CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner are headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame and the pair have announced the logos that will appear on the caps on their plaques.
Sabathia will enter the Hall of Fame as a member of the New York Yankees, the team he helped to a World Series title in 2009. Wagner will go in as a Houston Astro, the club he came up with and pitched for during the first nine years of his career.
Ichiro Suzuki (Seattle Mariners) and Dave Parker (Pittsburgh Pirates) also made their decisions official. The late Dick Allen, who died in 2020, will be inducted as a member of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Sabathia is the only player of the group to enter that Hall of Fame with a team other than the one he came up with. The southpaw, who won 251 games in his career, came up with the Cleveland Indians in 2001 before a deadline trade sent him to the Milwaukee Brewers in 2008. After pitching every three days down the stretch to help lead the Brewers to the playoffs, he signed with the Yankees that offseason.
The Yankees won the 2009 World Series and Sabathia stayed in town for 10 more seasons, earning three All-Star nods and winning 21 games in 2010. His 1,700 strikeouts in pinstripes rank fourth on the franchise’s all-time list.
Each player’s Hall of Fame plaque will be revealed prior to their speech at the induction ceremony on July 27.
Other Astros Hall of Famers welcome Billy Wagner
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Wagner will be the third player to wear an Astros logo on his cap in the Hall of Fame, following Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio. Both played alongside Wagner.
Biggio, who was an Astro for his entire 20-year career, said those Houston teams owed some of their success to Wagner.
“We had a lot of success over the years together and you’re not having the success we had without a Billy Wagner,” Biggio said in January, per MLB.com’s Brian McTaggert. “When you turn the ball over to a guy like that in the ninth inning, it’s game, set, match usually. For us to have that at the back end of a team that was very successful for a long period of time, totally deserving of him getting his credit today.”
Bagwell, meanwhile, reflected on having his two teammates beside him in the Hall of Fame with Astros logos on their caps.
“I’m ecstatic,” Bagwell said. “It’s so cool, the fact that the three of us played together and especially played together in some of our primes. That was an amazing feat, and to wear an Astros cap would be the ultimate thing to have the three of us together all in the same place.”
