Jim Rice, Rickey Henderson Elected to the Hall of Fame

Jim Rice and Rickey Henderson were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame today.

Both deserved to get elected. Rice hit near .300 for his career with just under 2500 hits and fell just short of 400 HRs. It is difficult, in my mind, to qualify Rice as being a dominant outfielder in his career. He did make the AllStar game 8 times however, and is unquestionably a man of good character.

Rickey Henderson is arguably one of the best leadoff hitters of all time, and is the career leader for leadoff HRs. Henderson won the World Series with the BlueJays in 1993, and is also the career leader in stolen bases. He bounced around 10 different Major League teams in his career, so it will be interesting to see whose hat he wears to go into the Hall. My vote would be for either the Oakland Athletics or the New York Yankees.

It is also notable that Mark McGwire received only 21.9% of the vote. I for one, could not be happier with this. If Pete Rose isn't in the Hall because of his gambling, then Mark McGwire should not be in the Hall for all the suspicion surrounding his name for the use of steroids then other illegal performance-enhancing substances.