Wednesday night, the 2017 Hall of Fame class will be announced during a live MLB Network broadcast. Among the 19 players on the ballot for the first time this year is Ivan Rodriguez, longtime catcher with the Rangers.
The numbers says Rodriguez is a slam dunk Hall of Famer. He's on the very short list of the best backstops in history. The only thing standing in the way of induction is performance-enhancing drug suspicion. Jose Canseco outed Rodriguez as a PED user in his book Juiced, though Rodriguez never did fail a test. We'll see how the voting shakes out Wednesday.
In a piece at the Players' Tribune, Rodriguez wrote his upbringing and how he wound up signing with the Rangers. His father made him a catcher because of his strong arm, and after a scouting showcase in Puerto Rico in 1988, Rodriguez signed his first pro contract on the truck of a car in the parking lot.
Texas called Rodriguez up to the big leagues in 1991, when he was still only 19 years old. He says he was called up on the day he was supposed to get married, so he had to postpone his wedding. From Rodriguez's piece at the Players' Tribune:
I was 19 when I got called up. The Rangers were playing in Chicago at the time. I never expected to be in the big leagues so soon. I should've been happy. But it was actually a little depressing. Get this: The day they called me up I was supposed to get married on the field down in Tulsa where I was playing Double A ball. The night before, we had done some rehearsals with all the players out on the field, and it went great.
Then the next day my manager at the time, Bobby Jones, calls me into his office and says, "Hey kid, I think we have a problem." I didn't know what was going on. "You're getting called up, so you have two choices. You can either get married here tonight, or you're going to Chicago with the Rangers. But you can't do both. If you're headed to the big leagues, we're going to have to delay the wedding."
So I went to Chicago.
Geez, talk about a bittersweet day. Hooray, I'm going to the big leagues and achieving my childhood dream! But wait, I have to postpone my wedding? Talk about bad timing.
Everything worked out for Rodriguez, of course. He and his fiancee delayed their wedding until the following spring, and Rodriguez never did go back to the minors. His Hall of Fame caliber career started the day he was supposed to get married. Could have been worse.
As of this writing, Rodriguez has appeared on 78.4 percent of the publicly available Hall of Fame ballots, according to Ryan Thobodaux's tracker. Seventy-five percent is needed for induction, so Rodriguez is right on the bubble.