Jim Bunning Marquee Hall of Fame 1996

He struck out 2,855 batters and walked exactly 1,000, finishing 224-184 with a 3.27 earned run average across seventeen seasons. He led the American League in strikeouts in 1959 and 1960 and the National League in 1967, when he had 253 with six shutouts and a 2.29 earned run average against a record of 17-15.

The no-hitter came at Fenway Park on July 20, 1958, a 3-0 win. The perfect game came on Father's Day, June 21, 1964, at Shea Stadium, a 6-0 win over the Mets. That Philadelphia club finished 92-70, one game behind St. Louis. He won 20 games once, in 1957, and exactly 19 in four other seasons.

The writers left him out for fifteen ballots. In 1988 he came four votes short, with 317 of 427 against the 321 he needed, and the Veterans Committee elected him in 1996 instead. By then he had gone into politics in Kentucky, and he later represented the state in the United States Senate.