Jeter heads baseball Hall of Fame candidates
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New York (AFP) –
New York Yankees icon Derek Jeter was among 18 first-timers named on baseball's 2020 Hall of Fame ballot on Monday.
The five-time World Series champion, who retired in 2014, is widely expected to be voted into the baseball pantheon at the first attempt after a glittering 20-season career.
Other notable first-timers on the list include Jeter's former New York Yankees team-mates Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano and Bobby Abreu.
Players are eligible for voting into the Hall of Fame five years after retirement, provided they have completed 10 seasons in Major League Baseball.
More than 400 members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America cast votes, and a player must appear on 75 percent of ballots to be accepted.
Results are revealed in January.
As well as the first-time candidates, the 2020 ballot also includes several players who have been held over from previous years after failing to meet the required 75 percent threshold.
They include home-run king Barry Bonds and former Yankees and Boston Red Sox pitching ace Roger Clemens.
Both have been implicated in doping during baseball's drug-tainted era of the late 1990s, a likely reason for their failure to make the Hall of Fame.
© 2019 AFP