Each of the new Hall of Famers found his own way to dominate. CC Sabathia stood for dependable durability. Ichiro Suzuki was a wizard in spikes. And whenever a reliever flings lightning bolts in the ninth, remember that the prototype was Billy Wagner.
That threesome received baseball’s highest honor on Tuesday when the writers elected them to the village of immortals in upstate New York. Sabathia, Suzuki and Wagner will be inducted in Cooperstown, N.Y., on July 27, joining Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were elected by a committee last month.
Candidates needed 75 percent of the vote to be elected, and Suzuki led the class with 393 of 394 votes for 99.75 percent. Sabathia, a fellow first-ballot selection, received 86.8 percent, with Wagner getting 82.5 percent. Carlos Beltrán was the closest runner-up, at 70.3 percent.
For Wagner, who had 422 saves and a 2.31 ERA, the announcement capped a climb that once seemed unlikely. Stuck around 10 percent in his first three years on the ballot, he rose steadily to miss by just five votes last January, setting up an excruciating finish.
“The last couple of days are going to be nightmares,” Wagner, 53, said by phone last week, adding, “You just sit with a big pit in your stomach right now, wondering where this thing’s going to go.”
It went his way, at last, with Wagner exceeding the 75 percent mark by 29 votes. His arrival gives Cooperstown its first left-handed closer, after eight righties: Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Trevor Hoffman, Mariano Rivera, Lee Smith, Bruce Sutter and Hoyt Wilhelm.
And while Wagner’s career innings total (903) is now the lowest in the Hall, his 0.998 WHIP is also the lowest among all enshrined pitchers who debuted after 1902.
Suzuki and Sabathia wasted no time – and with Suzuki, the first Japanese-born player in the Hall, the only question was how close to 100 percent he would be. Now 51 years old, matching his Seattle uniform number, Suzuki was a phenomenon like no other.
The Mariners secured his rights after the 2000 season by outbidding the field with a $13.125 million posting fee to the Orix Blue Wave. A franchise bleeding superstars but still trying to win, the Mariners believed Suzuki could become the first Japanese position player to succeed in the majors. It had always been his dream.
“I feel like I’m in a movie,” Suzuki said the day he signed, in November 2000 – and what a thriller it was.
From the very start, Suzuki was one of a kind. He held his bat regally, like a fencer in an en garde pose, engaging the pitcher with a tug of his sleeve. His slashing swing propelled him from the box, and he excelled at hitting and fielding with unrivaled consistency.
In each of his first 10 seasons, all with Seattle, Suzuki collected at least 200 hits and a Gold Glove award. Nobody else has ever done this in any stretch of five seasons. His debut was a sensation: he led the 2001 Mariners to 116 victories, tying the major league record, while winning a batting title (.350) and leading the majors in hits (242) and stolen bases (56).
Suzuki was named American League Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year for those efforts, and in 2004 he added another batting title, at .372. In doing so, he broke George Sisler’s single-season record for hits with 262.
Sisler had set the record, with 257, for the St. Louis Browns in 1920. When Suzuki traveled to St. Louis for the All-Star Game, in 2009, he visited Sisler’s gravesite, a gesture emblematic of his reverence for baseball history.
He has traveled to the Hall of Fame at least seven times, drawn by boundless curiosity that has not abated since his appearance for the Mariners at a season-opening series in Tokyo in 2019. Now a special assistant to the team’s chairman, Suzuki continues to dress for spring training and every Seattle home game, working out and preparing as if he were still on the roster.
In all – after hitting .353 with 1,278 hits in Japan – Suzuki batted .311 with 3,089 hits in 19 major-league seasons, including two and a half with the Yankees and three with the Miami Marlins. He played with Sabathia and Beltrán on the Yankees in 2014, though it was not a strong year for any of them.
Sabathia, especially, seemed to be nearing the end. He missed most of that season with a degenerative condition in the cartilage in his right knee, which absorbed the impact of his 6-foot-6, 300-pound frame. In 99 starts across four seasons, 2013 to 2016, Sabathia posted a 4.54 ERA.
“My right knee felt like Rice Krispies,” he wrote in his memoir, “Till The End,” with Chris Smith. “But it wouldn’t just snap, crackle and pop every time I moved it, it would grind and crunch, too. It hurt all the time, even when I was standing still.”
By 2017, though, several factors had converged to give Sabathia a final flourish that landed him in Cooperstown. He adapted to his diminished velocity by mastering a cutter with help of Andy Pettitte; he was sober after treatment for alcoholism in 2015; and, reinvigorated by a cast of younger players, he felt free of the burden of having to pitch deep into every start.
In his final three seasons, Sabathia’s ERA improved by more than half a run. He was a postseason stalwart, too, with a 3.13 ERA in seven appearances. In the last of those, in the 2019 ALCS against Houston, Sabathia literally pitched until his shoulder popped out of its socket.
That kind of unrelenting effort for the team was a hallmark of Sabathia’s career, which started with seven and a half seasons in Cleveland. He won the AL Cy Young Award in 2007, going 19-7 with a 3.21 ERA while pitching the most innings in the majors.
He did it again the next season, when the Indians traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers. With a huge free-agent payday at stake, Sabathia made his final four starts on short rest, lifting the Brewers to their first postseason appearance in 26 years. After the Yankees rewarded him (seven years, $161 million), Sabathia immediately propelled them to a title in 2009.
“The minute he walked into our clubhouse, it felt like we were a championship team,” Rodriguez, then the Yankees’ third baseman, said last summer. “He was exactly what we needed. He’s someone who makes everybody better, but also makes everybody happier. And that’s a rare combination.”
Sabathia, 44, finished 251-161 with 3,093 strikeouts. And while his career ERA, 3.74, is now the highest of any left-hander in Cooperstown, only two other lefties, Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson, can match him in both victories and strikeouts.
All 15 pitchers with 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts are in the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, who peaked at 65.2 percent on the writers’ ballot and was not elected by an eras committee in 2023. Clemens – like Bonds, who has also never been elected – has strong ties to performance-enhancing drugs, though never served a suspension.
Two stars who did, Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, remain in Cooperstown purgatory, easily surpassing the five percent threshold to remain on the ballot, but still far from the necessary 75 percent. Rodriguez, who has six more years of eligibility, collected 37.1 percent of the vote while Ramirez, who has one year left, got 34.3 percent.
Beltrán and Andruw Jones will be next year’s top returning vote-getters. Jones, a center fielder who won 10 Gold Gloves for the Atlanta Braves and hit 434 career homers, received 66.2 percent support on his eighth try. He and Beltrán could be elected next year, when the most prominent new candidates will be Ryan Braun and Cole Hamels.
Others who will remain on the ballot include Chase Utley, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Andy Pettitte, Felix Hernandez, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Omar Vizquel, Dustin Pedroia, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez, David Wright and Torii Hunter. All of them collected at least five percent of the vote, including first-timers Hernandez (20.6 percent) and Pedroia (11.9 percent).
(Top photo of Ichiro Suzuki in 2022: Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
