Culture

Will Ichiro Suzuki be the baseball Hall of Fame’s second unanimous selection?

Published

12 months ago

January 15, 2025

Will Ichiro Suzuki be the baseball Hall of Fame’s second unanimous selection?

Could Ichiro Suzuki become the second-ever player unanimously voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum? Will Billy Wagner pick up the five votes he missed last year to gain entry in his final year of eligibility? Will CC Sabathia make it to Cooperstown on his first try?

Heading into the Jan. 21 announcement of the Hall of Fame voting results, all three scenarios are on the table.

The voting is conducted by the nearly 400 eligible voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America; all of the 151 ballots logged on Ryan Thibodaux’s Baseball Hall of Fame tracker as of Tuesday afternoon have the box next to Suzuki’s name checked.

To this point, only famed Yankee closer Mariano Rivera has been elected to the Hall of Fame unanimously — not Babe Ruth, not Hank Aaron, not Ken Griffey Jr. nor Derek Jeter, just Rivera. Could Suzuki be the second?

Thibodaux said he doesn’t expect an answer to that until after the results are official.

“We haven’t seen him left off of any ballots yet and my guess is we won’t see one up until the results are announced,” Thibodaux said in a direct message on Bluesky earlier this week. “If anyone left him off, we likely won’t find out until after, if at all.”

Jeter was left off one ballot in 2020 and Griffey three in 2016.

Voters are not required to make their ballots public, but the Hall of Fame does allow voters to check a box on the ballot to release their selections following the announcement of the voting. Last year, a total of 385 ballots were returned, with 306 voters choosing to make their ballot public. Neither the voter who passed over Jeter in 2020 nor the three who left Griffey off their ballots in 2016 have been revealed.

Suzuki is not the only candidate trending towards induction. Sabathia is on 140, or 92.7 percent, which bodes well for the first-year nominee.

“I’ll admit to being a bit surprised at the strength of CC’s support so far. I had him eyeballed as perhaps a 75 percent bubble candidate, but he’s breezed along so far and has comfortably been in the low 90s for most of ballot season,” Thibodaux wrote. “Unless the late public and private voters have a wildly different evaluation of Sabathia’s credentials, it looks like he’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.”

FanGraphs’s Jay Jaffe, author of “The Cooperstown Casebook,” said he’s been surprised by Sabathia’s showing in his first year on the ballot.

“I thought he was going to be somebody who would squeak in like (Joe) Mauer did last year,” said Jaffe, who created the Jaffe War Score system (JAWS) that is commonly referenced by Hall of Fame voters to help put candidates into historical perspective. “I don’t expect him to stay at 92 percent or even 90 percent, but I think something upwards of 80 percent is very likely.”

Wagner is on the ballot for the 10th and final time. After just missing the 75 percent mark a year ago, he’s trending steadily toward induction. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was at 84.1 percent on the public ballots.

It’s not just the raw numbers that are in Wagner’s favor; the trends are behind him, as well. After just missing out, he’s been added to eight ballots that didn’t include him last year and of the 141 public votes submitted, none who checked his name last year haven’t selected him this year. Another eight first-time voters have voted for Wagner, as well.

“There are still more first-time voters out there and he’ll need to maintain solid support from that group,” Thibodaux wrote. “There are also likely several dozen voters who aged out of the electorate this year. If he happened to have extremely strong support among them, then there still may be work to do to get him over the finish line.”

Carlos Beltrán was at 79.5 percent of the vote as of Tuesday afternoon and Andruw Jones was just below the threshold at 74.2 percent. According to Thibodaux, last year those who made their ballots public before the announcement averaged 7.55 votes per ballot. Voters who waited until after the announcement averaged 6.77 votes per ballot and private ballots averaged 5.8 names. Thibodaux, who began tracking balloting in 2012, said those trends have been steady through the years.

The current voting totals are not encouraging for Beltrán or Jones in relation to their 2025 hopes, but it is a positive for eventual induction. Next year’s first-year eligible class doesn’t have any players who have a career bWAR of 60 or more, such as Suzuki (60) and Sabathia (62.3). The top first-year players on next year’s ballot are Cole Hamels (59 bWAR) and Ryan Braun (47.1 bWAR).

Jaffe said the strength of Sabathia’s support bodes well for the future of not just Sabathia, but also Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Mark Buehrle and Hamels.

“Andy Pettitte and Félix Hernández are almost diametrically opposed in terms of how they’ve gotten to this point, Pettitte with a very workmanlike career and a huge volume of postseason work that was very important in helping teams get to and win the World Series,” Jaffe said. “Félix had a very high peak and a lack of longevity, early burnout and no postseason experience.”

Pettitte, on the ballot for the seventh time, was at 31.8 percent as of Tuesday afternoon. Last year, Pettitte received 52 (13.5 percent) votes and this year he is already marked on 48 ballots, indicating a significant jump. Hernández, in his first year on the ballot, was on 25.2 percent of the votes revealed by Tuesday afternoon.

While the focus on voting is always on the 75 percent line needed for induction, the other marker to watch is the 5 percent needed to stay on the ballot.

Of the 14 names on the ballot for the first time, seven had not received a public vote as of Tuesday morning. Of the remaining seven first-year eligible players, only Suzuki, Sabathia, Hernández and Dustin Pedroia (12.6 percent) have received the necessary five percent to stay on the ballot.

That means 10 players are in danger of falling off the ballot, including a pair of catchers in Russell Martin (4.6 percent) and Brian McCann (4 percent) who would fall off the ballot after just their first year. Also facing the possibility of not receiving 5 percent are Torii Hunter (1.3 percent), who is on the ballot for the fifth time, and Francisco Rodríguez (7.9 percent), who is on the ballot for the third year. Mark Buehrle, on his fifth ballot, has 19 votes as of Tuesday morning, which will be enough to keep him on the ballot another year as long as no more than 380 ballots are returned. One more vote for Buehrle between Tuesday afternoon and next week’s announcement would guarantee the longtime Chicago White Sox starter a spot on next year’s ballot.

(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

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Culture

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

Published

2 weeks ago

December 18, 2025

Press Room

Video: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

new video loaded: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects

To capture Jane Austen’s brief life and enormous impact, editors at The New York Times Book Review assembled a sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness she has brought to our lives.

By Jennifer Harlan, Sadie Stein, Claire Hogan, Laura Salaberry and Edward Vega

December 18, 2025

Culture

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

Published

3 weeks ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Try This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen

“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.

Culture

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

Published

3 weeks ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Revisiting Jane Austen’s Cultural Impact for Her 250th Birthday

On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.

Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”

With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”

How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.

By ‘A Lady’

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)

Where the Magic Happened

Janice Chung for The New York Times

Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.

An Iconic Accessory

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.

Austen Onscreen

Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.

Jane Goes X-Rated

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.

A Lady Unmasked

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”

Wearable Tributes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.

The Austen Literary Universe

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)

A Botanical Homage

Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.

Aunt Jane

Jane Austen’s House, Chawton, England

Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.

Cultural Currency

Steve Parsons/Associated Press

In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.

In the Trenches

During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”

Baby Janes

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.

The Austen Industrial Complex

Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York Times

Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.

Around the Globe

Goucher College Special Collections & Archives, Alberta H. and Henry G. Burke Collection; via The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.

Playable Persuasions

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.

#SoJaneAusten

The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.

Bonnets Fit for a Bennett

Peter Flude for The New York Times

For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.

Most Ardently, Jane

The Morgan Library & Museum

Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”

Stage and Sensibility

Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.

Austen 101

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”