But isn’t that enough? Despite the frequent muttering by non-fans that baseball is just a bunch of statistics, there is way more to the game, and part of it is the goofy charm of stuff like “Tinker to Evers to Chance”. It’s a stupid piece of doggerel about a triple-play team that actually was never all that outstanding, and here it is burned in my mind. I say it at least once a month with reference to something or over, always to someone who has no idea what I’m talking about but is afraid to ask. That’s Hall of Fame material to me.
Then Daryl Strawberry should be in there becasue most people know the mocking chant of his name- even The Simpsons used it. 
And you know – I’d be OK with that. 
Missed the edit window “DOUBLE PLAY” ! (Sheesh, where’s my head sometimes)
Then put the poet in the HOF, not the players.
Here is the article on the poem.
Should we also induct the mighty Casey from Casey at the Bat?
How about Katie Casey from Take Me Out to the Ballgame?
Controversy is controversy, and for the most part I’m OK with that. But I find it funny that it was considered a travesty of justice for years that Mazeroski was kept out of the Hall of Fame even by the regular voting, and now that he’s in it is a travesty of justice that he is in.
Mazeroski was quite simply one of the finest defensive players of all time - some consider him the finest defenseman of all time. He was no slouch at the plate either. He’s a lot more than a single home run.
If the Hall cannot recognize a player like this, then the Hall isn’t worth much.
Guess I’m in the minority, but yeah, I could live with it. It’s the Baseball Hall of Fame, not Heaven, and if they added to the joy of the game, in reality or fiction, yeah.
Well, it’s the Hall of Fame and Museum. Lots of players make the latter and not the former.
Same with broadcasters (who have a separate HOF), actors, and poets. And it should be so.
I agree Maz certainly belongs in the Hall. I grew up watching him from the mid-60s till the end of his career and he was one of the finest defensive players at his position. He was named to 10 All-Star Squads in an era when players and managers named the squads, not the fans, although six of those times were when there were two All-Star games in a season. In addition, he won 8 Gold Gloves. And the leadership he brought to the Pirate squad was intangible. Playing for the Pirates World Champion team in 1971 was a fitting capstone to his career.
Nobody’s discounting his stats anywhere. Who has argued he SHOULDN’T be in? Robinson is a no-brainer. As Bill James put it, lots of players have more hits than Jackie Robinson, but not many players have been on postage stamps.
Ichiro! is an interesting comparison in some ways, but - and I know you know this, but it merits mentioning:
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The HoF has never given players “credit” for Japanese League play before and I see no reason to start now. Robinson’s pre-MLB record is different in that he was an exceptional ballplayer prevented from playing big league baseball by virtue of racial segregation.
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Robinson, obviously, deserves accolades for the courage and example he set, whereas Suzuki wasn’t the first Japanese ballplayer around.
Suzuki is, IMHO, not as great a ballplayer as Robinson is, in terms of straight-up on field performance. He’s excellent to be sure, but Robinson was quite a bit better, a better hitter in context who played the infield. Suzuki is basically just a singles hitter; he’s statistically similar to Ross Youngs, who is one of the Veterans Committee selections that are often cited as dumb ones. His objective credentials are clearly less than those of Kirby Puckett, who has been cited in their thread as a bad choice. You can’t argue Puckett should not be in but Suzuki should; even if Suzuki had started in North America five years earlier, he’d now be about what Puckett was but with less power.
But having said that, I’ll point three more things out:
a) Suzuki is still going strong - he hit .351 last year and is the type of player who typically ages well. He still has a shot at piling up a lot of hits.
b) Assuming Suzuki plays another five or six years at a reasonable level of skill he’ll end up with well over 2000 hits and various other milestones, and
c) Assuming that’s true, and given various other factors, I wouldn’t complain if he were made a Hall of Famer.
The chant predates Darryl Strawberry. Opposing fans (especially those in Boston) used to taunt Reggie Jackson with “Reg-gie, Reg-gie”. When the Red Sox played the Mets in the 1986 World Series, Boston fans just substituted “Reg-gie, Reg-gie” with “Dar-ryl, Dar-ryl”.
I agree with most of your points except this one. (I also think that Ichiro will be a HOFer regardless of whether he “deserves” it or not.)
I think that now is the perfect time to start to take into account stats from the Japanese Leagues. There were (by my count) 14 players from the Japanese leagues in MLB last year, including two All-Stars. That does not include the Taiwanese and South Koreans and Australians who came over from the Japanese Leagues as well. What differentiates Japan from Latin America is that Japan scouts and develops their own players and has a fully independant League of their own, plus Japan was the winner of the World Baseball Challenge.
I would never consider simply adding stats accumulated in Japan to those achieved in MLB, but it seems only fair to give weight to prior achievements when players come over mid-career. Ichiro was a three time MVP in Japan and proved that he was a fully capable Major Leaguer after arriving here. It might be another story if MLB scouted Japanese High Schools and Colleges and brought up Japanese players in their prime, but for the most part they don’t.
If a player with 300 HR’s in Japan came over and in 10 seasons in MLB put up another 300, I’d have to say he would be a candidate for the “best of the best” even if his career stats looked like Dante Bichette’s.