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22 years ago, a Sports Illustrated cover hinted to this year's Hall of Fame class

By Matt Monagan

Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday night. It was Piazza's fourth year on the ballot and Griffey's first, so it would've been tough to predict that they'd be entering Cooperstown in the same class. But back in 1994, Sports Illustrated delivered a very subtle foreshadowing of what would come to be:



Piazza was just coming off a Rookie of the Year-winning season in which he hit 35 homers, drove in 112 runs and slashed at a .318/.370/.561 rate. Griffey tallied 45 homers, 109 RBIs and a .309/.408/.617 line -- finishing 5th in the AL MVP vote.
So, was it just coincidence or did SI know what would happen 22 years later? As NJ.com's Joe Giglio points out, there was some Cooperstown talk in the actual story. A quote from then-Tigers GM Joe Klein: 
"It's in place for these players to dominate the game over the next 10 to 15 years. You might be talking about a whole group of players that have Hall of Fame credentials."
WE SHOULD'VE KNOWN.

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