Athletics at Guardians Prediction: Odds, expert picks, starting pitchers, trends and stats for July 18
JP Sears is slated to take the mound for Oakland against Slade Cecconi for Cleveland.
The Guardians may well be sellers at the trade deadline this season. Cleveland sits 12 games behind the Tigers in the American League Central and 4.5 games back in the Wild Card chase. They won six of their final ten heading into the Break which has them positioned squarely on the fence in terms of buying or selling at the deadline.
The Athletics are mired in last place in the American League West sitting 16 games behind the Houston Astros. Their issue lies primarily on the bump. A's pitchers have surrendered the second most runs in baseball allowing 551 runners to cross home plate with only the Rockies having allowed more (589). For a bit of perspective, only three teams (Washington being the third) have allowed more than 488 runs.
Lets dive into the matchup and find a sweat or two.
We've got all the info and analysis you need to know ahead of the game, including the latest info on the how to catch tipoff, odds, recent team performance, player stats, and of course, our predictions, picks & best bets for the game from our modeling tools and staff of experts.
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Game details & how to watch Athletics at Guardians
Date: Friday, July 18, 2025
Time: 7:10PM EST
Site: Progressive Field
City: Cleveland, OH
Network/Streaming: NBCSCA, CLEG
Never miss a second of the action and stay up-to-date with all the latest team stats and player news. Check out our day-by-day MLB schedule page, along with detailed matchup pages that update live in-game with every out.
Odds for the Athletics at the Guardians
The latest odds as of Friday:
Moneyline: Athletics (+114), Guardians (-135)
Spread: Guardians -1.5
Total: 8.0 runs
Probable starting pitchers for Athletics at Guardians
Pitching matchup for July 18, 2025: JP Sears vs. Slade Cecconi
Athletics: JP Sears (7-7, 4.79 ERA)
Last outing: July 10 vs. Atlanta - 5IP, 3ER, 4H, 0BB, 6KsGuardians: Slade Cecconi (4-4, 3.44 ERA)
Last outing: July 9 at Houston - 7IP, 2ER, 5H, 2BB, 9Ks
Athletics: JP Sears (7-7, 4.79 ERA)
Last outing: July 10 vs. Atlanta - 5IP, 3ER, 4H, 0BB, 6Ks
Guardians: Slade Cecconi (4-4, 3.44 ERA)
Last outing: July 9 at Houston - 7IP, 2ER, 5H, 2BB, 9Ks
Rotoworld still has you covered with all the latest MLB player news for all 30 teams. Check out the feed page right here on NBC Sports for headlines, injuries and transactions where you can filter by league, team, positions and news type!
Top betting trends & insights to know ahead of Athletics at Guardians
The Guardians have won 7 straight home games against the Athletics
6 of the Guardians' last 8 home game against the Athletics have gone over the Total
The Athletics have covered in 4 of their last 5 games showing a profit of 2.46 units
Brent Rooker is enjoying a 6-game hitting streak (9-22) including 2 HRs and 6 RBIs
Steven Kwan was just 2-15 (.133) in the 4-game series against the White Sox just prior to the Break
If you're looking for more key trends and stats around the spread, moneyline and total for every single game on the schedule today, check out our MLB Top Trends tool on NBC Sports!
Expert picks & predictions for tonight's game between the Athletics and the Guardians
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Our model calculates projections around each moneyline, spread and over/under bet for every game on the MLB calendar based on data points like past performance, player matchups, ballpark information and weather forecasts.
Once the model is finished running, we put its projection next to the latest betting lines for the game to arrive at a relative confidence level for each wager.
Here are the best bets our model is projecting for Friday's game between the Athletics and the Guardians:
Moneyline: NBC Sports Bet is recommending a play on the Cleveland Guardians on the Moneyline.
Spread: NBC Sports Bet is leaning towards a play ATS on the Oakland Athletics at +1.5.
Total: NBC Sports Bet is recommending a play on the over on the Game Total of 8.0.
