BBWAA selects Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice to Hall of Fame

The BBWAA selected Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice to join the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

National Baseball Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson made the announcement shortly after 2 eastern.

Jim Rice finally got his due!

As for Henderson and his 94.8 perecentage, only Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken Jr., Ty Cobb, George Brett, Hank Aaron, Tony Gwynn, Mike Schmidt, Johnny Bench, Steve Carlton, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Lou Gehrig have gotten higher.

Just looking at the article on MLB, Andre Dawson (67%) and Bert Blyleven (62.7%) should get enough votes next year to get inducted.

Other more distant possibilities for selection this year were Dawson, a former National League Rookie of the Year (1977) and MVP (1987), who was on the ballot for the eighth time, and Blyleven, fifth on the all-time list with 3,702 strikeouts, who was on the ballot for the 12th time. Neither made it again.

Dawson crept up from 65.9 percent last year to 67 percent (361 votes) and, like last year, Blyleven was right behind him with 62.7 percent of the vote (338), up from 61.9 percent in 2008.

Left-hander Tommy John, also on the ballot for the last time, received 31.7 percent of the votes (171) and has finished his 15-year tenure. Players may remain on the ballot for up to 15 years provided they receive at least 5 percent of the vote each year. John will now be eligible for the Veterans Committee voting on players whose careers began in 1943 or later when it gathers again in 2010.

Nine players didn't receive enough votes to return to the ballot next year: Mark Grace, David Cone, Matt Williams, Mo Vaughn, Jay Bell, Jesse Orosco, Ron Gant, Dan Plesac and Greg Vaughn. Gant, Plesac and Vaughn didn't receive any votes.

Henderson and Rice bring the number of players in the Hall to 202, 108 of them elected by eligible members of the BBWAA. They are the 20th and 21st left fielders. Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, once a teammate in Boston of Rice, was the last left-fielder elected to the Hall in 1989.

Former Yankees and Indians second baseman Joe Gordon was elected by a Veterans Committee this past December and will be inducted along with Henderson and Rice on July 26 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Tony Kubek won the Ford C. Frick Award for his contributions to baseball broadcasting and Nick Peters was the winner of the J.G. Spink Award given by the BBWAA for his career as a baseball writer. Both men will also accept their awards that day on the stage behind the Clark Sports Center.