In The Least Shocking News Of All Time, The Coward Hall Of Fame Voter Who Didn't Vote For Ichiro Has Refused To Make His Name And Ballot Public

The coward who didn't vote for Ichiro had his chance to answer for his sins, but like we knew he would, he declined and will continue to live in the shadows. The BBWAA publicly published 321 of the 394 ballots received for the 2025 Hall of Fame class and all 321 had Ichiro's name checked off, that means the voter who didn't vote for him stays anonymous and that's a shame. Be man enough to put your face next to that empty box and tell the fans and Ichiro himself WHY you didn't think he was worthy of your vote. I think that's the least the mystery voter could do. I don't see the pros to being anonymous, especially when it comes to this. You're voting for SPORTS, it's baseball! Why are we letting these guys hide? It's not politics, it's not a life or death matter, it's baseball. No reason at all why these guys can't all have their ballots be public. If you don't want your ballot to be public, then it gets thrown out and doesn't count. You want your voice and vote to count, put your name and face next to it. That's how it should have been. 

Like Jeff wrote above, accountability matters, especially in a situation like this. Messing with history matters, taking something sacred away from Ichiro and his family matters. I'm sure he doesn't really care, but this is a big baseball story, people care about this a lot. This voter knows he messed up, I'm sure he feels the pressure of keeping Ichiro out of the 100% club, folks just want to know why. Same with Jeter, I obviously think he's arguably the most overrated player we've ever seen, but why was that one voter aligned with me? Did he think he didn't belong in the hall? Or did he just not want him to be unanimous? Big different there, if you are too embarrassed to show your face than your vote shouldn't count. These voters for YEARS have chastised and berated players who mess up on the field, guys who make a game losing play, if they didn't talk to the media then they would be ROASTED. So what happens when the tables are turned and we want to hear from this specific media person? Crickets. Has a chance to show his face and state his reasoning, crickets. Cowardly, it's the cowards way out. 

So this baseball writer will sit there tonight drinking his Diet Coke, watching a Bruce Springsteen concert on YouTube from 1997 and he'll be nodding along all while knowing that he didn't have to face the music as to why he did what he did. Ignore the fact that if Ichiro struck out with the bases loaded to lose a game and didn't talk to reporters, that he'd be ripped apart and called every name in the book by this reporter, this guy doesn't have to do that. He should have to, but he chose not to. They need better and improved voting process when it comes to baseball, it's a broken process and everyone in the sport knows it. 

Voting for something like this is such an honor, you work countless hours to get to this point, and the fact that they allow you to rename anonymous for it is crazy. Should absolutely be mandatory to put your name next to the ballot you voted on, if that isn't kosher with you then we'll catch ya later. There are thousands of sports writers who would kill for the chance to vote for Cooperstown and would have no problem stating their cases for guys going into the hall. It just sucks that this guy had a chance to tell everyone why, and he took the cowards way out. That's all we'll have on this though, it's done and over. He won't come out and we'll joke about it during Ichiro's speech during the summer. Just super disappointing that we'll never get to the bottom of this. Time for things to change around HOF voting though, I think that much is clear.