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New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
When he didn't pick Ichiro for Rookie of the Year, a writer became the story
CLEVELAND — In January, when the Baseball Hall of Fame balloting results were released, and Ichiro Suzuki was not a unanimous selection, a longtime Cleveland sportswriter was quick to clarify: It wasn't him this time. Chris Assenheimer of the Chronicle-Telegram in Elyria, Ohio, has been in that lonely position before — as the only voter to snub the prolific Seattle Mariners right fielder more than two decades ago, in the 2001 Rookie of the Year vote. Advertisement Twenty-four years ago, Ichiro captivated Major League Baseball with a sterling rookie season. Now, he's headed to Cooperstown as a near-unanimous selection, left off the ballot of only one anonymous voter out of a pool of 394. Ichiro said in January he wants to 'have a drink' and a 'good chat' with the sole dissenter who prevented him from becoming the second unanimous selection (along with New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera) in the history of the Hall of Fame. Assenheimer would love to take up Ichiro on his offer and reminisce over some Bud Lights about a similar ordeal nearly a quarter-century ago. Bud Geracie, longtime columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote in a November 2001 piece: 'Chris Assenheimer is the guy who didn't vote Ichiro Rookie of the Year, and boy does he look like one.' That dig was scooped up by a wire service and printed in newspapers across the country, including the L.A. Times. 'The joke is,' Assenheimer says now, in his 29th season on the Cleveland baseball beat, 'he was somehow AL MVP but not a unanimous Rookie of the Year.' Ichiro couldn't have scripted a better first year in Major League Baseball. After nine seasons, three MVP awards and seven batting titles in Japan's Pacific League, he joined the Mariners, who paid the Orix Blue Wave about $13 million and guaranteed Ichiro another $14 million. He was the first position player from Japan to sign a big-league contract, and he wasted no time in delivering on it. 'You knew Ichiro was going to be a star,' Assenheimer said. With a .350 average, he joined Tony Oliva (1964) as the only rookies since the turn of the 20th century to win a batting title. He set a rookie record with 242 hits, the most by anyone since Bill Terry and Chuck Klein in 1930. Only Ichiro himself has eclipsed that total since, with his MLB-record 262 in 2004. Advertisement He became the second rookie to win MVP (Fred Lynn, 1975) as he fueled Seattle to a record-tying 116 wins under manager Lou Piniella. The Mariners, even after departures in previous years of Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez, reached the ALCS, where they fell to the dynastic Yankees. The Mariners hosted the All-Star Game that July. Ichiro immediately emerged as one of baseball's central attractions. Forget about the Rookie of the Year race. Ichiro planted himself in the conversation about the top players in the sport. 'To me, it was common sense,' Assenheimer said. 'The guy was not a rookie.' Assenheimer stood in the Cleveland Indians' clubhouse one day during the 2001 ALDS — they were the Mariners' opening-round opponent, coincidentally — and discussed his recently submitted Rookie of the Year ballot with a colleague. He had placed Cleveland pitcher CC Sabathia first, Ichiro second and Yankees second baseman Alfonso Soriano third. The other writer shot him a look and said, 'You're going to get some s—.' During the second week of November 2001, Assenheimer traveled to Houston for an anniversary trip with his then-wife, staying with another couple they knew. He took a call from a colleague who wrote for the Associated Press. That reporter quipped it was 'the lowest point' of his journalism career as he informed Assenheimer he was the lone Sabathia backer and asked him for a quote for a story. Later that night, Assenheimer and his wife were lying on the couch, watching a late-night edition of SportsCenter when, as Assenheimer recalls, anchor Stuart Scott announced Ichiro had received every first-place tally but one, thanks to a rogue voter who instead opted for Sabathia. Scott turned to his broadcast partner, Linda Cohn, and asked where she thought that voter resided. Advertisement 'They were calling me a homer and then (Scott) ripped into a diatribe, looking into the camera,' Assenheimer said. 