Ichiro Suzuki, now a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, had an incredible career: NPR

For Ichiro Suzuki, it’s not about records or achievements, he says.

It’s not that the Seattle Mariners great doesn’t have them – in fact, there were plenty in his star-studded career: Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, ten-time All-Star, owner of the record of success in a single season. , one of the few MLB players to record 3,000 hits or more.

But when asked what stands out from his career, Suzuki, always thoughtful, has long answered that it is the moments of emotion that will mark him the most.

Moments like Opening Day in Seattle in 2018, when fans stood to applaud his return home to the team where his remarkable Major League career began. And like his final game in an MLB uniform, at the Tokyo Dome in Japan, where a standing ovation lasted several minutes as he left the field for the final time, and fans lingered for hours to express their gratitude.

“When I look at (my records) now, they don’t seem that important,” Suzuki said after the Tokyo Dome match. “After experiencing this moment today, everything else seems so small.”

Now Suzuki is headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a selection so obvious that only A nearly 400 voters refused to include it on their ballot. And at a time when Japanese players have become more prominent than ever in the United States, Suzuki will be the first Japanese-born player in the Hall of Fame.

“In 2001, probably no one on Earth thought this day would come,” he said Tuesday during an emotional news conference in Seattle. “Being able to reach this day is a feeling I can’t express in words.”

His career refuted doubts about Japanese players

When Suzuki arrived in the United States in 2001, he had already been a star in Japan for years. He debuted in 1992 with Orix BlueWave, a team based in Kobe, and it quickly became apparent that he was a powerhouse.

His rise to stardom occurred at a time when the national mood in Japan was at an all-time low. The economic bubble of the 1980s burst, and in 1995 an earthquake struck near Kobe and killed thousands.

People needed something to give them hope, said Kiyoteru Tsutsui, a sociology professor at Stanford who is interested in Japanese baseball.

Then, shortly after the earthquake, the young star led Kobe’s team to a Pacific League pennant and a Japan Series title. “It’s like in Hollywood movies,” Tsutsui said. “Everyone in Japan knew him and he was the superstar of Japanese baseball.”

That experience changed the way Suzuki viewed his role as a baseball player in the community, he said Tuesday. “At first, some people said, ‘Now is not the time to play baseball.’ We felt it too,” he said. “But we realized that as professional baseball players, you can achieve things that ordinary people can’t achieve.”

But his move to the major leagues was not considered a certainty. At the time, only a few Japanese players had come to the United States, and they were all pitchers who didn’t need to field or hit every day.

Suzuki, on the other hand, was an outfielder. He was expected to play every day, and his small frame – a slim 5’10” – only added to the doubts.

“There’s been a lot of criticism and questions about him, whether he’s too small or doesn’t have the stamina to withstand the rigors of a 162-game major league schedule,” Tsutsui said. “Some experts predicted it would fail.”

Suzuki knew his performance would be used to judge other Japanese players in the future. “I remember playing with that pressure on my shoulders,” he said Tuesday.

Now, Japanese players are more important than ever in the MLB. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher-slugger Shohei Ohtani is baseball’s biggest star.

An almost unanimous selection

Only one player was selected to the Hall of Fame by unanimous vote: Mariano Rivera, the Yankees closer who helped New York win five World Series from the mid-1990s to the 2000s.

Suzuki was thought to have a chance to be the unanimous second choice. But he was one vote short: He was named on 393 of the 394 possible votes for the Hall of Fame, or 99.7 percent.

The Baseball Hall of Fame does not make ballots public. Some voters choose to do so, but others keep their ballots private. As of Wednesday, the voter who refused to choose Suzuki had not yet come forward.

On sports broadcasts and on social media, commentators, fans and players complained about the voter. “Whoever didn’t vote for Ichiro needs to come forward and explain. To avoid being pilloried, I would just like to hear the reasoning, because I can’t understand a “only reason,” said longtime analyst Bob Costas on MLB Network.

Voters can nominate up to 10 players on their ballot. Some speculated that the mystery voter thought Ichiro was a lock and instead used his 10 selections strategically in order to keep other players eligible for future ballots. Or maybe it was just a mistake.

Throughout his career, Suzuki has never been one to get too rattled or offended. On Tuesday, he said it was “really good” not to have achieved unanimity.

“Being imperfect is good, I think,” he said. “In life, it is because we are imperfect that we can continue to move forward.”