Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he is much more than that at home in Japan. Ichiro is a wellspring of national pride — like Shohei Ohtani now — and his fame across the Pacific was therapeutic as the national economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades.

Players are elected to the Hall of Fame provided they are named on at least 75% of ballots cast by eligible voting members of the BBWAA. With 394 ballots submitted in the 2025 election, candidates needed to receive 296 votes to be elected.

Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for baseball’s Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.

To no one's surprise, Ichiro Suzuki is a Baseball Hall of Famer. Also to no one's surprise, he had the most on-brand reaction to this legacy-defining development. On Thursday, the Seattle Mariners released a video of Ichiro receiving the phone call with the news