Former Kings Park baseball star Craig Biggio will have to wait another year for entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Biggio, who collected 3,000 hits and took the Houston Astros to the postseason six times over a 20-year career, was the leading vote-getter on a ballot of 37 candidates. But for the first time since 1996, no one was elected to Cooperstown, the Hall of Fame announced Wednesday.
Biggio garnered 388 votes (or 68.2 percent) from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. But enshrinement requires 75 percent of the vote.
Biggio, 47, was one of 24 first-time candidates along with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. The latter had been linked to performance enhancing drugs and are symbols of baseball’s steroids era.
Biggio was a four-time Gold Glover at second base who also played two other premium defensive positions: Catcher at the start of and centerfielder to end his career. He had 3,060 hits, 1,175 RBI, 414 steals, 291 homers and hit .281.
Mets catcher Mike Piazza, another first-time candidate, was fourth with 57.8 percent of the vote while Clemens (37.6) and Bonds (36.2) fell well short.
Bridgehampton native and Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, inducted in 1989, is Long Island's lone Hall of Famer.