'He's like, 'Chris, get over yourself. Don't tell us what you think the rules should be. Vote how the rules are.'' When they mentioned Assenheimer by name, the couple they were staying with screamed from upstairs. A whirlwind few days of interviews and insults was soon underway. Assenheimer's stance is simple, one he maintains 24 years later: Ichiro was not a rookie. He was an accomplished, award-winning player in a different league on the other side of the globe who had taken his talents to North America. Here's the quote Assenheimer supplied the AP in 2001: 'I just felt that Sabathia better met the criteria of what a rookie is in the truest sense of the word. That's nothing against Ichiro.' Here's how he feels about it after 24 years of reflecting: 'He was a seven-time All-Star (in Japan). They gave him (and his team $27 million) to sign. It was ridiculous.' Here's the thing: Ichiro, who collected a $75,000 bonus for winning, actually agreed with him… to an extent. 'I was a little embarrassed to be called a rookie here in the United States,' he said through an interpreter at the time. 'I was so relieved today when I heard this announcement I won the Rookie of the Year award because I felt this was an award I should have won without any doubt. If I won this award, I had wanted to win unanimously.' The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published the headline, 'Ichiro honored, irked.' It takes a special set of circumstances for someone to feel both of those emotions simultaneously. Assenheimer's one regret is that he didn't omit Ichiro entirely. He placed him second, behind only Sabathia, who went 17-5 with a 4.39 ERA in his age-20 season. 'I'll remember his numbers forever,' Assenheimer said. 'I would've liked his ERA to be a little lower.' Advertisement Assenheimer didn't take the stand he intended to: that Ichiro didn't fit the qualifications of a rookie. Instead, his ballot made it seem like he thought Ichiro was simply the second-best rookie performer. 'I shouldn't have even put him on the ballot,' Assenheimer said. 'But I guess I was thinking, 'OK, well, this is what Major League Baseball is making me do, vote for this guy for Rookie of the Year. I'm still going to not vote him first place.' It had nothing to do with CC.' At the time, Sabathia disagreed with Assenheimer's reasoning. 'The award is for first-year players in the big leagues, and (Ichiro) is definitely deserving of it,' Sabathia said. 'There's not an argument about that at all.' Assenheimer's choice had his phone ringing for days. He conducted interviews with Cleveland newspapers, USA Today and local and national radio shows. He called in to the nationally syndicated Mike & Mike, and listeners bestowed upon him the 'Just Shut Up' award. A Seattle morning radio show skewered him during an interview. Geracie wasn't the only one to use Assenheimer's surname as low-hanging fruit to make light of the situation. Phil Mushnick of the New York Post devoted an entire column to it, though Mushnick actually sided with Assenheimer's explanation. Mushnick wrote: 'Through a translator, (Ichiro) said, 'I was a little embarrassed to be called a rookie here in the United States.' Hey, Ich, how would you like to be called Assenheimer?' When Assenheimer received a call from a Japanese newspaper reporter, he feared he was public enemy No. 1. Quite the contrary, she told him. The consensus thought in Japan, she said, was that it was disrespectful to deem Ichiro a rookie, given his accolades. Even with nearly a decade of feats in the Pacific League, Ichiro still amassed 3,089 hits in MLB. That's how he landed a spot in the Hall of Fame, alongside, of all people, Sabathia. The two will be inducted, with reliever Billy Wagner and, posthumously, sluggers Dick Allen and Dave Parker, on Sunday in Cooperstown. It wasn't me again, Ichiro. — Chris AssenheimerC-T (@CAwesomeheimer) January 22, 2025 Last summer, Sabathia was inducted into the Cleveland Guardians Hall of Fame. It was pointed out to Sabathia that his lone Rookie of the Year supporter was in the room, so Assenheimer, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, asked Sabathia if he felt like he got robbed. Sabathia, perhaps changing his original tune, said 'Definitely. Ichiro was not a rookie.' Advertisement Ichiro and Sabathia were both elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, with Ichiro's lone holdout voter opting to keep their identity a secret. Assenheimer didn't have that option in 2001, but he had no qualms about taking ownership of his ballot. This time, Assenheimer could vote for both Ichiro and Sabathia. 'The whole thing just seemed silly to me,' Assenheimer said. 'I guess I could have just fallen in line like everybody else did. People were trying to say, 'You just want to be known.' That never crossed my mind. But it was fun to be out there.' (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Houston Astros / Getty Images, Otto Greule / ALLSPORT, David Maxwell / AFP via Getty Images)
