Maddux and Glavine on Top in Hall of Fame Exit Polling
One year after writers failed to elect any players to the Baseball Hall of Fame, four candidates are polling strongly as voters make their selections public.
Through Tuesday morning, the website baseballthinkfactory.com had collected 149 full ballots - over a quarter of the electorate, based on last year - and found that, within that sample, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas and Craig Biggio had all cleared the 75 percent threshold needed for election.
Results will be announced Wednesday, with the induction ceremony in July in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Mike Piazza was just under the line, at 71.1 percent. Others with more than half the vote were Jeff Bagwell (62.4), Jack Morris (59.1) and Tim Raines (57.7). Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, decorated stars with ties to steroids, fared little better than they did last season, when they made their debut on the ballot with less than 38 percent apiece. Bonds has 43.0 percent so far, and Clemens 42.3 percent.
Maddux has been named on all of the 149 ballots the website has tabulated; no candidate has ever been unanimously elected by the writers. Glavine (96.6) and Thomas (92.6) also seem to be safe bets for election on their first try, with Biggio, in his second appearance, likely to be close, at 79.9 percent.
The results, of course, represent only the portion of voters who have chosen to reveal their choices. The Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers' Association of America do not publish each voter's ballot or reveal the names of the voters.
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