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Watch 2016 Baseball Hall Of Fame Induction Live Stream: Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Piazza To Receive Game’s Highest Honor

By Jonathan Vankin
Published on: 20:41 PST, Jul 23, 2016

The 2016 Major League Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony is finally here, and the two newest Hall of Famers will give the biggest speeches of their lives on Sunday as the festivities will stream live online from Cooperstown, New York, site of the Baseball Hall of Fame since its the first-ever induction ceremony in 1939.

The first players to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, all entering that year, were Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, fastball pitcher Walter “The Big Train” Johnson, shortstop Honus Wagner and pitcher Christy Mathewson — who sadly had died 14 years earlier at age 45.

But on Sunday, July 24, Seattle Mariners all-time great Ken Griffey Jr., age 46, along with New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Mike Piazza, 47, will enter the Hall of Fame.

While Griffey, the son of Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees star Ken Griffey whose career overlapped with his son’s — the father and son were actually teammates on the Seattle Mariners in 1990 and 1991, the first of only two father-son duos to share the same dugout — was always destined to be a baseball superstar, Piazza took a very different route to the big leagues.

Watch the official Hall of Fame interview with Ken Griffey Jr. in the video below.

By virtue of being picked first overall by the Mariners in the 1987 baseball amateur draft, out of Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, Ken Griffey Jr. becomes the highest-ever draft pick to make the Hall of Fame.

But he enters the Hall side-by-side with Mike Piazza — the lowest-drafted player ever to put together a Hall of Fame career. Piazza was selected in the 62nd round of the 1988 draft with the 1,390th pick — out of 1,395 players selected that year. While it would be impractical to list all of the players picked before Piazza, not a single player selected in the 1988 first round has made the Hall of Fame, or appears likely to.

Watch the official Mike Piazza Hall of Fame interview in the following video.

Piazza was picked by Los Angeles out of the University of Miami largely because the Dodgers’ then-manager Tommy Lasorda was a friend of the Piazza family. But Piazza was not considered a serious prospect and even quit baseball early in his minor league career, only to come back, get called up to the Major Leagues toward the end of the 1992 season, win National League Rookie of the Year in 1993 — his first full season — and go on to hit more home runs than any other catcher in history.

Mike Piazza hit 396 while playing the demanding position, and another 29 as a designated hitter. He was also named an All Star 12 times in his 16-year career and took part in the postseason five times, though he played in only one World Series, in 2000 with the Mets who lost to their crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees.

Ken Griffey Jr. played in 22 Major League seasons, belting an astonishing 630 home runs, the sixth-most in Major League history. A 13-time All Star, Griffey Jr. was also the 1997 American League Most Valuable Player, but he played in only four postseasons.

In fact, not only did Ken Griffey Jr. never make it to the World Series, he never played on a team that advanced to a League Championship Series.

But Griffey set a record when the Hall of Fame balloting came around. Not only was he elected to the Hall of Fame on his first try, he collected 99.3 percent of the Baseball Writers Association of America vote, besting previous record-holder Tom Seaver who totaled 98.8 percent in 1992. Piazza was voted in on his fourth try, with 83 percent of the vote.

MORE HALL OF FAME COVERAGE FROM THE INQUISITR:

The Baseball Hall of Fame site will offer an online live stream of the 2016 induction ceremony honoring Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, 10:30 a.m. Pacific, on Sunday, July 24, from Clark Baseball Center in Cooperstown, New York. To access the Hall of Fame live stream, click on this link.

[Photo By Andrew Burton/Getty Images]

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