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ESPN provides extensive coverage of Baseball Hall Of Fame voting today

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Top portion of the ESPN.com Hall of Fame Ballot,
reflecting the votes of 17 ESPN MLB Insiders (ESPN)

Editor’s note: SportsCenter is providing comprehensive, day-long coverage of the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2014 announcement today. Pre-announcement coverage began on ESPN during the 9 a.m. ET SportsCenter and updates will continue throughout the day. In the 2 p.m. hour, Baseball Tonight’s Karl Ravech will host coverage of the announcement with 2012 Hall of Fame inductee and Baseball Tonight analyst Barry Larkin and ESPN MLB Insider and Hall of Fame voter Tim Kurkjian. Class of 2014 reaction and analysis will continue throughout the day across ESPN.

For diehard baseball fans, today should be a holiday. At 2 p.m., the National Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2014 will be announced, history will be made and media and fans alike will discuss and dissect.

The intrigue of Baseball’s Hall of Fame announcement seemingly grows each year and the voting standards for each individual journalist with a Hall of Fame vote has never been subject to so much debate and scrutiny.

In advance of today’s announcement, ESPN.com gathered 17 ESPN MLB Insiders, each with Hall of Fame vote, to submit their ballots. Eligible players needed at least 13 votes to garner 75 percent of ESPN’s total. ESPN.com then published the votes, creating an ESPN.com Hall of Fame ballot, to give fans a sense of what the Class of 2014 might look like.

“We started publishing an ESPN Hall of Fame ballot several years ago when we recognized there were a large number of voters employed here. And they don’t all vote the same way,” said David Kull, ESPN.com’s senior deputy editor, Major League Baseball. “The ESPN ballot is only a small sample size, but we felt it would provide our audience with a snapshot of how the real vote was likely to turn out.”

Voting for the Hall of Fame is conducted among the more than 500 Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) journalists, who have covered Major League Baseball for at least 10 consecutive years. They are able to vote for 10 players.

In 2013, there was no Hall of Fame inductees. The most recent inductee was ESPN Baseball Tonight analyst Barry Larkin in 2012.

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