New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
Aaron Judge is the world's best hitter. He's just as valuable to Yankees as a hitting coach
NEW YORK — The room is small, with several rows of long white desks and roller chairs, and a large projection screen in the back. It's steps away from the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, a ballpark where nearly every wall serves as a screaming billboard for the club's storied past — yet the space feels sparse, like a classroom at a community college. Advertisement Fitting, since it's where Aaron Judge, the son of high school teachers, does some of his best work off the field. While Judge may be the best hitter in baseball, his teammates say his behind-the-scenes presence in daily hitters meetings — from the information he offers to the atmosphere he cultivates — is a key differentiator for the New York Yankees, owners of the third-best offense in MLB in terms of runs scored. It's one thing to watch Judge. But to get a look inside his brain? 'It's cool to see what his process is, what he thinks about when he's hitting,' catcher J.C. Escarra said. 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It's directly across from the entrance to the clubhouse and just steps away from the batting cages and nutrition area, which features a tall cooler filled with sports drinks and shelves with MLB-approved supplements. Judge always sits somewhere in the middle. His teammates pile in around him, some holding iPads packed with statistics and videos, others gripping paper plates filled with the gourmet pregame spread. Rowson provides the opening remarks, and his assistants Pat Roessler and Casey Dykes offer analysis along the way. Sometimes manager Aaron Boone and other coaches attend. Advertisement Judge observes with laser focus, teammates say. Despite leading the league in so many major offensive categories, including batting average (.345) and OPS (1.170), he knows he has to be as prepared as anybody around him, especially as he continues to grow into his Yankees captaincy, now in its third season. 'The homework he does is incredible,' Rowson said. 'He comes to a hitters meeting already informed, but he also comes to get more. He knows what he's trying to do, and then he wanted to hear other guys and what their plans may be. There's a lot of communication.' He also knows when to lend a hand and when to step back. 'Sometimes, it's, 'Let me speak up,'' Goldschmidt said of Judge. 'Sometimes, it's, 'Let me just boost the morale of the team or the confidence.'' Long gone are the days when players would stroll into the clubhouses a few hours before the game, take batting practice on the field and consider themselves ready for first pitch. Most teams lay out schedules that include multiple pregame meetings, and the Yankees are no different. Every series, Yankees relievers go over the other team's hitters together. Every day, the starting pitcher meets with the catchers and coaches to plan for that game's start. The hitters hold a meeting to discuss the entire upcoming series before it starts, and then they have another meeting before every game. The hitters meetings typically start on a light note. Moments before it begins, a music video plays on the projector, and the volume is cranked up. Before a recent weekday game, it was 'Shake Ya Tailfeather' by Murphy Lee. 'It keeps guys loose,' Rowson said. 'Get them to easygoing. Part of coming out here every day and going through the grind is having fun. You've got to want to show up every day.' How deep Rowson dives into the opponent depends on what he feels the Yankees need to know. He'll litter his presentations with heat maps, pitch percentages and video clips, but he'll mix in questions designed to get the hitters talking to each other. Advertisement 'A good hitters meeting is not just all the analytical numbers (Rowson) has,' second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said, 'but hearing from guys who faced (the pitcher) and just speaking on what they see, how the ball moves, the way that guy has attacked guys in the past.' When the meeting finishes, they're free to continue their pregame preparation, which usually includes on-field batting practice approximately 2 1/2 hours before the game. 'Everyone is going to need something different,' Goldschmidt said. 'I may not want or need what Judgey wants or what maybe other guys want.' 'They construct their own plans,' Rowson said. 