Fred McGriff Gets the Call

Sunday evening, the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee announced that they have voted Fred McGriff into the Hall of Fame — unanimously.

McGriff played from 1986 to 2004, and won a World Series playing first base for the 1995 Atlanta Braves. A five-time All-Star and three-time Silver Slugger, McGriff finished his career with 493 home runs, 1,550 RBIs and a career .284 batting average.

Despite these numbers, McGriff could not make it into the Hall of Fame during his 10 seasons on the ballot, maxing out at an embarrassingly-low 39.8% in 2009, his last year of eligibility. Instead, a panel of 16 voters elected him. The panel included

• White Sox Hall-of-Famer Frank Thomas
• White Sox executive vice president Ken Williams
• Former White Sox executive and current Marlins GM Kim Ng
• Former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein
• Atlanta Braves Hall-of-Famers (and McGriff teammates) Chipper Jones and Greg Maddux
• Hall-of-Famers Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith and Alan Trammell
• Angels owner Arte Moreno
• Former Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston
• Twins president Dave St. Peter
• BBWAA past presidents Susan Slusser (Bay Area) and LaVelle Neal (Minneapolis)
• Statistician/historian Steve Hirdt

No one else on the ballot got more than 50% of the vote, with only former New York Yankee Don Mattingly getting to 50%. The same standard of 75% support as the general vote applies to veterans’ committees, so candidates needed 12 votes or more for election tonight. Others on this ballot include a trio steroids-era stars all getting fewer than a quarter of votes each (Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmerio,) the always-controversial Curt Schilling receiving seven votes, Dale Murphy coming in with six votes and former White Sox slugger Albert Belle also receiving fewer than four votes.