Former Atlanta Braves star pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine and retired superstar slugger Frank Thomas were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in voting announced on Wednesday.
With 75 per cent support from 571 votes cast by a media panel needed to ensure enshrinement, Maddux received 97.2 per cent while Glavine had 91.9 per cent backing and Thomas was supported by 83.7.
Craig Biggio, who had 3060 hits in 20 years with the Houston Astros, received 74.8 per cent support, missing the 429 votes he needed by only two votes, matching the smallest margin to miss out on the honour in Hall of Fame history.
Maddux and Glavine became the first initial-time eligible pitchers elected together since Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson in the inaugural 1936 class and the first regular starters from the same team's rotation to be elected to the US sporting shrine in the same year since 1946.
Maddux won 355 games, eighth best on the all-time Major League Baseball list, with a 3.16 earned-run average over 23 seasons, including 18 in which he won the Gold Glove for fielding skill.
He won four Cy Young Awards in a row as the National League's best pitcher from 1992-95 with the Braves, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego.
Glavine took two Cy Young awards and won 305 games over 22 seasons.
Thomas batted .301 with 521 home runs and 1704 runs batted in during 19 seasons with the Chicago White Sox, Toronto and Oakland.
The trio will be enshrined on July 27 at Cooperstown in New York, along with three long-time managers - Bobby Cox, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa.
That means Glavine and Maddux will receive the honour alongside Cox, their long-time manager with the Braves.
The six total enshrinees will be the most since 1971. It comes a year after the media panel voted no one into the Hall of Fame, in part as recognition of the sport's doping era, with Biggio missing out in 2013 by 39 votes.
Share