'Every human takes in information differently. It's about learning what you need. Nobody can take in everything.' For Judge, it's 'just a good opportunity for us to share little things.' He also leans on experience. Entering Friday, Judge had faced 1,013 pitchers over his 10-year career, according to Baseball Reference. He had gotten at least one hit against 567 of them. 'Pretty much anyone we face,' Rice said, 'he's faced before or he's seen someone similar at the minimum. He's usually got something to offer up. It's never anything crazy. He does a good job simplifying, saying something that everyone can digest.' Goldschmidt, who ranks fourth among active players in career hits, said it's 'crazy' to think that Judge can be as good as he is and still actively want to help those around him all the time. 'It's so hard to perform individually, especially at his expectation level,' Goldschmidt said. 'To be able to do it individually, and still be able to impact others around you is another layer that makes it even tougher. He does a really good job of that.' Judge said he gets as much out of the meetings as he gives. He said he likes to lean on Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger — longtime National Leaguers — in particular when the Yankees face NL opponents. Sometimes young players have faced rookie pitchers in the minor leagues, and what they share can change a fellow hitter's at-bat, too. Advertisement Judge also wants to know his teammates' plans at the plate so he can watch their at-bats in real time and provide feedback if he notices something unusual with a swing, or if that hitter strays from his approach. 'Maybe they'll help me recognize a slider a little sooner,' Judge said. 'It goes a long way. Even for me, talking to Goldschmidt, I've seen guys in our division 15 or 20 times. I can throw him a tidbit, tell him that I'm trying to eliminate a certain pitch and focus on these two (pitches), or to focus on a certain zone.' And sometimes, talking to Judge leaves teammates smiling and shaking their heads. Of course, it might be easy for Judge to take certain information and immediately use it on the field. But for mere mortals? 'It's pretty funny,' Escarra said. 'He's so talented. I can be thinking the same things and getting different results. But it's cool being in the same room and talking hitting with him.' (Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic. Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
Sliders: For new Baseball Hall of Fame class, growing the game means rethinking the way in
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game. COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Billy Wagner broke his right arm twice when he was 5 years old. He started throwing with his left hand instead and soon realized it was loaded with thunderbolts. Wagner's 100 mph heat was a rarity in his time and led him, eventually, to a Hall of Fame induction ceremony this weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y. Advertisement Baseball may be a game of imitation, but breaking your dominant arm while hunting for velocity would be extreme. 'I would avoid that path,' Wagner said last week, on a Zoom call with reporters. 'I mean, that's a little painful.' The sad fact is that too many aspiring pitchers shred their arms, anyway. When Wagner and CC Sabathia — who also goes into the Hall on Sunday, with Ichiro Suzuki, Dick Allen and Dave Parker — consider the future of their craft, the wide-ranging impact of youth development concerns them. 'I think some of these guys are coming into the game broken,' Sabathia said, adding that the 'insane' outbreak of Tommy John surgery starts with overuse at the younger levels. 'That was something that my dad fought against for me for a long time. He recognized that my arm was special, (and) he never let anybody pitch me more than one time on a weekend.' Sabathia then outlined his plan for his 14-year-old son, Carter, who is 6-foot-2, 170 pounds and throws 85 mph. 'If I put him in the Perfect Game circuit right now, we'd be flying around everywhere, every weekend for him to pitch, and I won't do it,' Sabathia said. 'He plays third base, he plays center field, and he only pitches here with his local team in Jersey, and we'll get reps that way…. He's going to play other sports, and he's going to be as diverse an athlete as possible.' Wagner — whose son, Will, is an infielder for the Toronto Blue Jays — has coached high school baseball in Virginia for years. He sees the same problems as Sabathia. 'When they get to the major-league level, they're running out of what we call runway,' Wagner said. 