The BBWAA released 314 Hall of Fame ballots to the public on Tuesday, but the most interesting ballot was nowhere to be found.
While 314 ballots from the 2020 election have been made public, 81 remain private, meaning the one voter who did not vote for Derek Jeter will stay -- at least for now -- anonymous.
When Jeter was elected on Jan. 21, he received 99.7 percent of the vote, missing out on becoming the second-ever player (Mariano Rivera in 2019 was the first) to be elected in unanimous fashion.
After the results came out, the race to identify which voter left Jeter off his or her ballot commenced. But the voter did not reveal the ballot beforehand and has chosen to remain private after the fact.
In the hours after he was elected, Jeter didn't seem bothered at all by the one voter who omitted him.
"Well, I look at all the votes that I got," Jeter said. "It takes a lot of votes to get elected in the Hall of Fame. Trying to get that many people to agree on something is pretty difficult to do. That's not something that's on my mind, I'm just extremely excited and honored to be elected."
When it comes to the one BBWAA member who didn't vote for Jeter, the identity of that person is far less interesting than their reasoning. Did they submit a blank ballot? Did they vote for others over Jeter because they felt no one should get in on the first ballot? Did they think Jeter wasn't worthy for some strange reason?
For now, that voter remains anonymous. And this whole turn of events reinforces that something needs to change. Hall of Fame voters need to be accountable, and should not have the option of remaining anonymous.