The ballots for the fifth class of the Pro Tour Hall of Fame have gone out and 2009 is shaping up to be an interesting year as many people see this year’s crop of pros as a potential “catch-up” season for a handful of players like Steve OMS, Chris Pikula, Justin Gary, Scott Johns, William Jensen, Mark Justice, Mike Long, and a host of others.  Antoine Ruel and Kamiel Cornelissen are the only two people new to the ballot with numbers that leap off the page so there is clearly room for someone from year’s past to make a move. Here are all the players on this year’s ballot (which includes players still eligible from previous ballots).

2009 Hall of Fame Candidates
Ryuuichi Arita
Jose Barbero
Chris Benafel
Marco Blume
David Brucker
Franck Canu
Tiago Chan
Patrick Chapin
Daniel Clegg
Kamiel Cornelissen
Jeff Cunningham
Brian Davis
Antonino De Rosa
Eric Froehlich
Osamu Fujita
Justin Gary
Gerardo Godinez Estrada
Mike Hron
Masami Ibamoto
Tsuyoshi Ikeda
Itaru Ishida
William Jensen
Scott Johns
Craig Jones
Mattias Jorstedt
Mark Justice
Frank Karsten
Mattias Kettil
Brian Kibler
Masashiro Kuroda
Nicolas Labarre
Matt Linde
Raffaele Lo Moro
Michael Long
Pierre Malherbaud
Casey McCarrel
Patrick Mello
Eivind Nitter
Jin Okamoto
Daniel O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
Wessel Oomens
Rickard Osterberg
Diego Ostrovich
Jamie Parke
Brock Parker
Chris Pikula
David Price
Michael Pustilnik
Neil Reeves
Carlos Romão
Antoine Ruel
Brian Selden
Alex Shvartsman
Bram Snepvangers
Ben Stark
Helmut Summersberger
Mike Thompson
Jens Thorén
Tom van de Logt
Tomi Walamies
David Williams

You can find the year-by-year breakdown of when players became eligible by clicking here. This page also shows you which players have fallen off the ballot. (By the way if you haven’t been paying attention to Kazuya Mitamura and Sebastian Thaler you are missing out on the only two players currently eligible for the 2015 class of the Pro Tour Hall of Fame. The players coming onto the ballot in 2009 are:

Jose Barbero
Tiago Chan
Kamiel Cornelissen
Jeff Cunningham
Brian Davis
Antonino De Rosa
Eric Froehlich
Mike Hron
Frank Karsten
Mattias Kettil
Rickard Osterberg
Diego Ostrovich
Antoine Ruel
Ben Stark
Helmut Summersberger
Jens Thorén

Most importantly, for those of you playing along at home, are the stats for each player which includes the number of Top 8s at both PT and GP competition, lifetime Pro Points, and a couple of different ways to look at the overall finishes of each player. Hall of Fame voters, such as Mike and myself, get to vote for up to five players this year. I will be sure to post my ballot to the site when I finally decide what to do. In the meanwhile you can see what Randy is mulling over for his ballot on this post to his excellent blog.

I am looking forward to any and all feedback about this year’s ballot which is due at the end of this month.