'And so they're injured because they've done all this massive training to get to that point, to chase their dream.' He added: 'At the lower levels, there needs to be more joy in what we're doing to grow the game. It's not a job. We don't need to take lessons every single day to make the perfect swing. The swing comes because you're out in the backyard throwing up rocks and hitting them off a bat. You're playing sandlot baseball, you're playing Wiffle ball.' Advertisement The rising expense of youth baseball has made it harder for lower-income families to afford. That's part of a multifaceted issue affecting the makeup of MLB rosters, which included just 6.2 percent Black players on opening day, down from a peak of more than 18 percent in the 1980s. Sabathia is the first Black AL/NL starter elected to the Hall since Fergie Jenkins in 1991, and the third, with Jenkins and Bob Gibson, to record 3,000 strikeouts. Of the 20 pitchers with a 20-win season since Sabathia last did it, in 2010, only David Price is Black. 'I'm excited to be able to get up there and talk to (Fergie) about what it means, (but) the one thing that keeps crossing my mind, though, is like: who's next?' Sabathia said. 'I feel like, through the Players Alliance and some of the efforts that we're putting together for this next generation, I almost feel even more responsible now to be on guys about being that next Black Ace, whether it's Taj Bradley or now Chase Burns or Hunter Greene, or whoever else. I don't want to be the last Black pitcher to win 20 games, be in the Hall of Fame, to do all these things.' Sabathia has stayed involved in MLB as part of the Commissioner's Ambassador Program, a group that has caused 'tension and an awkwardness' with the union, as The Athletic's Evan Drellich reported this week. To Sabathia, the open exchange of ideas is all positive. 'You can go to Rob (Manfred) and talk about whatever kind of problems you have,' Sabathia said. 'That's something that we didn't have when I was playing. I never got a chance to have the commissioner come and sit in the clubhouse and kind of go over what's happening during the season. So I'm trying to do whatever I can to help grow the game and point the game in a positive direction.' The other living inductee this weekend, Suzuki, now serves as a special assistant to the chairman of the Seattle Mariners. He suits up before many games, refining his technique so he can help current players with theirs. To Suzuki, preserving the immeasurable aspects of baseball is vital to the essence of the sport. Advertisement 'Baseball is a game of human beings playing against human beings, and to have the passion and the energy that is created by that is something that I really hope is still part of the game,' he said through an interpreter. 'That's what I really value and is very important to me.' Hobby shops line Main Street in Cooperstown, with treasures great and small, so it's fitting that baseball cards helped build the museum at the end of the block. The Hall of Fame was around long before the memorabilia craze of the late 1980s and early 1990s, of course. But as Marq Evans explains in 'The Diamond King,' a compelling documentary released this year, a surprisingly profitable relationship between Donruss cards and the Hall brought a windfall that paid for new administrative offices and an expansion of the library. Evans set out to tell the story of Dick Perez, the prolific artist who painted more than 400 portraits for a series of 'Diamond Kings' cards that appeared in Donruss sets from 1982 to 1996. Along the way, he learned how several connections — like the puzzle pieces within each pack — combined to grow the Hall of Fame. 'The Hall was a place I had wanted to go to my entire life, but it's hard to get to from Eastern Washington, where I grew up,' Evans said. 'So it was just really fascinating to hear that this artist and this company, Perez-Steele Galleries — and really the Diamond Kings — played such a part in making the place as magical as it is.' Perez began painting portraits of Hall of Famers for the Hall to sell as postcards in 1979. The next year, a federal judge ruled against Topps' monopoly of the baseball card industry, allowing Fleer and Donruss to sell cards starting in 1981. Bill Madden — a New York Daily News writer who also worked with Donruss and keenly followed the collectibles business — knew of Perez's Hall of Fame postcards and thought something similar could work for Donruss. Frank Steele was friendly with the Hall's then-chairman, Ed Stack, and negotiated a deal between the card company and the museum. Advertisement The Hall would make Perez its official artist, endorse the fledgling card company and receive an escalating scale of royalties from every pack sold. Nobody knew how lucrative the relationship would be. 