Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he's much more than that in Japan. Back home, he's a wellspring of national pride, much like Shohei Ohtani now. His triumphs across the Pacific buoyed the nation as Japan's economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

Ichiro, who rose to global superstardom with the Seattle Mariners, was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot, but fell one vote short of becoming the second player voted in unanimously. Former New York Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera became the first player voted in unanimously in 2019.

Global baseball’s hit king Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player elected to Major League baseball’s Hall of Fame on Tuesday, just one vote shy of unanimous selection. The Seattle Mariners star headlines the 2025 Hall of Fame class to be enshrined at Cooperstown,