Posted on 01/24/2019 9:23:28 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It is difficult to compare because Rivera played on the best franchise in the league during his career but they were also successful because he was so dominant. In any case, if ballots had been scrutinized like they are now you would have had a lot more unanimous picks.
Dumb voters. Then it became a “tradition” one of baseball’s many unwritten rules was “if Babe wasn’t unanimous nobody should be” so there was always a cadre of 3 or 4 voters that “made sure” nobody went unanimous. Apparently they all died.
With the election of Mike Mussina, Schilling has the highest Career Wins Above Replacement of any player eligible for the hall of Fame not named Bonds or Clemens. He is 65th. Pete Rose is 64th. Joe DiMaggio is 68th.
If you're going to talk about those... you need to talk about Goose Gossage. :-) Fingers was a polished gentleman coming out of the bullpen. Gossage was a Cro-Magnon.
I listened to him pitch, once, in Yankee Stadium. I say, "listened", because he was throwing too hard for me to see the ball.
Rivera pitched only 1283 innings with an 82-60 record in his career and is unanimously elected to the HOF(and rightfully so) and Schilling pitched 3261 innings with a 216-146 record with almost 3 times the strikeouts in his career, practically carried his teams to 3 World Series titles with almost unprecedented post season numbers and is snubbed
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