"Rickey likes it here in Seattle. Seattle's been good to Rickey."

- Rickey Henderson, following his signing with the Mariners in 2000, after being asked how he felt about being in Seattle.


The results of the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballots will be released on Monday, January 12th. This year's ballot contains the new candidates of Jay Bell, David Cone, Ron Gant, Mark Grace, Rickey Henderson, Jesse Orosco, Dan Plesac, Greg Vaughn (really?), Mo Vaughn and Matt Williams. While thirteen candidates return from the 2008 ballot, including Tommy John and Jim Rice. Should John or Rice not achieve the 75% minimum, they will not be eligible to appear on any future ballots and would have to rely on the Veterans Committee for election.

Of the first timers on the ballot, Rickey Henderson is a sure-fire, first ballot guarantee, while the rest will struggle to make it though the first year without being cut (although I think that Mark Grace will get more support than the other first timers).

The Home Run Derby website has a tracker of ballots that have been made public by BBWAA writers. If the chart on this site is any indication, we can surmise a few things about this year's HOF voting:

1) Rickey Henderson will not be a unanimous selection because some writer left him off his ballot while including Matt Williams, Bert Blyleven, Andrew Dawson, Tommy John, Don Mattingly, Tim Raines, Jim Rice and Alan Trammell.

Most of the players on that list were excellent ball players but they simply weren't in Rickey's class...and I say that as someone that doesn't consider himself a big Rickey fan. Somebody believing that those players deserve to be in the HOF isn't really a problem. The problem is somebody believing that those players deserve to be in the HOF ahead of Rickey Henderson.

Facts are facts, Rickey is the greatest lead off hitter of all-time.

Rickey may be eccentric, but Rickey's clearly the best.

UPDATED 1/9: The Home Run Derby has a post indicating that the writer that left Rickey off his ballot had come out and said that he simply made an error in omitting Henderson. At least that helps shed a little light as to why Rickey was left off that ballot.

2) Jim Rice is going to either just make it in or just miss out; he's brutally close. As are Bert Blyleven and Andrew Dawson, both of whom are sitting at the same 68.42% as Rice in the tracker of known ballots.

3) Mark McGwire looks like he has lost support this season. No member of the 500 Home Run Club has ever failed to gain admission to the Hall of Fame but it looks like that standard is going to be put to the test with McGwire. The obvious barrier to his election is the stigma of the steroids era, but even without that issue you could make an argument that McGwire has the weakest credentials of any member of the 500 HR Club. His home run numbers will always be eye-popping (well, his career number and his four year run from 1996 to 1999), but the rest of his resume isn't what you would call dominating.

4) All the other first timers are going to be cutting it very close to remain on the ballot for next year.

As a related side note: I've got a post in the hopper looking at the 500 Home Run Club and McGwire's place in it, along with some analysis as to whether the notions of power from twenty years ago are still an appropriate way to determine the game's greatest players.