Lone Writer Who Didn’t Back Ichiro for Hall of Fame May Never Be Known

An online site that tracks Baseball Hall of Fame voting doesn’t expect the lone voter who did not check Ichiro Suzuki on his ballot to ever come forward.Mr. Suzuki earned a vote on all but one of the 394 ballots cast by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America to easily make the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He will be enshrined at Cooperstown on July 27 along with a starting pitcher, CC Sabathia, and a reliever, Billy Wagner.With 394 ballots submitted, candidates needed to receive 296 votes to be elected. Mr. Sabathia, who also was in his first year of eligibility, received 342 votes, while Mr. Wagner in his tenth year of eligibility received 325.Mr. Suzuki’s final tally is reminiscent of when a New York Yankees shortstop, Derek Jeter, fell one vote short (396 of 397) of being a unanimous selection for the 2020 Hall of Fame class. Ken Griffey Jr. missed being unanimously selected by three votes in 2016. Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera in 2019 was the only player to receive a unanimous selection.“I don’t think we’ll ever know who the one person was,” Adam Dore of the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker told The New York Sun. “It will be just like we had in the Jeter and Griffey years. Nobody ever came forward for those cases.”During a press conference on Thursday, Mr. Suzuki acknowledged the writer who didn’t vote for him, though he or she remains unknown. “I was able to receive many votes from the writers, and grateful for them,” Mr. Suzuki said through an interpreter. “But there was one writer that I wasn’t able to get a vote from. I would like to invite him over to my house, and we’ll have a drink together and have a good chat.”Mr. Suzuki, the first Asian player to be voted to the Hall of Fame, was a ten-time All-Star who spent 14 years over two stints with the Seattle Mariners and also played for the Yankees and the Miami Marlins. Including his professional years in Japan, he played 28 professional seasons. He was the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year in 2001 when he joined the Mariners. His 262 hits during the 2004 season still stands as the Major League record. He finished with 3,089 career hits and a .311 batting average.Those eligible to cast a Hall of Fame ballot can vote for up to ten players, which means Mr. Suzuki, a ten-time Gold Glove winner, wasn’t good enough to make one person’s top ten list.“It’s hard to say what reason the voter may have had,” Mr. Dore said. “Hopefully, it wasn’t some sort of personal grudge or anything. We have seen a number of voters over the years cast ‘strategic ballots’ and this is certainly a possible reason here.” An example of a strategic ballot, Mr. Dore said, is someone using a vote on a candidate who might not reach the 5 percent necessary to remain on the ballot for the next year. “If a voter wanted to help those candidates, he or she could have theorized that a non-vote for Ichiro wouldn’t hurt since he was the one candidate essentially guaranteed election anyway,” Mr. Dore said. “I don’t know if that is the reason in this case. But it is possible.”The BBWAA, which conducts the voting among those with at least ten consecutive years of membership, approached the Hall of Fame in 2016 about making all the ballots public, but the Hall declined. Voters are allowed to make their ballots public if they wish and many do so with posts on social media or by giving clearance to the BBWAA to do so.Full disclaimer: I have been a Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2008 and have disclosed my ballot publicly since 2017. And, yes, I voted for Messrs. Jeter and Suzuki.“I thought Ichiro was the best bet to be an unanimous selection,” Mr. Dore, a 28-year-old longtime New York Mets fan, said. “We don’t know if it’s the same voter who had no Jeter or somebody different. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out, unfortunately.”Mr. Dore and his partners, Ryan Thibodaux and Anthony Calamis, have been operating the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker for nearly a decade on a volunteer basis. They’ve gathered 225 ballots for this year’s election as of Thursday. The BBWAA will publish ballots with voters’ approval in the coming weeks.

Lone Writer Who Didn’t Back Ichiro for Hall of Fame May Never Be Known

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