Adrian Beltré received my vote to be inducted into the 2024 National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Helton Todd
Mr. Joe Mauer
Rodriguez, Alex
Ramirez, Jack
Pettitte, Andy
Mr. GarySheffield
Rollins, Jimmy
Utley Chase
Collins, Billy
Billy Wagner has maintained a pessimistic perspective on his chances of being inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame when speaking with him on the telephone this past week.
Collins is a candidate for the seventh time. According to the regulations right now, he has 10 possibilities. With 68.1 % of the votes cast in 2023, he narrowly missed being inducted. Out of the 389 votes cast, a participant needed 292 vote. 75 % is the cutoff. The only candidate named this year was Scott Rolen, who received 297 seats, or 76.3 %.
One of the greatest left-handed relief pitchers of all time, Wagner, said,” I’d be crazy to say I would n’t want to be in the Hall of Fame.” But I’m not going to stand here and declare that my life will be ruined if I do n’t enter.
Wagner added that he wo n’t endure the agony of waiting for the call on January 24 when the Class of 2024 is announced while glued to the phone. He said,” I’m not very good at dealing with disappointment.”

Jim Leyland will be joined by anyone chosen by the BBWAA for the induction ceremony on July 21 in Cooperstown, New York, behind the Clark Sports Center. Early this month, the 16-member Contemporary Era Non-Players Committee simply chose Jim Layland. Leyland nearly gave up trying to get the Hall’s visit.
Adrian Beltré, the third baseman, is on the ballot for the first time and appears to be about sure. He has 3, 166 job strikes, which is good enough for 17th on all-time list. First baseman Todd Helton, who spent his entire 17-year career with the Colorado Rockies, has a good chance of winning because he missed the Course of 2023 by only 11 votes, making this his fifth period on the ballot.
That brings up my own vote, which I recently mailed. Voters who are ready may cast up to 10 ballots, and this year I went for the most.
Beltré and Helton were among the seven individuals whose containers I quickly filled out. Joe Mauer, another first-year member who was the only American League fielder to win the batting name, winning three of them, was even a candidate I supported.
Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Andy Pettitte, and Gary Sheffield, who is running for the BBWAA in his final month, are among my small group of candidates who have been tainted by performance-enhancing drugs. They all have no chance of succeeding.
There are now three locations. Shortstop Jimmy Rollins and next infielder Chase Utley, who were the heart and soul of those Philadelphia Phillies team that won the World Series over Tampa Bay in 2008 and lost to the New York Yankees in 2009, received two of them from me.
After speaking to Wagner on the phone for almost 30 minutes, I gave him the next spot. That choice was n’t something that came easily.
Collins had been on the bubbles for me for a while. His 422 saves for five teams are not the most in record for a left-handed closer. John Franco is never present in the Hall with 424. Mariano Rivera ( 652 saves ), Trevor Hoffman (601 ) and Lee Smith ( 478 ), the top three Hall relievers, are all right-handed.
With his 0.70 playoff ERA, Rivera stands out from the competition. He is the only athlete in history to have received 100 % of the vote in the BBWAA election. Hoffman had to do it three days. Smith was ultimately elected in 2019 by what was then known as the Tomorrow’s Game Era Committee after missing on all 15 of his BBWAA opportunities.

That might eventually be Wagner’s end.
Hoffman has advised me to support Wagner, who played his last year for the Atlanta Braves in 2010 and retired at the age of 38 to care for his four children. Wagner had 37 saves.
Collins remarked,” I could include kept pitching.” Although it was n’t as simple as it once was, my children had reached the point where fatherhood was everything.
Collins was adored by his colleagues at Braves. Greg Maddux, who had 355 gets on his profile, asked me when I was going to voting for Collins when we last spoke in Cooperstown.
In addition to the slight difference, Hoffman and Wagner both had a small sample size in the postseason and did n’t exactly perform well. Wagner’s ERA was 2.31 during the ordinary time, compared to Hoffman’S 2.87. Wagner had 1, 196 strikes in 197 fewer innings than Hoffman, who had 2, 133. Outfielders batted 187 against Wagner and 211 against Hoffman.
Maddux and Trevor might have had a place. However, that was n’t the deciding element. When Wagner was a young child growing up in small-town Virginia, his parents divorced when he was 5 decades old. He then moved in with different family and settled with an aunt and uncle while attending Tazewell High School.
Collins is who he is today, though, because of that suffering.
He said,” I would n’t be where I am today if I had an easy childhood.”
Collins, a professional, occasionally shot off his tongue. He recalled having some harsh words for then-owner Drayton McClane when the Houston Astros traded him to the New York Mets because they refused to pay his$ 8 million contract.
He claimed that one of the reasons I wanted to be a great school manager was because I frequently erred in how I handled situations throughout my career. I ought to have been a bit softer. These are some of the issues I consider when I teach the people right now.
It makes sense why he left his career first to raise children rather than improve his math skills. He did n’t want what he had gone through as a child to be repeated to his own children.
He is a high school football coach with his youngest brother playing for Houston’s minor-league system, where he also has an oldest son.
I have a soft spot for people who have triumphed over hardship. Collins has a history of being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
For me, that is sufficient.