Updated at 8:21 p.m. ET
Mariano Rivera, the New York Yankees' closing pitcher who posted a record 652 saves over his 19-year career, is the first player to be unanimously selected for Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame.
Two other pitchers, the late Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina, and slugger Edgar Martinez were also elected.
Rivera received all 425 votes cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The stars all received at least 75 percent of the ballots cast. Players must be retired for five years to be eligible for the honor.
In 2014, Rivera told NPR that as he grew up in poverty in Panama, he had far different expectations from life.
"I wanted to be a mechanic. So I would have saved all the money that I make to open my own shop," he said.
Roy Halladay, who won two Cy Young Awards and made eight All-Star appearances, played for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies. Winning 203 games in his 16-year career, he was known as a workhorse, posting 67 complete games — the most in the major leagues — since 2000. He is also the third posthumous Hall of Fame inductee. Halladay died in November 2017 when he crashed the airplane he was flying into the Gulf of Mexico near the Florida coast.
Edgar Martinez was a .312 hitter in his 18 years with the Seattle Mariners. He hit 309 home runs, won two batting titles and was a seven-time All-Star. Martinez is also one of three inductees — the others were Frank Thomas and Harold Baines — who played most of their careers as designated hitters.
Mike Mussina played 18 years for the New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles, winning 270 games, striking out 2,813 batters and posting a career 3.68 earned run average. He was a five-time All-Star who won at least 11 games every year from 1992 to 2008. He also won seven Gold Gloves — an award for the top fielding position players.
As baseball fans earlier in the day awaited the news of which past stars would make the cut and have his name officially ranked with the game's immortals, ESPN reminded readers that there had never been a unanimous selection to the Hall.
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, two stars tainted by the widespread reaction against performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, both fell short of the 75 percent vote threshold. Bonds received 59.1 percent and Clemens 59.5 percent. Both were in their seventh year of eligibility.
Rivera, Halladay, Martinez and Mussina will be officially inducted into the Hall of Fame at a ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., this summer.
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