Ichiro Suzuki has made even more history. The all-time great hitter is heading to Cooperstown, with C.C. Sabathia and Billy Wagner joining him.

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.

Ichiro Suzuki, the dominant contact hitter whose 19 years in the major leagues, mostly with the Seattle Mariners, became the first Asian player elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.