2009 Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees

Here is the Cooperstown Class of 2009...

Joe Gordon- One of the first power hitting second basemen. Finished with 253 homers. Played 11 seasons and was a 9 time all star. He was the 1942 AL MVP and 5 time World Champion (1938, 1939, 1941, 1943 with NY and 1948 with Cleveland).

Jim Rice: The dominant right handed power hitter for a decade (1975-1986). He finished with 382 Homers and 1451 RBI. 8 time All-Star, 2 silver sluggers, & the 1978 MVP.

Rickey Henderson: 2295 runs, 3055 hits, 2190 walks, 1406 steals, and the most lead-off homers in history. 10 time all star, 1990 MVP, 1989 ALCS MVP, Gold Glove (1981), 3 silver sluggers, 1989 and 1993 World Champion.

Gordon and Rice should have been inducted awhile ago. For whatever reason, Gordon was forgotten. Rice's production was overshadowed by the steroid hulks of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Rickey is the greatest leadoff hitter ever and might be the best major league player of the last 40 years. He made it on the first ballot.

Who's missing? The usual suspects: Andre Dawson, Bert Blyeleven, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, and Alan Trammell. Dawson was as dominant in the NL as Rice was in the AL. However, stat geeks are stuck on his .323 OBP. Blyleven had 60 shutouts, over 3000 Ks, and 287 wins. What does it take? Smith was the all-time leading save guy until recently. Goose and Sutter are in, why not Smith? (Maybe it's the Garvey homer). Morris won 254 games and was dominant in big games. His 3.90 ERA is keeping him out. The ERA went up dramatically as he got older and hitters began looking like Female Soviet Olympians. Trammell is overshadowed by Yount and Ripken.