The Vote

440 Ballots, 330 votes needed.

Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey, Jr. make it. I’m waiting for the vote total.

Griffey was not unanimous, 437 votes. Highest percentage ever.

Update: Here are the votes. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens finished in the mid 40s. Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines came close, 71.4% and 69.8% respectively.

Update: I want to say that I’m not that upset about Griffey’s lack of unanimity. Griffey is getting a lot of credit for being clean. He had a fantastic first half of his career, and a poor second half. While there is no doubt that he is a Hall of Fame player, he got a huge boost in the voting from being clean.

His vote total is also impressive to me due to the change in perception of Griffey over the years. When he was young, the media did not like him. He was difficult. Most of the press people I knew at the time who met him did not like him. Griffey went so far one year in the playoffs to get his teammates to boycott talking to ESPN over something written or said (I’m sorry, I don’t remember the details). Griffey did make his teammates, “Fuck ESPN” shirts to wear. Now he seems rather beloved. I suspect he grew up at some point, or maybe the decline in his career caused him to be more humble. I also believed that Griffey screwed Alex Rodriguez out of an MVP Award by convincing a Seattle writer that Griffey was the MVP of the team. (Then again, it was Alex Rodriguez.)

So congratulations to Griffey and Piazza. Both were great players of their era, and the honor is richly deserved.

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