Baseball Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch announced on Tuesday from Cooperstown, New York, live on MLB Network, the newest members of the shrine’s Class of 2025—Ichiro Suzuki, Billy Wagner, and CC Sabathia.
Sizzling baseball talk couldn’t have had better timing for the big announcement coming from the “Home of Baseball” in Central New York, as much of the east coast, including Otsego County where Cooperstown is located, is reeling from the effects of a polar vortex.
Wagner reached past the 75 percent threshold required (82.5 percent with 325 votes) in his 1oth, and final year of eligibility, on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot. With 28 names on the ballot, including 14 newcomers for consideration, Wagner’s 422 saves registered during his 16 MLB seasons, which has him 8th on the all-time list of relief specialists, finally pushed across the proverbial finish line. Having registered 35 or more saves for seven seasons, and doing so with four different franchises (Astros, Phillies, Mets, and Braves), Wagner was arguably the most dominant lefty coming out of the bullpen from the mid-1990s through his final season of 2010.
Carsten Charles Sabathia, better known as CC during his 19-season career starting 560 games as a right-handed pitcher for Cleveland, Milwaukee, and New York Yankees, enters the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. Sabathia’s 251–161 win-loss record, along with 3,093 strikeouts, makes him the latest former New York Yankee to be voted into the Hall of Fame. Sabathia’s teammate, while playing in the Bronx for six seasons (2009–2014), Derek Jeter, joined the Cooperstown ranks with the Class of 2020.
Between Sabathia’s joining Cleveland’s pitching rotation in 2001 as a 20-year-old, until his being traded in July 2008—months before declaring himself a free agent and spending his final 11 seasons in Yankees’ pinstripes—he played 17 games for the Milwaukee Brewers. His presence for Brewers’ skippers Ned Yost and Dale Sveum in the second half of the season catapulted the National League club into the postseason.
“[Sabathia] literally took the team on his back to the postseason,” Jason Kendall, former Brewers’ teammate and catcher for the southpaw for three months in 2008, told The Epoch Times during a phone conversation from his home in western Missouri. “Our team had zero worries when CC pitched on three days of rest. The guy was unbelievable. What I saw, and I had the best seat in the house when CC pitched, was the best three months span in my career that I saw pitch.”
Kendall didn’t hide his enthusiasm when speaking of his former batterymate in Milwaukee. Having played an all-star-laden MLB 15 seasons, including his first nine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Kendall is as good as they get when evaluating pitching talent. Having squatted behind home plate in excess of 1,700 MLB games prior to working with Sabathia in Brewers’ uniforms, Kendall, like his other Milwaukee teammates, was excited to make the postseason.
“The leader that Willie Stargell was to all those great Pirates’ teams in the 1960s and 1970s, that’s what CC turned out to be for the Brewers in 2008,” said Kendall of Sabathia, who is one of only 19 pitchers in MLB history to toss 3,000 or more strikeouts. “CC was larger than life on the mound. He threw 130 innings for us.”
With the Brewers losing to the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Division Series, for all the resurgence that Sabathia brought to Milwaukee starting in July of 2008, Kendall said that it is no secret that the club’s pitching ace wouldn’t be around come 2009. In the off-season, Sabathia signed a seven-year, $161 million deal with New York. At the time, that was the largest deal ever inked by a pitcher. The Yankees would go on to win the 2009 World Series.
“You’re not going to see 300 wins anymore; 200 wins by a pitcher will be tough to get. CC threw seven complete games in 17 starts, and complied an 11–2 record that season in Milwaukee,” said Kendall, who along with Sabathia, today works on special projects within the MLB commissioner’s office.
For Suzuki, 51, if ever there was a slam dunk to enter the Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, it was the former right fielder from Japan. Suzuki received 99.7 percent of the vote (393 votes).
Prior to joining the Seattle Mariners in 2001, where the left-handed hitter would spend the first full 11 seasons of 19 MLB seasons, Suzuki collected 1,278 hits during his nine seasons with the Orix Buffaloes in Nippon Professional Baseball’s Japan Pacific League. When retiring during the 2019 season after playing only two games, Suzaki earned a .311 batting average, 3,089 hits, in 9,934 at-bats. Suzuki was the American League’s rookie of the year and most valuable player in 2001.
“When I was playing for the A’s and Royals, I got to see Ichiro up close from the batter’s box,” Kendall said of the former Mariner. “[Suzuki] was as complete a ballplayer that I have ever seen.”
Kendall, whose father Fred Kendall, also a catcher, posted a dozen MLB years of service mainly with the San Diego Padres, has visited the Hall of Fame on a couple of occasions. He looks forward to returning someday to see the plaques of those of the Class of 2025.
The 2,000 year-round residents of the Village of Cooperstown can expect, for Hall of Fame Weekend from July 25 to 28, tens of thousands of fans flocking to the “Home of Baseball.” As the Class of 2025 takes its place, front and center of the baseball universe in July, five new members of MLB’s most exclusive club will surely return home with memories of a lifetime.
