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The 2022 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot has been released by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and there are several former Texas Rangers who are on the ballot for the first time.
The most prominent of the players who are on the ballot for the first time this year are David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez. Ortiz and Rodriguez are viewed extremely differently by the baseball community at large, and I am going to be very interested in seeing how the voting plays out for the two of them.
Aside from ARod, other former Rangers who are on the ballot for the first time are Prince Fielder, Joe Nathan, A.J. Pierzynski, and Mark Teixeira. Tim Lincecum is also on the ballot for the first time, and he was a member of the Rangers, of course, though he never was on the active major league roster.
On the ballot for the tenth and final time are Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling and Sammy Sosa. The rule used to be that you could stay on the ballot for fifteen years, but the Hall, not wanting Bonds or Clemens to be voted in but also not wanting to out-and-out ban them, changed it to a ten year period.