Gary Sheffield had his hopes up this time around even if he knew it was a longshot. The Baseball Hall of Fame selection process was never too kind to Sheffield, rendering him uninterested for most of the past 10 years, but maybe, just maybe, he would earn enough votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to reach Cooperstown in his 10th and final year on the ballot.
Ultimately, he received 63.9% of the votes with 75% needed for induction, the result of what he called a “flawed system” that has left him frustrated.
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“That’s where I get confused because anybody that ever watched me on a day-to-day basis, when you play for eight different teams, I thought all of my relationships were great with reporters,” Sheffield said on “The Bret Boone Podcast” on Tuesday. “I never walked away from an interview during the good times or the bad times. I always stood there until the last one was asked.
“That means I allowed you to do your job and whether I liked the question or not, I had a good relationship with a lot of reporters, and that’s why I was surprised I didn’t get voted in because you know, that tells me that you can laugh in my face but stab me in the back. That’s how I felt. There’s no other way to look at it. Every place I’ve been I performed.”
Sheffield put together a standout career over 22 seasons (1998-2009), three of which were spent with the New York Yankees and the final with the New York Mets. He was one of the most feared hitters of his generation, accumulating a .292 average (2,689 hits), 509 home runs, 1,676 RBI and a .907 OPS (140 OPS+).
His career also carried an asterisk, however, that many reporters have not looked past. The former outfielder was one of 89 players named in the Mitchell Report over performance-enhancing drugs, though he was never suspended for PEDs. Sheffield’s link, he said, came when he was working out with Barry Bonds in the winter of 2001 and he used cream to a wound that broke open and was bleeding. He insists he didn’t know it was a steroid.
“It’s a flawed system based on guys not watching you on a day-to-day basis,” Sheffield said on the podcast, via Audacy. “Because if they did there’s no way they could look at you with a straight face and say this guy’s better than this guy and his numbers mean more than his numbers. Just from that standpoint alone, it’s biased and a lot of it is politics and a lot of other things when you look at it.
“For me, there’s no one way that is going to fix this problem but I can tell you that reporters are human beings, and the fact that they can tell you that they’re not biased, I don’t believe that, whoever believes that is believing a fool because I just know for a fact that they are biased and they do what they want to do and how they want to do it.”
Hall of Fame voters can select up to 10 candidates for Cooperstown, and a player can remain on the ballot as long as he receives at least 5% of the vote.
Sheffield’s remaining hope is via the Era Committee, formerly known as the Veterans Committee, for the 2026 class. According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame website, the committee has elected 115 major leaguers to Cooperstown.
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