Fred McGriff Gets the Call

The Crime Dog has been voted into the Hall of Fame by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee

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.