Shall we play a game?
Yes?
Okay, take a look at these two numbers and decide for yourself what is significant about them.
4367 Vs. 4256
To ensure you're playing along, I'm going to skip a few lines before I give you the answer for dramatic effect. Keep scrolling until I tell you to stop.
Hello!
No peeking!
I'm serious, no peeking!
I miss Bob Uecker
I'm hungry, want to grab dinner?
Have you seen the TV version of Ted? Funny show.
You may now stop scrolling.
So, what do those two numbers have in common?
The number on the left represents the number of combined hits Ichiro Suzuki got in his career, and the number on the right represents the total number of hits Pete Rose got in his career.
We'll revisit the significance of these number later on, but for now, I must question why one singular sensation, one singular person with the privilege of casting of vote for the prestigious honor of baseball immortality, chose to rob Ichiro Suzuki of unanimous selection to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Whenever there is a vote taken, there always seems to be one person who feels the need to separate themselves from the pack. Why do they dare to be different? Do they want notoriety? Do they have something personal against the person being voted on? Who knows?
Yesterday, someone (as of this writing it remains unknown), chose to take away Ichiro Suzuki's opportunity to become the first hitter in baseball history to be unanimously voted into the Hall of Fame.
That's right, 99.7% of the electorate determined Ichiro Suzuki was worthy of enshrinement to baseball's holy grail. But one person, ONE person, one coward decided Ichiro Suzuki was unworthy of induction and refuses to come forward to tell us why.
Maybe that person will eventually be transparent enough to come forward and tell us why they chose not to vote for Ichiro, but for now, all we can do is speculate.
Well, this is my blog, and this is my forum, so allow me to provide three possible reasons as to why someone denied Ichiro Suzuki unanimous induction into baseball's hall of fame.
1. They felt the need to penalize Ichiro for his career in Japan: True, Ichiro came to the major leagues as a fully developed product. He was already a seven-time all-star and three-time MVP in Japan. Had he not been a productive player in America, he would have been a bigger bomb than Howard the Duck. Still, it's important to note that our National Baseball Hall of Fame does not necessarily restrict itself to those who played in the major leagues, as several Negro League players have been enshrined. Even if we focused solely on Ichiro's Major League accomplishments, he's still a ten-time all-star, ten-time Gold Glove Winner, two-time batting champion, and he holds the record for most hits in a season. I'd say those are hall of fame numbers? Wouldn't you?
2. He played in the major leagues until he was 45: The only legitimate argument towards this theory is that Ichiro may have hung on too long to ensure he got to the magical 3000 hit plateau. Even so, all the aforementioned accomplishments that I listed in the last paragraph were accomplished before Ichiro turned 36. Thus, it's pretty safe to assume that he would have waltzed into the Hall of Fame had he hung it up then
3. Pete Rose's legacy: I know this theory is out of left field, but hear me out. Remember those numbers we talked about earlier? Ichiro has 111 total hits more than Pete Rose, the all-American hit king. The man who got more hits in the major leagues than anyone else. A person who has not yet been elected into the Hall of Fame for various transgressions against baseball. This was also the first vote that took place since Rose's death four month ago. All Rose ever wanted late in life was the immortality he never got. Perhaps the person who voted against Ichiro chose to honor Rose by silently protesting the indignity of Rose not being enshrined by voting against someone who was by all accounts a total shoo-in.
So, why was Ichiro Suzuki denied unanimous selection into the National Baseball Hall of Fame?
The world may never know.
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