The 2009 Hall of Fame Results

Congratulations to Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice on their election into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rickey was an obvious first-ballot hall-of-famer, as by many measures he is the greatest leadoff hitter of all time, and he indisputably the all-time stolen-base king. Jim Rice was just as obviously a marginal candidate, as indicated by his only making it in this his 15th and final year on the ballot.

For much more on this election, see this great post from Mike Lynch at Seamheads.com. Not only does he provide the actual voting results, but he also compares this with the voting of the members of the Seamheads group at Facebook (some 250+ voted). A third table shows the direct comparison of the two sets of votes. Interestingly, the Seamheads voters didn't think Rice was deserving, rating him sixth amongst this year's candidates with only 39.1% of the vote. They also didn't think much of Andrew Dawson, who gets 41.9% of their vote as compared with 67% by the real voters. On the flipside, I think the Seamheads voters are clearly correct to support Tim Raines more heavily: 58.1% vs. the pitiful 22.6% the real voters gave him.