The Hammer
By 
Building on Erik’s post, I wanted to highlight the absolute catastrophe of the last year for baseball’s very best players:
That’s seven Hall of Fame players. To put it in perspective, we lost seven Hall of Famers combined from 2016 to 2019: Frank Robinson in 2019; Willie McCovey and Red Schoendienst in 2018; Roy Halladay, Jim Bunning and Bobby Doerr in 2017; and Monte Irvin in 2016.
The last time as many as four Hall of Famers died was 2010, when Ron Santo, Robin Roberts, Bob Feller and Sparky Anderson all passed — though Anderson had earned induction as a manager, not a player. Most years since the turn of the century, it’s one or two Hall of Famers; in 2004 and 2008, it was none.
With Aaron, Lasorda, and Sutton we’re at three HOFers in 2021, and it’s only been 21 days. Not all of these deaths can be assigned to COVID-19, but there’s obviously a relationship between increased mortality for the elderly and this utterly horrifying toll.