Ichiro Suzuki snubber still unknown after BBWAA releases batch of remaining Hall of Fame votes
The singular BBWAA voter who snubbed Ichiro Suzuki for the Hall of Fame is still at large — and is likely to remain so after the organization's final release of ballots.
Each Hall of Fame ballot comes with an option for the writer's vote to be publicly released after the results are announced, though many writers announce theirs in advance. The final list arrived Tuesday, with 323 of the 394 votes (82%) made available to the public. All 323 of those voted for Suzuki.
That means the voter who cost Suzuki the status of being the second player in MLB history to be unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame (after Mariano Rivera) was one of the 71 voters who opted to remain anonymous.
The situation follows the precedent of Derek Jeter, who also missed out on unanimity by one ballot, and that one voter remains unknown five years later.
The situation is against the will of the BBWAA, which has voted in the past to make all votes public. It's the Hall of Fame that has rejected the organization's requests to do so.
Suzuki himself has spoken respectfully of his lone holdout, inviting the writer to his home for a drink and a discussion:
"I've been coming to the Hall of Fame as a player seven times, and this is my eighth time here in the Hall of Fame, and what an honor it is for me to be here as a Hall of Famer," Suzuki said. "This is a very special moment. I was able to receive many votes from the writers, and [I'm] grateful for them, but there's 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 we'll have a good chat."
Suzuki made Cooperstown's Class of 2025 in his first year of eligibility. He will be joined by fellow first-balloter CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner, who got in on his 10th and final year on the ballot. Dave Parker and Dick Allen also made the class through the Classic Baseball Committee vote. Allen's enshrinement will be posthumous.
Why would someone not vote for Ichiro Suzuki in the Hall of Fame?
Even though only one player has ever been unanimously voted to the Hall of Fame, it's a measure of the respect Suzuki cultivated during his lengthy career that news of his single snub was met with widespread outrage.
Most of the speculation about the vote is simply wondering why. It used to be that no player was ever expected to be unanimous, simply because it was accepted that some voters refused to vote for players on their first ballot because no player — not Babe Ruth, not Willie Mays, not Rickey Henderson — had ever been unanimous. Rivera's election changed that.
That leaves behind a few remaining possibilities for why Suzuki didn't get someone's vote:
Legitimately believing Suzuki isn't a Hall of Famer: It would be a difficult argument to make, but maybe there really is someone who doesn't think a .311 batting average, 3,000 hits, 10 All-Star nods, 10 Gold Gloves, an MVP and a decorated career in Japan don't warranted a spot in Cooperstown. The smallest of small-Hall voters.
Playing the "he doesn't need my vote" game: Because the BBWAA and Hall of Fame limit voters to checking off a maximum of 10 players on their ballot, it's conceivable that someone looked at Suzuki and thought they could vote for 10 other players they believe to be deserving while leaving off a player who was clearly going to make the Hall no matter how they voted.
A legitimate mistake: This theory was advanced by MLB.com's Mike Petriello last week. Humans are fallible, and it's entirely possible that someone thought they had checked off Suzuki but didn't. That exact scenario actually happened when players were asked to fill out their own ballots, as one player left Suzuki off but didn't realize he had done so until he was asked.
Wanting to watch the world burn, or whatever: Maybe someone out there just really, really doesn't like Suzuki or wants to make a weird point about ... something? We could speculate for days, but let's just say that personal reasons could be at play as well.
We'll probably never know who didn't vote for Suzuki, and therefore, we'll probably never know the reason. It doesn't really matter in the long run, but no one likes an unsolved case going cold.
