There was no surprise when it was announced that Ichiro Suzuki would enter the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. What was a surprise, though, was that one baseball writer didn’t think Ichiro deserved first-ballot consideration.
The 10-time All-Star and two-time batting champion recorded 99.7 percent of the voting total because, astonishingly, one person did not vote for him. Now, MLB fans were justifiably in disbelief because there wasn’t a reasonable argument against Ichiro’s resume. But instead of leading the hunt for that rogue voter, Ichiro took a different approach.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday for his Hall of Fame press conference, the former Mariners legend said via his interpreter that he would love to invite that voter over for a chat at his house.
Ichiro says he would like to have the one writer that didn’t vote him into the HOF over to his house to “have a drink together and have a good chat” pic.twitter.com/Cbi18mCMKh
Ichiro said that he would like to have a drink with that voter, which was a gracious approach to someone who honestly deserves to have their voting privileges revoked.
To this day, Mariano Rivera is the lone player to reach the Hall of Fame through a unanimous vote. Ichiro surely deserved to be the first position player to have that honor.
But really, you have to love that response from Ichiro. It was all class.
Ichiro Suzuki is unquestionably one of the best baseball players ever to grace this planet.
His 3,089 hits compiled throughout his career ranks as 25th on Major League Baseball’s all-time list. He was a 10-time All-Star and a 10-time Gold Glove winner through his 19-year career. He won the league’s MVP as a rookie and is one of two players in MLB history to do so.
And he did all that after starting his MLB career at 27 years old, guys. He’d already compiled 1,278 hits as a pro in Japan.
Yet, somehow, this dude isn’t a unanimous first-ballot Hall of Famer. That’s unfathomable to me.
Ultimately, I guess it doesn’t really matter. Ichiro is a Hall of Famer and we should all be good with that. That’s the point of all of this.
But that’s not enough. Considering his contributions to the game, this man should be living with Mariano Rivera unanimously. Period. The fact that he’s not speaks to how incredibly silly the Baseball Hall of Fame voting process is in the first place.
The fact that Mariano Rivera is the only unanimous selection for the Hall of Fame is ridiculous. He deserves it, obviously. But, like Ichiro, plenty of others do, too. But one voter out of the 393 Baseball Writers Association of America decided he didn’t deserve it today.
The part that makes this all the more infuriating is that we’ll likely never know who this is thanks to the BBWAA.
Members of the association voted in 2016 to make the ballots public, but the BBWAA’s board of directors rejected the proposal. That’s cowardice if you ask me. But, hey. What do I know? Instead, in a total cop-out, the association allowed voters to make their ballots public if they choose to do so.
Some do it. Some don’t. We almost certainly won’t get one here.
Whoever left Ichiro deserves all of the ire coming their way, but they’ll never get it. It’s just like the lone voter who left Derek Jeter off of their ballot five years ago. We still don’t know who did that and that’s Derek freakin’ Jeter, guys. If we’re not finding out who did it for him, then we’re certainly not finding out for Ichiro.
But, to whoever did this, make no mistake about it. You are unserious. Please take your job more seriously moving forward.
Jimmy Butler is making it awkward
This Jimmy Butler business in Miami hasn’t gone as far as it possibly can yet, but the Heat star is pushing the envelope as hard as he can before things go too far.
“It’s all thanks to Caleb Williams, a quarterback Johnson couldn’t resist attaching himself to for the foreseeable future. An uber-talented player who made joining one of the NFL’s premier laughingstocks so enticing in itself. A poised leader whose locker Johnson literally had his kids pose in front of for a photo during his initial tour at Bears headquarters.”
Johnson’s offensive genius, alone, won’t be enough to get Chicago out of the rut it’s currently in. But this is certainly a fantastic start to revamping a franchise that hasn’t tasted anything close to success in years.
Can’t wait to see how this unfurls.
Quick hits: The rest of the HOF … Landing spots for Britney Griner … and more
By virtually every metric, Ichiro Suzuki is one of the best hitters to ever play baseball. He’s the kind of player who should require not as much as a second thought before checking his name on a Hall of Fame ballot.
Yet, for one voter, Ichiro wasn’t deserving of Hall of Fame induction in 2025.
On Tuesday, the former MVP, 10-time All-Star and two-time batting champion was named among the three-player class for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was joined by CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner. And while there was no surprise as to Ichiro’s induction, there total vote tally was a shock.
Ichiro fell one vote short of a unanimous first-ballot induction.
