (@MartinoPuccio) January 22, 2019
And that it took so long is an embarrassment.
It is a simultaneously mind-boggling and vexing exercise to go back through the years and look at the yearly Hall of Fame vote.
In 1936, the first year of Hall of Fame voting, for example, four “experts” saw fit to leave Ty Cobb off their ballots, 11 said no to Babe Ruth and 21 omitted Christy Mathewson.
What followed was the fallacious reasoning of “well, if Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Ty Cobb weren’t unanimous picks, then Player X shouldn't be, either” being applied with insulting consistency. Many years presented plenty of “are you kidding me?” scenarios.
Such as: 20 voters leaving Ted Williams off their ballots in 1966, 23 omitting Stan Musial in 1969 and nine neglecting Hank Aaron in 1982.
The three voters who decided against marking the box next to Ken Griffey Jr.’s name in 2016 — Griffey had the highest vote percentage (99.32) before Rivera — embarrassed themselves, as did the 16 who didn’t vote for Johnny Bench in 1989, the six who left Nolan Ryan off in 1999 and the 49 who went against Pedro Martinez in 2015.
And on and on.
But at least all of those mentioned above surpassed 90 percent.
Those who somehow couldn’t get to that level in the eyes of voters include Jackie Robinson, who received a shameful 77.5 percent of the vote in 1962; Walter Johnson (83.63 percent in 1936), Bob Gibson (84.04 percent in 1981), Hank Greenberg (84.97 in 1956), Yogi Berra (85.61 in 1972), Sandy Koufax (86.87 in 1972), Mickey Mantle (88.22 in 1974) and Joe DiMaggio (88.84 in 1955).
As just about every ballot is made public now — the vast majority are disclosed by voters, though the Hall doesn’t compel it — the prospect of being flogged on the internet without question played a role in Rivera’s 100 percent.
And now that the dam officially has broken, Derek Jeter, who is eligible next season, has a good chance of making it two consecutive years in which there is a unanimous pick.
In the end, of course, induction is what matters. Few, if any, of those touring the Hall look at the plaques of Ruth or Aaron or Koufax or DiMaggio or Robinson and ponder vote totals.
“One of the most difficult career paths in the world is to the major leagues,” Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson said during Wednesday’s event, which honored Rivera and fellow inductees Mike Mussina, Edgar Martinez and Roy Halladay, who was killed in a plane crash in 2017. “In the long history of professional baseball, 19,429 men thus far have been privileged to wear a major league uniform, and of them, 1 percent, one out of a hundred, make it to Cooperstown. So that’s really how special this honor is.”
Still, the honor of unanimity rightly bestowed upon Rivera left a lingering thought: It’s about time.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
More Yankees headlines
