A major league baseball Hall of Fame voter is proposing that the Baseball Writer's Association of America adjusts its rules to allow Yankees legends Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of fame together.
With Jeter announcing this week this will be his last season and Rivera hanging up his cleats a year earlier, the earliest either would be eligible for enshrinement would be 2019 given MLB's rule that players be out of the game at least five years before they are eligible for such distinction.
If Poughkeepsie Journal columnist Dan Pietrafesa had his way the sport would now bend it's rule to allow both stars to stroll into immortality side by side. "It's the right thing to do," Pietrafesa writes. "Jeter and Rivera came up through the New York Yankees organization together, won five World Series titles together with class on and off the field, and belong together on the stage in Cooperstown delivering their induction speeches on the same July day in 2019."
Pietrafesa points out similar adjustments have been made before, in particular involving fellow Yankees greats Lou Gehrig was elected in a special vote at the 1939 Winter Meetings because it was uncertain how much longer he would live and Joe DiMaggio was elected to the Hall in 1955, despite retiring just four-years before in 1951.
"Like Gehrig and DiMaggio, Jeter and Rivera had their moments as they became a part of the Yankee lore," Pietrafesa adds.
Jeter is the only player to bang out 3,000 hits in a Yankee uniform. He also sports a career .312 career batting average and can finish his career among the top-5 players all-time in hits with 201 hits this season.
Rivera, meanwhile, ranks as MLB's all-time saves leader with 652, and has the lowest career all-time earned run average for pitchers hurling at least 1,000 innings at 2.21.
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