Ichiro Suzuki is worth celebrating, unanimous Hall of Fame induction or not

Ichiro Suzuki won election to the Hall of Fame Tuesday, but very little of the discussion involved why he made it. The media focus was largely on castigating the one voter who ensured he wouldn’t be unanimous.

This focus on unanimity is a recent construct. For most of the Hall’s voting history — which dates to 1936 — nobody cared about an honoree’s vote percentage as long as it exceeded the required 75 percent threshold.

It wasn’t until the Hall began allowing voters to make their ballots public, and really until Ken Griffey’s 2016 election with 99.3 percent of the vote, that media began getting up in arms at the idea that somebody didn’t vote for a particular candidate.

The profusion of making ballots public has certainly created a public pressure toward unanimity. When Griffey was elected, a high portion of  voters self-identified and Griffey went in with the highest percentage of votes in history. The previous high, 98.8 percent, had been set by Tom Seaver in 1992.

Yet Suzuki on Tuesday became the third player just since Griffey to get in with at least 99 percent. Mariano Rivera was elected unanimously in 2019, and Derek Jeter also missed unanimity by a single vote in 2020.

Obviously, it is logically impossible to make an argument against the election of Suzuki, Rivera, Jeter, Griffey and a bunch of others.

Yet even so, the reality is that with the sole exception of Rivera in 2019, the writers group has never been unanimous. Nor, until recently, was there an assumption that they ought to  be.

That’s a striking statement considering that there are now nearly 350 inductees, most of them chosen by the writers.

In the face of that historical reality, our collective focus on identifying the one anonymous person who said no distracts from — in the case of Suzuki — the reasons why 393 said ‘hell yes.’

It has always been thus. In 1979, when Willie Mays was first on the ballot, he got 409 votes, well above the minimum required for election., Yet 23 voters decided that Mays was not a worthy Hall of Famer. Hank Aaron’s 1982 election was ratified by 406 voters, but denied by nine. And nobody especially cared, at least not to the degree that we see online today.

There are many who think Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time. But in 1966, 20 voters did not choose him. Cal Ripken set the all-time endurance record, but failed to persuade eight voters in 2007.

This history of non-unanimity dates back to the very first election. In 1936, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson constituted the first class. Here is how that first vote broke down.

1936 Hall of Fame election

The striking thing about this list isn’t that four people failed to acknowledge Cobb’s greatness or that 11 voters didn’t choose Ruth, but that nobody viewed those actions as a slight. At the time, all of the attention fell on their status as honorees and members of the inaugural class… as it should always be.

Ty Cobb never said, “If I find out the names of those four idiots who didn’t vote for me, I’ll string 'em up." (although I have to admit it would have been cool if he did).

This is a moment to celebrate greatness. A luminary and titan of the sport's history. Fans should focus their efforts on appreciate what Ichiro brought to the table, rather than what the one writer who failed to vote for him does not.

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