SABR Research Collection celebrates new Baseball Hall of Fame inductees in 2021
On September 8, 2021, the Baseball Hall of Fame welcomes four new members: Derek Jeter, Ted Simmons, Larry Walker, and Marvin Miller. SABR celebrates Cooperstown’s Class of 2021 by highlighting Research Collection articles featuring the new inductees.
SABR’s BioProject provides comprehensive biographies of Jeter, Simmons, Walker, and Miller. Author Alan Cohen follows Jeter from a childhood encounter with another Hall-bound Yankee through nearly two decades of stellar play in the Bronx. Gregory Wolf explores Simmons’s spectacular offensive output, resulting in late-blooming Hall of Fame recognition. Cohen chronicles Walker’s path to becoming only the second Canadian-born player selected for Cooperstown. Bill Johnson’s new biography of Miller remembers a groundbreaking career of labor leadership.
SABR’s Games Project offers career-spanning stories for the three players in the Class of 2021, including nine new articles. Coverage of Jeter begins with a snow-delayed Opening Day in 1996, continues through his iconic “Jeter Flip” and “Mr. November” games of the 2001 postseason, late-career highlights like his 3,000th hit and final game at Yankee Stadium, and his visit to eastern Pennsylvania on a 2013 minor-league rehab assignment.
Simmons appears in a 1969 minor-league game as a “designated pinch hitter” — a test program foreshadowing baseball’s future. Subsequent articles evoke big-batting days with the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers, along with a stellar performance when those teams played in the 1982 World Series. Recast as a reserve during the twilight of his career, Simmons leads the Atlanta Braves’ “Bomb Squad,” boosting morale and contributing clutch pinch-hits.
Walker’s journey begins a long way from fame, as an undrafted teenager on a roster drawn from three different big-league farm systems, and that’s where the Games Project finds him in Utica in 1985. Later articles catch him on the upswing as a Montreal Expo, with his first career two-homer game and a clutch hit against a Canadian countryman; show him bashing baseballs around Coors Field with the Colorado Rockies; and conclude his career with the St. Louis Cardinals in his only World Series appearance.
Find all published SABR biographies for Baseball Hall of Fame inductees by clicking here.
Originally published: September 1, 2021. Last Updated: September 1, 2021.