{"id":18702,"date":"2019-01-23T00:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T00:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2019\/01\/23\/rivera-halladay-martinez-mussina-elected-to-baseballs-hall-of-fame\/"},"modified":"2019-01-23T00:10:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T00:10:00","slug":"rivera-halladay-martinez-mussina-elected-to-baseballs-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/rivera-halladay-martinez-mussina-elected-to-baseballs-hall-of-fame\/","title":{"rendered":"Rivera, Halladay, Martinez, Mussina Elected To Baseball's Hall Of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Richard Gonzales<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n <\/a><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n Enlarge this image<\/a>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

\n Former New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera poses with his Monument Park plaque in 2016, at Yankee Stadium in New York.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rich Schultz\/AP<\/p>\n

<\/b>
\n hide caption<\/b><\/b>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

toggle caption<\/b><\/b>\n <\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Rich Schultz\/AP<\/p>\n

<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Updated at 8:21 p.m. ET<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mariano Rivera, the New York Yankees’ closing pitcher who posted a record 652 saves over his 19-year career, is the first player to be unanimously selected for Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Two other pitchers, the late Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina, and slugger Edgar Martinez were also elected.<\/p>\n

Rivera received all 425 votes cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The stars all received at least 75 percent of the ballots cast. Players must be retired for five years to be eligible for the honor.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Rivera told NPR<\/a> that as he grew up in poverty in Panama, he had far different expectations from life.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to be a mechanic. So I would have saved all the money that I make to open my own shop,” he said.<\/p>\n

Roy Halladay<\/a>, who won two Cy Young Awards and made eight All-Star appearances, played for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies. Winning 203 games in his 16-year career, he was known as a workhorse, posting 67 complete games \u2014 the most in the major leagues \u2014 since 2000. He is also the third posthumous Hall of Fame inductee. Halladay died in November 2017 when he crashed the airplane he was flying into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida coast.<\/p>\n