Now, baseball writers have been notorious with how they approach the Hall of Fame voting for years. Many have refused to consider any player with ties to PEDs, leaving stars like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens out of Cooperstown. And some hold a near-impossible standard for first-ballot candidates. In the voting history, only Mariano Rivera received a unanimous vote.
But really, Ichiro should have been right there with him. There is no argument whatsoever against his candidacy.
Baseball fans were furious to see that Ichiro fell short of unanimity and wanted that writer to come forward.
Ego at its finest. Ichiro misses becoming the first position player to be a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame by ONE vote. Give me a freakin break.
The 2025 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees were officially unveiled and we will have a new class of stars enshrined in Cooperstown.
After votes were collected by the BBWAA, we have learned which players will have their plaques on the walls of the beloved museum in upstate New York.
To no surprise, Ichiro Suzuki headlined the class with the most votes of any player this year. The 2001 AL Rookie of the Year and MVP was a 10-time MLB All-Star before he retired in 2019. Earlier this month, he also became the first MLB player to enter the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ichiro — who received all but one vote — headlined the three-player class. Here are the full results from this year’s Hall of Fame voting tally:
Ichiro Suzuki turned 50 years old last month. And just because he retired back in 2019, don’t think that he has stopped playing baseball. If we’re being honest, Ichiro might never stop playing baseball.
Right now, the MLB legend is back in Japan to work with high school baseball players, and he seems to be having a blast. A couple weeks ago, he shattered a classroom window with a home run, which drew a hilarious reaction. And now, he’s taking on an entire high school girls baseball team because of course he is.
Footage from an exhibition game this week hit social media, and we were treated to Ichiro going nine innings on 116 pitches against a high school girls team. He had nine strikeouts, threw around 86 mph with the fastball and actually got out three times at the plate (he was 2 for 5).
50-year-old Ichiro Suzuki pitched a complete-game shutout on 116 pitches against a high school girls team today. He had nine strikeouts, topping out at 86 MPH
Sure, Ichiro might be a 50-year-old retiree, but he’s still Ichiro. The pitchers who got Ichiro out will have bragging rights for life.
This wasn’t the first time Ichiro had pitched against a high school girls team in Japan — he did so in 2021 with 17 strikeouts. But this latest footage understandably had MLB fans making jokes about the matchup.
Ichiro Suzuki is objectively one of the best pure hitters MLB has ever seen. He has 10 200-hit seasons, and he’s a member of the 3,000-hit club. But at age 50, he did something he had never pulled off during his big-league career.
He shattered a window with a home run.
Back in Japan, Ichiro took some batting practice in front of a local baseball team, and one unsuspecting person ended up getting themselves a souvenir through their apartment or classroom window.
Obviously, that’s super impressive. The man is 50 years old and still hitting monster home runs. But his reaction was probably the best part. The moment that ball shattered the glass, he looked like a kid who had just thrown a baseball through their parents’ window.
Hey, someone should have thought about that before building apartments/schools and a baseball field so close to one another. That was bound to happen.
But, obviously, 21 years is a long time. That means the last time the Mariners made the playoffs was in 2001. Someone who hadn’t even been born yet might be able to legally drink a beer in that time span.
So we thought it’d be fun to take a look back and see what the world was like the last time the Mariners made the playoffs. Below is that list. And it’s almost certainly going to make you feel old, but it’ll also be a fun trip down memory lane.
Between Japan and the United States, Ichiro Suzuki was a professional baseball player for almost three decades. Widely regarded for his longevity, dependability and for being one of the best pure hitters of all time — Suzuki is a living baseball legend.
Suzuki spent most of his career playing with the Mariners. In his time in the Pacific Northwest, Suzuki became a Seattle sports icon and one of the best all-around superstars in MLB history. After playing his last few games in his native Japan, Suzuki’s storybook career ended roughly three years ago.
On Saturday evening, before a game against the Guardians, the Mariners paid tribute to Suzuki by inducting him into the team’s Hall of Fame. But that wasn’t all they did on “Ichiro Weekend.”
They had a custom-made ball with a special “Ichiro” icon:
And when it came time for Suzuki to stand in front of a podium and say a few appreciative remarks about his new honor — the atmosphere in Seattle was positively electric:
Wow. Listen to the roar of that crowd before Suzuki even has a chance to speak. What’s up, Seattle, indeed!
Some have surmised that Suzuki’s induction into the Mariners Hall of Fame is a likely precursor to a place in Cooperstown. He isn’t eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame until 2025. When talking about the story of baseball, you can’t tell it without Suzuki.
