Fred McGriff Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

By the time McGriff retired in 2004, with 493 career home runs, the power landscape was in the process of becoming inextricably altered.

“Over the years, it was about consistency,” McGriff said when asked Sunday evening about being overshadowed by players suspected of using steroids, treading lightly around the subject. “I put lot into this game. I worked hard to get to this point, maybe just play one game in the big leagues. I exceeded all expectations.”

He continued: “You control what you can control, and if you can’t control it you go with the flow. Over the years, you have people coming up asking you about it.”

McGriff, while playing for Toronto, San Diego, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers, also finished with 1,550 R.B.I. A left-handed hitter, he was a five-time All-Star and helped power Atlanta to a World Series title in 1995. He finished in top 10 in most valuable player voting five times.

Yet in a decade on the writers’ ballot, he received little traction. He peaked at 39.8 percent of the vote in 2019, his final year of eligibility. Before that, he had never surpassed 23.9 percent.

Sometimes, he said, he would become frustrated because “if I hit 500 home runs, I’m a great player, and if I hit 493, I’m a good player.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/sports/baseball/fred-mcgriff-hall-of-fame.html