The Panamanian Mariano Rivera became the first player in the history of the Major Leagues to achieve one hundred percent of the votes of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) to enter the Hall of Fame of Cooperstown. at the 2019 ceremony.
Along with Rivera will be in the Class of 2019 the Puerto Rican designated hitter Edgar Martínez (85.4) and the American pitchers Roy Halladay (85.4) and Mike Mussina (76.7) of the votes that were necessary for his election.
Jeff Idelson, president of the Hall and Museum of Fame, announced the results of the vote on Tuesday during a special program on the major league channel.
The group will join designated hitter Harold Baines and closer Lee Smith, who were elected last December by the Veterans Committee.
All of them will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at the ceremony on Sunday, July 21, which will be held at the Clark Sports Complex in Cooperstown, New York.
Rivera and Halladay entered their first appearance on the writers’ ballot, while Martinez was elected on his tenth and final opportunity.
For Mussina it was his sixth turn that he presented to the vote, in which it is necessary that the participants receive more than 75 percent of the votes that are needed to enter the Hall of Fame.
The election of Rivera and Martinez means that for the first time two Latin American players are elected to the Hall of Fame by direct election of the members of the BBWAA.
In 2006, when the Hall of Fame formed a special committee to investigate the Black Leagues that worked in the United States before the Major Leagues accepted people of color (from 1949 onwards), the deceased Cuban players Cristóbal Torriente and José Méndez and his compatriot, executive Alex Pompez, entered Cooperstown, along with 13 other figures of that alternate baseball.
