Congrats to Goose

Goose Gossage finally was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He should have gotten in years ago. In 2007 he came close 71.2% of the vote (75% is needed). This year's new class of candidates was extremely weak, so that allowed voters to think further about Goose, and so he suddenly received 85.9% of the vote.

How weak was this year's class? In my view Tim Raines is a marginal hall-of-famer, but he only received 24.3% during this first year. I would vote for him, but I don't know if he'll ever get in. Other than him, no one from this year's class even got the 5% of the vote necessary to remain on the ballot next year (Rod Beck, Travis Fryman, Robb Nenn, Shawon Dunston, Chuck Finley, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch, Todd Stottlemyre, Jose Rijo, Brady Anderson).

So naturally many holdovers did better this year. Gossage was elected, and Jim Rice nearly made it too, as he climbed from 63.5% to 72.2%. Next year's class has sure HOFer Rickey Henderson, but not many others who will get a lot of support (Mark Grace? Matt Williams? Mo Vaughn?), so hopefully Rice will get in. Actually, I'm more supportive of Bert Blyleven than Rice, but I'd vote for those two as well as Andre Dawson. Bert this year climbed from 47.7% to 61.9%, while Andre climbed from 56.7% to 65.9%.