The National Baseball Hall of Fame inducted two legends of its grand game Sunday afternoon in Cooperstown, N.Y., as Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza become the newest members of one of the most iconic groups in the world.
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Griffey, who played 13 of his 22 seasons with Seattle, will be enshrined in Cooperstown as a Mariner, the first in the Hall of Fame.
He was especially emotional while thanking his dad and former Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Sr.
He followed catcher Mike Piazza to the podium as a crowd of more than 50,000 – believed to be the second largest ever for induction weekend – soaked in the scene in blazing heat.
The pair was elected to the Hall of Fame in January, with Griffey receiving a record 99.3 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America in his first year on the ballot.
But he enters the Hall side-by-side with Mike Piazza – the lowest-drafted player ever to put together a Hall of Fame career.
Ken Griffey Jr. played in 22 Major League seasons, belting an astonishing 630 home runs, the sixth-most in Major League history.
Piazza was picked by Los Angeles out of the University of Miami largely because the Dodgers’ then-manager Tommy Lasorda was a friend of the Piazza family.
Griffey also was the American League MVP in 1997, drove in at least 100 runs in eight seasons, and won seven Silver Slugger Awards.
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Piazza hit right from the start in the majors, setting a rookie record for catchers with 35 home runs in 1993. He made it in on his fourth try. The ceremony can be watched online at MLB.com, BaseballHall.org or the MLB AtBat app.
