Former Yankees Star Falls Short of HOF

Former New York Yankees player and manager Lou Piniella fell one vote short of election to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday night as part of the 2024 contemporary era ballot.

It’s a stinging blow to the 80-year-old, who won World Series as a player and as a manager and won more than 1,800 games as a Major League skipper.

Piniella had been on the veterans’ committee ballot twice and came within one vote of being inducted in 2018.

The only member of the ballot to earn election was manager Jim Leyland, who also had a World Series title on his resume as a manager. He received 15 of the 16 votes from the committee.

Piniella spent the bulk of his playing career with the Yankees, as he played for them from 1974-84. The Yankees acquired him via trade from Kansas City.

In 11 seasons with the Yankees he was a .295 hitter who hit 57 home runs and 417 RBI. The outfielder was part of the Yankees’ World Series teams in 1977 and 1978. The Yankees won both series.

Before New York, Piniella broke into baseball as a player with Baltimore in 1964, was the 1969 American League Rookie of the Year with Kansas City.

He remained with the Yankees after retirement as the team’s hitting coach, became the team’s manager from 1986-87 and then its general manager in 1988, before he returned to the bench to replace the fired Billy Martin. With the Yankees as a manager he was 224-193, but the Yankees failed to make the playoffs.

He found success as a manager away from New York. He led the Cincinnati Reds to the 1990 World Series title, where they swept the Oakland Athletics. He spent a decade with the Seattle Mariners, where he won three AL West titles and beat the Yankees in the 1995 Wild Card playoffs.

He spent three more seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays (2003-05) and four seasons with the Chicago Cubs (2007-10), the latter of which he led to two NL Central titles. His career managerial record was 1,835-1,713

The remaining members of the ballot were manager Davey Johnson, manager Cito Gaston, umpires Joe West and Ed Montague, along with executives Hank Peters and Bill White.