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The Pride of Maple Ridge

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Yes yes yes:

Walker received 76.6 per cent of votes from members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America during his 10th and final year on the Hall of Fame ballot. Players need at least 75 per cent of the votes to get into the Hall of Fame and Walker received only 54.6 per cent last year.

Walker will be officially inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 26, along with Derek Jeter, who was also voted in on Tuesday with 99.7 per cent of the votes. The results of voting were announced at 6 p.m.

The 53-year-old Walker, who is from Maple Ridge, B.C., becomes only the second Canadian Hall of Famer, joining pitcher Ferguson Jenkins of Chatham, Ont., who was inducted in 1991.

I’m glad that he made it despite Peter Gammons dropping him from the ballot in his last year of eligibility despite not using all 10 slots on this year’s, saving the diplomatic incident that would have arisen when the Canadian government inevitability sent special forces to abduct and fire him out of a cannon into the St. Lawrence River.

I’m glad that Walk, a truly great player who was also incredibly fun to watch in his prime — a huge guy who was fast as hell and could throw. He was the victim of a weird overcorrection where the media went from treating guys like Vinny “The” Castilla and Dante Bichette as great players because they put up superficially great triple crown stats in Colorado to just discounting Coors performance almost entirely. But Walker really was great, one of the best dozen or so RFs to ever play the game, if not as great as the slash line he put up at Coors would indicate.

Also, one of the better shortstops of the last 25 years was inducted. Seriously, notwithstanding the excessive fawning and ridiculously undeserved Gold Gloves Jeter received, he is of course a Hall of Famer — like Walker, one of the dozen or so best players ever at his position. Whoever the one person who left him off their ballot was, on the one hand they did it for presumably dickish and rationally indefensible reasons but on the other hand they’re my hero.

And needless to say…

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