Mike Piazza

Baseball's Hall of Fame will open its doors to two of the most impactful hitters in recent memory when Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza enter the Cooperstown, New York, shrine Sunday.

The New York Mets announced Monday that longtime catcher Mike Piazza will have his No. 31 jersey retired by the franchise on July 30.  

When you think Ken Griffey Jr., the first picture that pops into your mind is of the precocious young star who took the game by storm in Seattle. When it comes to Mike Piazza, it's hard not to settle on him leading the New York Mets to a Subway Series showdown against the Yankees.  

Mike Piazza, the best offensive catcher in baseball history, isn't in the Hall of Fame. And nobody can really explain why.

Yes, you will hear phrases like "stain of the steroid era" and "cloud of suspicion." But these are the facts: Piazza was never suspended for performance-enhancing drug use. His name did not appear in the Mitchell Report, and it hasn't surfaced in any subsequent PED revelation.

If you think Mike Piazza is worthy of Cooperstown, you're not alone. For the third year in a row, he drew votes from the majority of the Hall of Fame voters.

…But not quite enough to actually get into the Hall of Fame.

During his 16 years in the major leagues, Mike Piazza compiled a career batting average of .308 with 427 homes runs.

Piazza, who was the 1,390th overall draft pick for the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 1988, batted .300 or better for nine consecutive years between 1993 and 2001. He also had nine seasons with 30 or more home runs, and his 1997 season, where he batted .362 with 40 home runs and 124 RBI, was arguably the greatest single offensive season by any catcher in history.

If you’re looking for a unique piece of baseball history—or collecting evidence of the anger issues caused by rampant steroid usage—you missed out on a gem.

The 2013 MLB Hall of Fame class has been all over the news lately.

The announcement comes Wednesday, Jan. 9., and this year marks the first time that the some of the game's greatest but also most controversial players—Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, and Curt Schilling—are eligible to be elected.

MLB Network has brought in everybody and their mother to give their two cents on who should be elected and how the era should be evaluated based on the prevalence of performance enhancing drugs.

In part three of this 13-part series of the greatest Mets of all time, we move on to position players, beginning with catchers.

Although they have always been overshadowed by the Bronx Bombers, the Mets have possessed their fair share of baseball's greatest, especially in recent time. The Mets offense struggled during most of the 1960s until it all of a sudden became clutch in 1969 when they won their first World Series. The offense was better, but still inconsistent during the 1970s. When the Mets won, they were hitting, but during the latter years in which they were a losing team, the hitting was not the same. In the 1980s, the Mets were consistently hitting well, probably their best offensive decade.