'The first year with Donruss, in 1981, they sold like $1 million worth of cards, and the Hall of Fame got some royalty off that, which was very small,' Evans said. 'And then just a couple of years later, they were doing like $80 million in sales — and not only, of course, is the royalty off that a much larger number, but the higher it went, the royalty percentage also went up. So all of a sudden, the Hall of Fame has a ton of money that they did not expect to have.' Eventually, the oversaturation of the card market led to Donruss' demise. But Perez's work continues, and the Diamond Kings' legacy survives in the form of a permanently endowed internship program now in its 25th year. Peggy Steele, who owned and operated Perez-Steele Galleries, said that 33 alumni are returning this weekend to help with induction ceremonies. 'We always felt like you give back where you make it,' she said. 'That's where the Hall continues to benefit. If we hadn't had that relationship, it never would have happened.' Tom Hamilton was born in Wisconsin in 1954, a year after Major League Baseball arrived in Milwaukee. The Braves would leave for Atlanta while Hamilton was still in grade school, but the Brewers arrived in his high school years, giving Hamilton a new team — and another set of broadcasters — to follow. Hamilton, this year's Ford C. Frick Award winner for broadcasting excellence, has spent 36 seasons bringing the Cleveland Indians and Guardians to his radio listeners with gusto and verve. But his formative influences are all from Wisconsin: Earl Gillespie, Merle Harmon, Bob Uecker, Gary Bender and Eddie Doucette. 'Those were five incredible radio play-by-play guys in the three sports that I did: basketball, football and baseball,' Hamilton said recently. 'I didn't realize it, but it was like grad school.' Advertisement Here are some thoughts from Hamilton on each of the five voices who set him on his path to Cooperstown. Earl Gillespie: 'I got to do University of Wisconsin football with him for one year, and for me, that was like winning a jackpot. He was a guy that I had grown up — I don't want to say emulating, but a guy I had so much respect and admiration for as a broadcaster because he did the Braves. When they went to Atlanta, he wanted to stay back in Wisconsin. Then he did the Packers and Badgers on radio. So to do a year of University of Wisconsin football with Earl was kind of like: 'I'm playing center field next to Hank Aaron.'' Merle Harmon: 'Listen to Merle Harmon's football calls. He was the voice of the Jets when Joe Willie (Namath) won the Super Bowl. He was really good. He initially was the No. 1 guy for the Brewers, and Bob was the No. 2 guy. And the only reason Merle gave up the Brewers (was because) he was going to do the Olympics for NBC in 1980. He had to give up the Brewers to do it.' Bob Uecker: 'Well, he was so funny — none of us can be that — but I don't think Bob's ever been given credit for how good he was at play-by-play. He was phenomenal, to the point that when I started going out on my own and doing games, I had to make sure I wasn't imitating Bob — you know, 'get up, get out of here, gone!' There's only one Bob. But I think because he was so accomplished in everything else and is noted for the movies, the beer commercials, Johnny Carson, I don't think he got enough recognition for being an incredible play-by-play guy on radio.' Gary Bender: 'He was at Madison, he was a sports anchor, but he did Badger football and Packer football. And then he went from Madison to be the main guy for CBS. He did the Final Four, the North Carolina State-Houston game. And the one thing about those four guys — Earl, Merle, Bob, Gary Bender — they were as good of people, if not better, than they were broadcasters. And they were incredible broadcasters.' Eddie Doucette: 'I never got to know Eddie, but he was doing Milwaukee Bucks basketball on radio when they had Lew Alcindor and Oscar Robertson. And Eddie, oh my god — energetic creativity. He's the one that came up with the 'jack-knife jumper' and 'into the low post in the toaster to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.' He came up with Bobby 'The Greyhound' Dandridge, and the 'sky hook' for Kareem. I've never been that creative, but those are all terms he used. That's why I always said about Hawk (Harrelson): 'When people are imitating your calls or your vocabulary, that sets you apart from everybody.'' The 75 percent threshold for election to the Hall of Fame serves two