And the winners are…
These players are all on the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot this year, and they’ve all made it into my own personal Hall of Fame too. Players can take their place in my HOF for various reasons, some of them nefarious. We’ll learn how they fare in the sanctioned voting in a couple of weeks, but here’s how they rate on my ballot.
Curtis Granderson
Alum of the University of Illinois-Chicago, a baseball powerhouse. A business major, he attended his last two years of school while playing professional ball for the Tigers. Love this. In.
King Félix Hernández
I think he just might make the real Hall of Fame, but he’s in mine regardless. Am I biased because I live in Seattle? Maybe; he’s a legend here. Did I love seeing the left field seats full of yellow King Felix shirts when he pitched? I sure did; it was a beautiful sea of gold, raptly following his every move. A giant field of bright yellow sunflowers, turning toward their sun. King Felix and his fans perfectly sum up one of my favorite things about baseball: the collective experience, doing something together, making memories that live on. King Felix was into every game, and so were his fans. Feel that love! Do I love that King Felix gets a custom throne every time he returns to town? YES!
Sometimes it’s got a royal red velvet seat; for the pre-season fan event in 2024, the whole thing was a deep golden hue, befitting his regal status. During the first game of the 2024 season, against our own Red Sox, he welcomed the first-ever winner of the Salmon Run with a huge hug at home plate.
Photo by Joe Nicholson/MLB Photos via Getty Images
Sweet. And weird, and hilarious too. Would the Salmon Run have taken off the way it did without King Felix’s imprimatur of approval? Mmm, I’m not certain about that, but it sure helped! I love his loyalty to his adopted hometown, and his silliness too.
As for stats, he hit a freakin’ grand slam. He pitched a freakin’ immaculate inning. He did those two things within six days of each other. He pitched a perfect game. His career WAR of 49.7 comes in on the low end of current Hall of Fame pitchers, and that hurts his overall case. But it’s higher than many others who were voted in, Sandy Koufax included.
Long live the King! In.
Adam Jones
I love Yankee killers, and I absolutely swoon over ones with specific weapons in their arsenal. Jones’s particular success over the Yankees? The very strategic deployment of triples during the 2008 season. On July 28, Jones hit a triple and a grand slam. He was the second, and final, visiting player ever to do that in the same game at Yankee Stadium. The Orioles slaughtered the Yanks 13-4 that day. On September 21, Jones hit what would be the final triple at the old Yankee Stadium, so screw them, right?
As Red Sox fans, it’s difficult to think about Adam Jones without also thinking about the awful, racist words which were hurled at him (along with objects like bags of peanuts) at Fenway Park, particularly during the 2017 season. CC Sabathia, another player up for election to the Hall of Fame right now, also spoke up, saying that Boston was the worst place to play, and that all 62 Black players in the league that season knew it. That is shameful. I hate that this is part of our reputation, our legacy, as Sox fans. My stomach still twists when I think about this. Adam Jones is in.
Ian Kinsler
One of my best friends mailed me an off-brand 2018 Red Sox World Championship T-shirt, out here in Seattle, from Bob’s (RIP). Not many things are more New England than that! The shirt featured a select group of star players from the 2018 World Series-winning team. Besides the obvious choices (Devers, Betts, Bogaerts, Martinez, and Sale) you might think that Nathan Eovaldi, Craig Kimbrel, David Price, Christian Vasquez, Brock Holt, or Andrew Benintendi might appear on the shirt as the final honoree. No, they’re not there, but Kinsler is. Huh?
But never mind! There is a special place in my heart for each and every member of that team because they helped me deal, day by day, with going through a divorce, which quite literally spanned the entire season, from mid-April to watching the final out of the World Series with my divorce attorney, another Massachusetts transplant in Seattle. (That almost seems like a show I’d watch, except that I lived it.)
Kinsler’s in!
Russell Martin
I don’t like that he was a Yankee, but he’s in my Hall of Fame on the basis of having the longest English-language name I’ve ever seen: Russell Nathan Coltrane Jeanson Martin, Jr.
Dustin Pedroia
I could write a novel here. Oh, what could have been, in terms of the real Hall of Fame. I write this with sadness because he unfairly went down on a dirty play. But what really matters is what he really did, and that was huge. Pedroia, my boy-a. He’s in the Hall of Fame in my heart.
Fernando Rodney
I’m a sucker for some flash and a good story. I always loved the Rodney’s bow-and-arrow pose and his off-kilter hat because why not? I’m going to skip over a lot of good stuff, including a run with the Mariners (it’s a Mariners-rich ballot this year, which is fun!) in order to get to this part: in 2019, Rodney worked his way up from a minor league contract to first-time World Series champion at the age of 42. Dreams do come true. He has continued to play professionally for several more teams, mostly in Mexico, and is currently rostered with the Hamilton Cardinals, a professional team in Canada. The man is 47 years old. In, in, in.
CC Sabathia
He was a Yankee, but he had my respect. He was always there, which was tough on Red Sox fans (and don’t think we didn’t want some of that). During 13 different seasons, he pitched at least 180 innings. His career 116 ERA+ is better than Nolan Ryan’s. He’s 10th in MLB history among left-handed starters with 61.8 bWAR. He reached 3,000 strikeouts and 250 victories in his final season; only 15 pitchers have ever done that. Ever. When you look at lefties, it’s down to only three. There’s much more to say, but I’ll close with his honesty about his alcoholism and sobriety. By speaking out in various venues (a book, an article in The Players Tribune, tons of interviews, social media) about his own illness and struggle, he’s made it easier for others to tackle it. I respect that. In.
Ichiro Suzuki
I’ve written about Ichiro before, and how he brought two strangers who didn’t speak each other’s language’s together one morning in a small museum in Venice. In fact, they only knew one word in common: Ichiro. But that one word was enough. This meet-cute never went any farther, unless you count the fact that I think about it every so often because it really touched my heart. For me, one of the most powerful things about sports is how it can bring people together. Ichiro embodies that. And of course he’s an all-timer on the baseball field. In.
Manny Ramirez
We can all roll our eyes about Manny but has anyone else, ever, done this? And by this, I mean high-fiving a Red Sox fan over the outfield wall, in a visiting park, while fielding the ball, then throwing in to get the runner at first. That’s a double play. In.
Alex Rodriguez
I still have the newspaper cut-out of Jason Varitek shoving his glove in A-Rod’s face in 2004, and that’s still how I think of him. Out.
Photo by J Rogash/WireImage
Andy Pettitte
He’s in my Hall of Fame for the weaselly way he tried to justify taking HGH by saying he was only trying to “promote faster healing” because he “felt an obligation” to return to his team after an injury. I don’t think he has the stats to get into the real Hall, and I’m not saying this whole steroid question isn’t a huge gray area, I’m simply saying that’s how I feel. Out.
Chase Utley
One of my least favorite players of all time. I want him to fall off the ballot so I don’t have to think about him again. Out.
Torii Hunter
I voted Torii into my Hall of Fame last year and he gets another Yes from me this year too, since he’s still on the [real] ballot. Not only did I truly enjoy him as a player, but I wrote this last year and still feel the same way, so here you go again:
The visual with Hunter’s legs pointing towards the heavens, headstand-style, was the cherry on top of David Ortiz’s grand slam on October 13, 2013. The slam dug the Sox out of a 5-1 deficit in the ALDS on their way to an eventual and much-needed Sox World Series victory.
I’ve elected the cop too. In and in.
Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images