Baseball Hall of Fame 2015: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, Craig Biggio elected to Cooperstown
1. Baseball Hall of Fame 2015: Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez,
John Smoltz, Craig Biggio elected to Cooperstown
Arizona Diamondbacks' Randy Johnson, left, in 2008, and Boston Red Sox' Pedro Martinez in 2003.
AP Photo/File
Last Updated Jan 6, 2015 4:22 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz, a trio of star pitchers who dominated
in an era of offense, were elected to baseball's Hall of Fame on Tuesday along with Craig Biggio, the
first time since 1955 writers selected four players in one year.
The Big Unit, Martinez and Smoltz earned induction on their first tries, and Biggio made it on the
third attempt after falling two votes shy last year.
Johnson, a five-time Cy Young Award winner with 303 victories and 4,875 strikeouts, was selected on
534 of 549 ballots by veteran members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
"The Hall of Fame was never something that I surely ever thought about," said Johnson, who has
been pursuing a photography career since his retirement.
Later, he tweeted, "I'm just so humbled,started playing BB at 7 yrs old, now to grace to stage in July
with the greatest player ever. Thank You."
The 97.3 percentage for the left-hander was the eighth-highest in the history of voting.
"I don't think people quite understand how difficult it is to be 6-foot-10 and be throwing a ball 60
feet, 6 inches away," Johnson said. "In order to do that, you have to be consistent with your release
point and where you're landing and your arm slot and all that. For someone 6-1, 6-2, there's less
body to keep under control, so it's a lot easier."
2. Martinez, a three-time Cy Young winner with flamboyance to go along with his fastball, appeared on
500 ballots (91.1 percent). Martinez was 219-100, struck out 3,154, led the major leagues in ERA
five times and in 2004 helped the Boston Red Sox to their first World Series title in 86 years.
"My body would change half an hour before the game, and I would just become this serious, focused
person because my dad reminded me you've got to be serious about your job," Martinez recalled. "I
saw everybody as an enemy, and I saw everybody as like in a jungle: You just kill to survive. And
that's the intensity and the focus I had to keep to do it every day on a day-to-day basis. And that's the
kind of chip on the shoulder that people thought I had, even though that was my way to concentrate
and do the day to day things that I did in baseball."
Dominican President Danilo Medina sent a congratulatory letter to Martinez, who was born and
raised in the Dominican Republic. The president tweeted: "God Bless You, Thanks for bringing so
much happiness to our people."
Smoltz was picked on 455 ballots (82.9 percent) and will join former Atlanta teammates Greg
Maddux and Tom Glavine, who were inducted last summer along with Chicago White Sox slugger
Frank Thomas. Smoltz, the 1996 NL Cy Young winner, was 213-155 with 154 saves, the only pitcher
with 200 wins and 150 saves. He went 15-4 in the postseason.
Biggio appeared on 454 ballots, 42 more than the 75 percent needed and up from 68.2 percent in his
first appearance and 74.8 percent last year. He had 3,060 hits in 20 big league seasons, all with the
Houston Astros.
The quartet will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 26. The BBWAA had not voted in four players in
a single year since selecting Joe DiMaggio, Gabby Hartnett, Ted Lyons and Dazzy Vance 60 years
earlier.
3. Mike Piazza fell 28 votes short but increased his percentage to 69.9 from 57.8 in 2013 and 62.2 last
year.
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Steroids-tainted stars Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa remained far
from election. As CBSSports.com's Jon Heyman notes, one issue is who is culpable, and how
culpable?
"There are players who failed tests, players who appeared in the Mitchell Report, players who were
charged with crimes, and players who simply had varying degrees of smoke," Heyman writes. "That
smoke usually came from unusually bad testimony or soft-on-steroid quotes to oddly inflated bodies
and statistics (and for one or two over-eager voters, the presence of back acne; this is also an acne-
free zone, by the way, as that is no sort of evidence of PED use, as there are many causes of acne)."
Clemens received 37.5 percent and Bonds 36.8 percent. Clemens, the only seven-time Cy Young
winner, started at 37.6 percent in 2013 and dropped to 35.4 last year; Bonds, the only seven-time
MVP, began at 36.2 and fell to 34.7.