purposes. It's a high enough figure to be a landslide, but low enough so a few misguided voters can't influence the outcome. The result is what matters — in or out? The rest is just details. Advertisement Of course, one detail of Ichiro Suzuki's election has generated plenty of conversation: He fell a single vote short of joining Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous electees to Cooperstown. That very fact shows that there's always been a lot of curious, stray votes among the hundreds in each election. The point is that Suzuki cleared 75 percent. And while there's no excuse for even one voter to pass over such a decorated candidate, remember that writers used to be really, really stingy. Consider the case of Yogi Berra, who hit 30 homers twice and batted .300 four times, qualifying him for the center square of last Saturday's Grid. Berra did pretty much everything else, too: three MVP awards, 10 World Series titles, 15 years in a row as an All-Star, the life of a legend. Yet when Berra first came before the Baseball Writers' Association of America, for the 1971 election, only 242 of 360 voters checked his box — 28 shy of election. Could you imagine? In fact, nobody was elected on that 1971 ballot, which featured 16 players who eventually would get plaques. 'Sure I'm disappointed,' Berra told Dick Young of the New York Daily News. 'But then, DiMag didn't make it his first year, either.' At the time, only four candidates had been elected on the first ballot since the initial class of 1936: Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Stan Musial. Some fairly decent players — Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and, yes, Joe DiMaggio — were forced to wait their turn. Players now must wait five years to be included on the ballot, but DiMaggio, who retired after the 1951 World Series, was deemed eligible in 1953. Yet the writers made him get in line behind Dizzy Dean and Al Simmons, who both made it on their ninth try. DiMaggio fell 81 votes short. In 1954, DiMaggio missed by 14 votes, with Bill Dickey (ninth ballot), Rabbit Maranville (14th) and Bill Terry (14th) getting the call. DiMaggio finally made it in 1955, and Berra got in easily on his second try, in 1972, with newcomer Sandy Koufax and 300-game winner Early Wynn, who had been denied three times. 'It is great to make it, whether it takes one, two, three or four years,' Berra said then. 'It doesn't matter.' It's been 10 years since a newly elected Hall of Fame duo matched up precisely with their years in the game. Randy Johnson and John Smoltz, from the class of 2015, both started in 1988 and finished in 2009. Now it's CC Sabathia and Ichiro Suzuki, who made their MLB debuts in 2001 and played their final games in 2019. Advertisement When speaking about Suzuki, Sabathia often mentions a game that served as a fulcrum in his career. On July 30, 2005, with Cleveland, Sabathia took the mound in Seattle after one of his worst starts ever: an eight-run shelling in Oakland. It brought his ERA to 5.24 and prompted a meaningful bullpen session with Indians pitching coach Carl Willis. 'I was trying to learn an out pitch,' Sabathia recalled last week. 'I was getting to two strikes and I was getting a lot of foul balls. I couldn't get a strikeout. And we went down to the bullpen in Oakland and he taught me how to throw a cutter, and it came out like an 82 mph slider. And I was like, 'Oh, this thing is good. I'm taking this into the game.'' Against Suzuki in Seattle, however, Sabathia's new cutter/slider met its match. 'I throw him a slider, (he) hits it off the window in Safeco,' Sabathia said, referring to a second-level restaurant at the Mariners' ballpark, then known as Safeco Field. 'I was like, 'All right, you know, that's Ichi. I could keep throwing this thing.' Comes back up later in the game, I throw it to him (on a 1-1) pitch, he takes it deep again. 'But that ends up being, like, the best pitch of my career, right? It changed my career, being able to throw that pitch. And he just peppered it off the window.' Sabathia was right about his new pitch. He lost that day in Seattle but went 9-1 over the final two months in 2005, a stretch that marked the beginning of a 7 1/2 year prime. Before that start in Seattle, Sabathia's career ERA was 4.26. From August 2005 through the end of the 2012 season, it was 3.10. All he needed was to weather Suzuki's two homers and keep his confidence in the new pitch – which, apparently, was easy to do. After all, as Sabathia said, 'That's Ichi.' (Top photo, l-r, of Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagner in January 2025: New York Yankees / Getty Images)
