Fred McGriff Marquee Hall of Fame 2023

Nineteen seasons produced a .284 average, 2,490 hits, 1,550 runs batted in and 493 home runs, the same total as Lou Gehrig. He led the American League with 36 home runs for Toronto in 1989 and the National League with 35 for San Diego in 1992. He was an All-Star five times and the 1994 game's most valuable player.

He hit 30 or more home runs in a season for five different clubs, which only Gary Sheffield has also done. The 1994 strike stopped him at 34 in 113 games. Atlanta traded for him at the 1993 deadline and won the division that year and the World Series in 1995, with him at first base.

The writers put him on ten ballots and never got him past 169 votes of 425. Steroid-era arithmetic had made a career of 30-homer seasons look ordinary. The Contemporary Baseball Era Committee elected him in 2023 with all sixteen votes, nineteen years after his last game. He was called the Crime Dog, after a cartoon dog in public-service ads.