Mariano Rivera made a lot of very good baseball players look very bad for a very long time. A total of 993 different hitters recorded at least one at-bat against Rivera during his 19-year major-league career with the New York Yankees. Close to two-thirds of them posted a batting average of .200 or worse against him, with nearly half failing to record a single hit off Rivera and his magical cut fastball.

For that reason and so many more, Rivera was elected into the Hall of Fame on Tuesday by the voting members of the Baseball...