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Craig Biggio Reacts To Hall Of Fame Vote Like A Champ

This year’s vote for the baseball Hall of Fame, already infamous for not including any players for the first time since 1996, couldn’t get Craig Biggio down. The longtime Astros second baseman appeared on the ballot for the first time in 2013 and led the unfortunate pack with 68.2 percent of the vote. As for the remaining 6.8 percent he needed? Just a matter of doing his homework.

Biggio also goes into how he received a call from a radio station in New York in the one-hour time frame the Hall of Fame told him he could expect a call confirming he made it in, which I imagine is the worst possible thing that could happen in that hour. Poor Craig.

It shouldn’t have been all that surprising that Biggio received the highest vote total this year, now knowing what we know about how the writers voted. Biggio was a perennial contact hitting threat (he had over 3,000 hits!) in an era marked by the longball and marred by the speculation that everyone who could hit the longball, did so with the help of PEDs. In a vacuum, you’d be crazy to predict Biggio would lead a field including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, but alas, that world doesn’t exist.

Like the class act he is, Biggio added some courteous, blunt, wisdom:

“I think it’s kind of unfair, but it’s the reality of the era we played in. Obviously, some guys are guilty and other guys aren’t. It’s painful for the ones that weren’t, and hopefully this situation will all pass and move on and we’ll have something possibly good to talk about maybe next year.”

This guy’s gotta get in next year, at least so the whole Houston Astros fabase doesn’t get together and drink a Texas-sized vat of the Kool-Aid together after their first year in the American League.

[via Big League Stew, Getty Images]

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