Jan. 07--Sammy Sosa is still alive on the Hall of Fame ballot, albeit barely.
Sosa wound up with seven percent of the votes by 440 members of the BBWAA, beating the five percent mark needed to stay on the ballot.
Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Piazza were the only players selected, with Griffey getting a record 99.3 percent of the votes. Jeff Bagwell was at 71.6 percent, finishing third, while Tim Raines closed in at 69.8 percent.
Sosa, the former Cubs slugger, had been trending downward in his first three appearances on the Hall ballot, registering 12.5 percent of the vote in 2013, 7.2 percent in 2014 and only 6.6 percent last year.
A website tracking public Hall of Fame votes Wednesday morning had Sosa on 8.8 percent of 181 ballots.
Players who receive a vote on less than 5 percent of the ballots cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America are removed from the next year's ballot.
Sosa ranks eighth on the all-time home-run list with 609 and 28th in RBIs with 1,667.
With so much ground to make up -- candidates need 75 percent of the vote to be elected -- Sosa likely has no chance of making it into the Hall by the writers' vote and is merely fighting for survival at this point. His only shot at Cooperstown appears to be via a veterans committee vote years from now, as happened with longtime Cubs third baseman Ron Santo.
Sosa's old friend Mark McGwire, who ranks 10th all time with 583 home runs, finished with 12.8 percent in his 10th and final year on the ballot. McGwire eventually admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and returned to baseball as a hitting coach; last month, the Padres hired him as their bench coach. Sosa has been out of the game since his retirement after the 2007 season.
Accoring to the Hall of Fame vote tracker, Griffey, Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines were in line for election this year. But as it turned out, only two made it. Three writers did not vote for Griffey.Raines had 69.8 percent in his second-to-last year on the ballot.
Home-run king Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, also suspected PED users, finished at 44.3 and 45.2 percent, respectively in their fourth year on the ballot.
