We’re less than three weeks away from the unveiling baseball’s Hall of Fame Class of 2011, and the list of candidates includes several players who logged time in a Red Sox uniform during their career. However, unlike 2009 and 2010, when Jim Rice, Rickey Henderson, and Andre Dawson were elected, chances are pretty good that no former Fenway favorite will receive the congratulatory phone call this time around.
In fact, only two ex-Sox are on the ballot at all: John Olerud and Lee Smith. Olerud is on the ballot for the first time and may be hard pressed to receive the 5% of votes needed to remain a candidate going forward. Smith, on the other hand, finished seventh in the balloting last year but received only 47.3% of the votes cast. So he has a fair amount of ground to make up and probably won’t do it, not now and maybe not ever.
Instead, consensus around the sport seems to point to Roberto Alomar and perhaps Bert Blyleven and/or Barry Larkin as receiving enough votes to get in – and to Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro as locks to be kept out because of their association with performance-enhancing drugs. If pressed, this observer would tell you that Alomar will be the only name in the press release come January 5, when the results are announced, and that most of the rest of the field will finish far enough behind to be non-factors going forward.
See you in a few weeks when we all find out.
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