Congratulations to the Baseball Hall of Fame Class of 2025

Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown has honored the best of the best once again.  At this year's ceremonies and induction the Hall welcomed its 2025 class of Dick Allen, Dave Parker, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner into baseball immortality.  Sabathia, Suzuki and Wagner were voted in by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Allen and Parker were voted in by the Classic Baseball Era Committee.

I count myself extremely fortunate to have seen Allen, Parker, Suzuki and Wagner play in person. Allen played for my beloved St. Louis Cardinals at Busch II in 1970. I saw Parker play several times over the years when the Pirates would come to St. Louis.  I was able to see Suzuki play at Busch III due to interleague play when the Mariners would visit the Cardinals.  Billy Wagner was on the hated Houston Astros when the Cardinals and 'Stros had a heated rivalry.  We didn't like him much as Cardinal fans, but deep down I secretly admired him and thought he would have made a great Red Bird.  I never saw Sabathia play in person but I did on TV and he was everything he was cracked up to be.

Voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this year in the broadcaster's and writer's wings were Tom Hamilton and Thomas Boswell respectively.  Hamilton is a favorite of mine, whom I first listened to on XM radio starting many years ago and now listen to on the audio channel of MLB.TV.  Mr. Hamilton is the most under rated play-by-play guy in the Majors. He is old school and reminiscent of Vin Scully.  They are similar in that Hamilton does it all.  He handles the play-by-play, the commentary and all of the stats.  Hamilton is everything I would want if I were able to hire the PBP guy for a baseball club.

Boswell won the Baseball Writers' Association of America Award given for Meritorious contributions to baseball writing.  He was a writer and columnist for the Washington Post and spent 37 years in D.C. from 1984 to 2021. He's also written seven books on baseball and is still interviewed frequently by other journalists.

This year rather than write more about each inductee I have located their induction speeches and listed the links below.

Dick "Richie" Allen  Speech by Mr. Allen's widow Willa Allen

Dave Parker  Speech by Dave Parker, II, son of Dave Parker

CC Sabathia

Ichiro Suzuki

Billy Wagner

Tom Boswell   

    (the link for Boswell and Hamilton is the same as they were inducted on 7/26/25)

Tom Hamilton

Congratulations to all seven of these gentlemen!