Ichiro Suzuki was one of the four new members to be inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame for 2025 on Thursday. He was joined by Nippon Professional Baseball’s career saves leader, lefty Hitoki Iwase, slugging third baseman Masayuki Kakefu and umpire Hiroya Tomizawa.
Both Suzuki and Iwase were elected from the players division, with Ichiro getting 92.6 percent of the vote to become the seventh member to be inducted on the first go. Twenty-six voters cast ballots without Ichiro’s name written on them.
No player has ever been a unanimous selection in Japan, largely because the eligibility was so badly handled for most of the hall’s history. Until 2008, no former player became eligible until he had been out of uniform – even as a coach or manager – for five full years. Thus Sadaharu Oh, who stopped playing in 1980, didn’t become eligible until 1994, when he was elected on the first ballot.
This is not an indictment of those 26 voters who didn’t support Ichiro.
Ichiro was going to go in without a struggle, and there are many deserving candidates on the ballot, and for a short time I toyed with the idea of not voting for him in order to give that vote to another deserving but under-supported player.
The problem was that none of the other good candidates other than Iwase were going to get close enough to selection that one more vote might conceivably make a difference.
So, not voting for Ichiro would have been meaningless unless that vote was cast to keep someone on the ballot who might have a shot at eventual selection. Michiro Ogasawara, who in my mind is an extremely worthy candidate, got just 31 votes, including one of mine. Hiroki Kokubo got just 14, and though I don’t consider him a real good candidate, some people might see him as one and definitely in need of support to keep him on the ballot.
The closest player to miss selection in this year’s players division polling from members of the baseball media for 15 years or more, was six-time Golden Glove-winning shortstop Masahiro Kawai, who’s other principle claim to fame is his NPB record of 533 career sacrifice bunts.
Kawai was in the 14th year of eligibility and fell 51 votes shy of induction after missing by 50 votes a year ago. It would seem like he has a tough road ahead, but next year is going to be a REALLY soft one for new candidates who might soak up a lot of votes. The best player who retired in 2020 is former Dragons pitcher Kenichi Nakata, who will have a tough job even getting on the ballot.
The surprise for me was that Shinnosuke Abe got just 78 of the 262 votes needed, suggesting it’s going to be a tough slog for one of Japan’s greatest catchers. His former teammate and MLB closer Koji Uehara got 102 votes on the first try, which wasn’t a surprise. In my opinion, he’s the best pitcher on the ballot after Iwase, and I’ll probably vote for him next year if I’m allowed after my stint at the day job runs its course in a few weeks.
