Alex Rodriguez Receives Disappointing News Again After New Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot
Alex Rodriguez just learned the news about his status on making the Baseball Hall of Fame. The ballots for the Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2023 were counted, and Rodriguez did not have enough votes to be inducted. The former Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers and New York Yankees star received 35.7% of the vote on the ballots cast by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He needed at least 75% of the vote, and only one person reached that threshold — Scott Rolen. Last year, Rodriguez received 34.3% of the vote.
One thing that has hurt Rodriguez is he was suspended for the entire 2014 season with the Yankees for his involvement with Biogenesis, a lab based in South Florida that provided players with banned performance-enhancing drugs (PED). Rodriguez admitted to using PEDs while he was playing for the Rangers. In 2019, Rodriguez appeared on ESPN's First Take and said he wanted to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
"I would love to get in [to the Hall of Fame], but I understand that I made my own bed," he said, per Sportskeeda. "So if I don't make it to the Hall of Fame, I can live with that. I will be bummed, it would suck and I can't believe that I put myself in this situation. But if that happens, I have no one to blame but myself."
Rodriguez, 47, has a Hall-of-Fame resume. In his career, Rodriguez has been named an All-Star 14 times, won the AL MVP award three times, won the Silver Slugger Award 10 times, led the AL in home runs five times and won a World Series with the Yankees in 2009. Rodriguez finished with a career batting of .295 while recording, 3,115 hits, 696 home runs and 2,086 RBIs. He is the only player to have over 600 homers, 2,000 RBIs, over 2,000 runs scored, over 3,000 hits and over 3,000 stolen bases.
Rolen played for the Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Toronto Blue Jays and Cincinnati Reds and is considered one of the best defensive third basemen in history. In his career, Rolen won eight Gold Gloves was named an All-Star seven times and led the Cardinals to a World Series title in 2006. Rolen finished his career with a .281 batting average with 2,077 hits, 316 home runs and 1,287 RBIs.