Fred McGriff, Scott Rolen inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame - ESPN

Baseball's two newest Hall of Famers, Fred McGriff and Scott Rolen, joined the ranks of the immortals on Sunday in the same understated manner that marked both players' long careers.

McGriff and Rolen were inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday during a ceremony on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York, when two players who often shunned the limelight were tasked with speaking to a throng of fans in attendance as well as a national television audience on the MLB Network. Both responded with eloquent speeches.

«This is baseball's biggest honor,» McGriff said. «This is like icing on the cake. You see, my goal was simply to make it to the big leagues.»

Now McGriff has made the biggest league of all after his long wait for enshrinement finally ended on Sunday. Passed over during his 10-year stay on the BBWAA ballot, McGriff was unanimously voted in at the winter meetings in December by one of the Hall's era-based veterans committees.

McGriff finished with 493 career homers, likely missing the ballyhooed 500-dinger club because of the 1994-1995 work stoppage that cost him parts of two seasons when he was producing the best numbers of his career. His speech recounted his childhood in the Tampa, Florida, area, not far from the spring training complex of the Big Red Machine-era Cincinnati Reds teams.

His words built on a theme of continuing to work in pursuit of your dreams, an ethic McGriff embodied from the time he was cut from his 10th grade team.

«I was on a mission to improve as a hitter,» McGriff said. «It was time to work. That meant becoming a student of the game, reading books, watching videos about hitting. Charlie Lau's 'The Art of Hitting .300' became my go-to book. It