Don't Forget Moose: Yankees' Mussina Joins Rivera In Hall Of Fame
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Mariano Rivera may have stolen the show on Hall of Fame election day, receiving baseball's first unanimous selection, but another Yankee great will be joining him in Cooperstown this summer.
Mike Mussina, Rivera's teammate from 2001-08, was elected to the Hall of Fame along side Mariners slugger Edgar Martinez and the late Roy Halladay.
Mussina was a steady right-hander for the Yankees and Baltimore Orioles who went 270-153 with 2,813 strikeouts over 18 seasons. He received 76.7 percent, getting seven more votes than the 319 required for election.
Mussina got 20.3 percent in his first ballot in 2014 but has steadily gained support since. Armed with a nasty knuckle curveball, Mussina also got a push from the sabermetric community.
Halladay, an ace with the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, got 85.4 percent and will be the first posthumous inductee since Deacon White in 2013 and Ron Santo in 2012. Halladay died in November 2017 at 40 years old when an airplane he was flying crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
Halladay won two Cy Young Awards, one each with Toronto and Philadelphia, before ending his career in 2013 at 36 years old due to back injuries.
The right-hander was a first-round draft pick by Toronto in 1995, debuted in the majors in 1998 and struggled terribly until being demoted to the minor leagues in 2001. With the help of sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman, Halladay reinvented himself and became an All-Star in 2002, then won 22 games and an AL Cy Young in 2003.
Halladay's best season came in 2010, his first following a blockbuster trade to Philadelphia. Halladay pitched a perfect game against the Florida Marlins in May, then delivered a no-hitter against Cincinnati in the opener of the NL Division Series. It was just the second no-hitter in postseason history after the Yankees' Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against Brooklyn in the 1956 World Series.
In an era marked by pitch counts and early hooks, Halladay was a workhorse. Since 2000, Halladay's 65 complete games are by far the most in the majors — Livan Hernandez is second at 39.
The only other player elected on the first ballot posthumously was Christy Mathewson in 1936. Roberto Clemente was elected by a special election in 1973 after dying in a plane crash on Dec. 31, 1972.
Martinez was a .312 hitter over 18 seasons with Seattle. He got 85.4 percent in his 10th and final try on the writers' ballot. He and Baines will join 2014 inductee Frank Thomas as the only Hall of Famers to play the majority of their games at designated hitter. David Ortiz will be eligible in 2022.
A late bloomer from Puerto Rico, Martinez never played more than 100 games in the majors until he was 27. He broke in as a third baseman before becoming a full-time DH at 32, a role he held until retiring at 41 years old in 2004.
Martinez got just 36.2 percent of the vote in his first ballot appearance in 2010 and fell as low as 25.2 percent in 2014 — the cutoff for induction is 75 percent. With a push from the sport's analytics community and a hearty social media campaign, Martinez made major progress in recent votes, including 70.4 percent in 2018.
It was only the fourth time the writers voted in four players in one class — it also happened in 2015, 1955 and 1947. The largest group selected by writers was the inaugural five-member class of Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson in 1936. The writers and Today's Game Era Committee have combined to elect 31 people since 2014.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens made gains but again fell short in their seventh times on the ballot. Bonds got 59.1 percent and Clemens 59.5.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)