Houston Astros: The Peculiar Hall Of Fame Path For Jeff Bagwell

The wait is finally over Houston Astros fans.

The wait is finally over Houston Astros fans.

Year after year of disappoint and shock, one of our own has finally been recognized for achieving something that nearly 300 people have ever done.

Yes, my friends, Jeff Bagwell is finally getting that call to head out to Cooperstown!

Finally, two our most influential players — he and Craig Biggio — over the past two decades are now both in the Hall.

Think about it — No. 5 and No. 7 are synonymous with each other — things just don’t seem right if they’re not associated.

The days I saw this man do great things as a kid within the vast bowels of our beloved, sometimes begotten Astrodome have all have come to fruition.

The brawny former first baseman was able to gather a whopping 86.2 percent of the votes cast by eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

He also joins Tim Raines and Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez as the men who will represent the class of 2017.

Out of the 442 votes cast, 381 of them went to Bagwell, which constitutes that the people in power of making such a incredible honor happen have spoken.

We’ve been waiting seven years for this — and after each January, we all be encouraged as the amount of ballots that piled up in favor of the red-headed slugger started to pile up.

It simply wasn’t his time.

As most of us live by the old adage of “good things happen to those who wait,” this certainly rung true for this occasion.

There was a ton of talented players that deserved the call a lot earlier than he — including Biggio — but we all knew that eventually he was going to get there.

It certainly makes that red-letter date of Aug. 30, 1990 — the moment the face of the franchise changed with just a simple trade with the Boston Red Sox — a moment that we’ll heralded for eons to come.

The Red Sox apparently didn’t believe in who was a lanky, first-base prospect but the Houston Astros did and he spent the next 15 years proving why he was worth a damn in America’s past time as well as building his brand.

The price of giving up Larry Andersen was well worth it in exchange for a trailblazer that was so influential to the game we love.

The unique batting stance, his ability to lead and rally his teammates and always finding a way to make a play are all reasons why the four-time All-Star will always be one of my favorites.

In fact, here’s a interesting stat from one of my favorite Twitter follows, @Bags4HoF, had churned out:

As you can see above, that’s not an easy feat to complete.

We all knew that he was on fire for so long but as Father Time meandered into the middle of the last decade and it also came for Bagwell as a multitude of injuries started to pile up.

It happens to everyone and it was just only a matter of time where the decline was to begin.

But nobody can take away — particularly the MLB MVP Award he won in 1994 — the accolades earned and the milestones that he reached along the way.

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Is his path to the Hall of Fame peculiar?

Absolutely — did anybody honestly think that he’d be where he is now back in 1989?

I doubt there would be many but he did what guys like him do — shut up the naysayers and continue to prove why he belonged.

And now that he has received his invitation to the most exclusive clubs known to man, he can hold his head up high and bask himself in the credible realm of honor.

We’re all damn proud of you Bags.

Oh, and I’ve got start working on making my way up to upstate New York this summer so I could partake in the festivities of his enshrinement scheduled to occur July 28-31!

Bagwell, 48, finished his career batting .297 with 2,314 hits, 1,529 ribbies, 449 homers and a sterling .948 OPS through 2,150 games, spending all 15 of his seasons in H-Town.

Go Houston Astros.