MLB Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Yesterday

I did not watch the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony live yesterday, but I have seen video clips of many of the speeches.  I very much enjoyed seeing Ichiro’s presentation.  There was a time about 20 years ago where I said here that going to see the Mariners play was a treat because it allowed me to see Ichiro’s focus on the game and  his “routine” to participate in that game.  Ichiro is not the best player I ever saw, but I found him to be the most compelling player to watch even when he was in the dugout.

You can go to baseball-reference.com and see every nuance of Ichiro’s stats; I will not dwell on all of them here, but Ichiro is a well-deserved first round inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  He did not arrive in Seattle until he was 27 years old, but he brought with him a résumé that included 7 consecutive batting titles from the Japanese League.  Surely, that was not going to carry over into MLB; Ichiro was too skinny and too much of a “slap-hitter” to survive in big league waters.  Boy, was that reasoning off kilter…

Ichiro is the first Asian player to make it to the Hall of Fame; he will not be the last.  But as others join him there, don’t let some of Ichiro’s accomplishments dim in your memory.

• In 2004, Ichiro recorded 262 base hits.  That is a bit more than 3 hits every 2 games for the duration of the regular season.  That  year, he broke George Sisler’s record of 257 hits in a single season – – a record that had stood for 84 years.
• In his rookie year, Ichiro won the Rookie of the Year Award AND he won the MVP Award too.  Only one other player, Fred Lynn, has ever done that.

Listening to some of Ichiro’s remarks yesterday made me think that one day Shohei Ohtani will be in the same position addressing an audience.  And that got me thinking about active players who could make the Hall of Fame ceremony somewhere down the line.  Here is an off-the-top-of my-head list; I did not go through team rosters to compile this list, so there are surely omissions that would be corrected if I did more homework here.  These seven players look like shoo-ins to me:

1. Freddie Freeman
2. Bryce Harper
3. Aaron Judge
4. Clayton Kershaw
5. Shohei Ohtani
6. Max Scherzer
7. Mike Trout

Here are five players who came to mind who could make it to the Hall but are not lead-pipe-cinches:

1. Ronald Acuna, Jr. – – if he can avoid more injuries
2. Jose Altuve
3. Mookie Betts
4. Manny Machado
5. Chris Sale

Switching gears but staying with baseball … Last week, Kyle Schwarber got the 1000^th hit of his career and it was a home run.  In his career at that time, he had hit 319 home runs which means his “home run percentage” relative to his base hits is .319.  That seemed to be awfully high, so I decided to check up on the “home run kings” of baseball to see what their “home run percentages” were:

• Henry Aaron = .200
• Barry Bonds = .260
• Ken Griffey, Jr. = .227
• Willie Mays = .200
• Albert Pujols = .208
• Babe Ruth = .249
• Mike Schmidt = .245
• Jim Thome = .263

Finally, since today has been about baseball, I’ll close with this from “Mr. Baseball” – – Bob Uecker:

“The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………