The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown has its newest member.
Slugger Fred McGriff wound up his 19-year career in the bigs with Tampa Bay in 2004, but on Sunday he became the latest previously overlooked player to attain baseball immortality when the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Players Committee chose him unanimously.
McGriff was a five-time All-Star who hit at least 30 homers 10 times, and the Crime Dog helped lead the Braves to the 1995 World Series title.
Now he has a good reason to make his first visit to Cooperstown.
“To call myself a Hall of Famer. Now it’s Fred McGriff, Hall of Famer," he said. "And over the years, like I said, people coming up to you and so forth. And guys that you played against, come up to you and saying, ‘Fred, man, you know, you're a great player, you went out there and played the game right.’ And so forth. And you always have to like, ‘Ah, thank you. Appreciate it.’ And so now, that’s out of the way now. I don't have to answer that question.”
Although McGriff played in the steroid era, many of his home run feats — he finished with 493 — still stand out. He is 29th all-time, was the first to hit 30 for five different franchises, and in 1992 became only the third player to lead both leagues in homers.
Born in Tampa and originally drafted by the Yankees in 1981, McGriff played first base for Toronto, San Diego, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, the Chicago Cubs and the L.A. Dodgers. But his best years were with the Braves during their dominant 1990s in the NL East. He batted .303 with 10 homers in 50 career playoff games.
Needing 12 of 16 votes for enshrinement, Don Mattingly (eight votes), Curt Schilling (with seven) and Dale Murphy (with six) fell short, as did Albert Belle, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro.
McGriff was asked about his career and his Hall of Fame candidacy perhaps being overshadowed by the titans of the steroid era.
“I put a lot into this game, I worked hard to get to this point and for me to just play one game in the big leagues basically exceeded all expectations. And so I went out and I just played the game like it was supposed to be played, and you went out there hard, every single day. And that's really all you can do. You control what you can control. If you can't control it, you go with the flow.”
McGriff is also beloved by a generation of fans who saw his appearance in a commercial that was an ESPN mainstay, Tom Emanski’s instructional videos. They made McGriff a meme and also may have introduced him to a generation on the internet that didn’t remember his heyday.
“Coming to Cooperstown I got to wear my blue hat, you know, my Tom Emanski hat in Cooperstown,” he said. “That video is gonna make a revival now. It's gonna come back. I was amazed that video stayed on for 20 years, and in that clubhouse every single night, it was coming on, and I may be in a training room or something like that. And the minute it come on, I head out the training room, because the guys are gonna rag me every single day.”
The results of the regular Hall of Fame ballot will be announced Jan. 24, and the induction ceremony is set for July 23.
