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Only one player won the writers' election this year for the Baseball Hall of Fame

Scott Rolen, pictured in 2012, has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Gene J. Puskar
/
AP
Scott Rolen, pictured in 2012, has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Scott Rolen, a seven-time All-Star third baseman, was the lone player elected by baseball writers to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in this year's voting.

Rolen, who had a 17-season career playing with the Philadelphia, St. Louis, Toronto and Cincinnati teams between 1996 and 2012, was named on 76.3% of ballots by voters from the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the Hall of Fame said Tuesday.

It was Rolen's sixth year on the ballot. Players need to be named on at least 75% of votes cast to be elected. None of the 27 other players listed on this year's ballot cleared the hurdle for election.

"There was actually never a point in my life that I thought I was going to be a Hall of Fame baseball player," Rolen, 47, told Reuters. "Never did I think I was going to get drafted. Never think [I'd] play in the big leagues. Never going to be whatever."

The induction ceremony will take place in July in Cooperstown, N.Y. Rolen will be inducted along with Fred McGriff, who was elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee in December.

Last summer, the Hall added seven new members: Bud Fowler, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva, Buck O'Neil and David"Big Papi"Ortiz.

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James Doubek is an associate editor and reporter for NPR. He frequently covers breaking news for NPR.org and NPR's hourly newscast. In 2018, he reported feature stories for NPR's business desk on topics including electric scooters, cryptocurrency, and small business owners who lost out when Amazon made a deal with Apple.