Ichiro finds special joy in his place of peace, the Hall of Fame, which he’s forever changed

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — He had walked through these massive red doors before — seven times before. But this was different.

This was visit No. 8, on a frosty, 14-degree Thursday morning in January. This time, Ichiro Suzuki was walking through these doors, of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, as one of the legends.

“This is my eighth time here in the Hall of Fame — and what an honor it is for me to be here as a Hall of Famer,” said the only man in history who can say he slashed 4,367 hits in the two greatest leagues on Earth, first in Japan’s Pacific League, then in Major League Baseball.

“This,” he said, “is just a very special moment.”

But is it fair to wonder if this was even bigger than his always-churning brain cells could possibly comprehend?

Babe Ruth has a plaque in this place. Willie Mays has a plaque in this place. Henry Aaron has a plaque in this place. But no one has ever walked through these doors with the sport-changing, Hall-changing, planet-changing possibilities of Ichiro.

As the first player elected from Japan, he enters the Hall as more than just a baseball player, more than just the transcontinental Hit King. He is literally a man who connects the continents.

It is 6,596 miles from Tokyo to Cooperstown. That seems like a lot. Only one man has ever been elected to the Hall of Fame who could shrink that journey: Ichiro Suzuki.

But even he hasn’t fully grasped that fact yet.

On Thursday, he strolled gracefully onstage at the Grandstand Theater for his official Hall of Fame press conference. He took a seat next to his longtime translator, Allen Turner, and the other two men who were elected to the Hall with him Tuesday, Billy Wagner and CC Sabathia.

Ichiro, CC and Billy, welcome to your future and forever home. pic.twitter.com/7a0kHTkPQz

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) January 23, 2025

Wagner humanized his prolonged path to election, by finding himself unable to stop the tears from flowing as he tried to capture the meaning of finally being elected, in his 10th and final spin on the ballot.

“It’s humbling,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s deserving.”

Sabathia flashed that signature smile and expressed his awe at the thought of “being in this museum forever.”

But Ichiro spent the next 34 minutes reminding us of why sparks fly every time he enters any room.

He was a man who played baseball so fast, for 19 spectacular major-league seasons. But on this day — with the words, HALL OF FAME, inscribed on his new jersey — he spoke so slowly. He uttered the words almost statesman-like, pausing to think carefully about every answer, and at times, every sentence.

He mustered only the slimmest of smiles as he invited the one mystery voter who left him off the ballot to stop by his house — “and we’ll have a drink together and have a good chat.”

He playfully revealed that his favorite artifact in the Hall is the plaque that was once chiseled for his dog, Ikky. (And yes, that really happened.)

He swirled a question around his brain about what he would say now to the rookie version of himself, then replied: “Believe in yourself. And not have any fear.”

But when the topic turned to how his election could rattle the Hall’s Richter scale once his plaque hangs in that gallery in July, Suzuki couldn’t wrap his mind around that thought.

Full disclosure: It was a question from me that tossed this ball in the air. Here’s how that went:

QUESTION: “Ichiro, I know that you’ve spoken about how the Hall of Fame has changed you and the way you look at the history of baseball. I wonder if you think that you have changed the Hall of Fame in some way, and the Hall of Fame now, in Japan, will be a shrine in a way that it never was before?”

ICHIRO (VIA TRANSLATOR): “I’m not able to answer that yet. You know, other people voted me in. Other people decide how I was. And so that’s a tough one to answer.”

He then listened to Turner translate his words — and realized he had one more thing to add.

“If I was up here,” he said, “saying, ‘Man, I changed the Hall of Fame,’ you would think I’m crazy.”

It was the quip of the day. Laughter rippled through the room. But if you want to know the truth, he’s about to think that the rest of us are crazy — because the Tokyo to Cooperstown highway is now open. And don’t be shocked if, by Induction Weekend in July, it’s nearly as jammed as the New York State Thruway.

On this side of the Pacific, do we even fathom the global magnetism of this dude? He’s a one-of-a-kind international baseball rock star. And he has blazed a trail from Nishi Kasugai-gun, the town of his birth, to the plaque gallery in Cooperstown, that looks more like a comet streaking across the baseball sky.

He came to America in 2001, trying to prove that he and his country were worthy of their place in this sport. More than 3,000 hits and 19 seasons later, the biggest baseball names from his land are now streaming across the sea.

The dollars these men are collecting are staggering the payroll structure. And when you point them toward the field, Shohei Ohtani and his countrymen are among the most magnetic attractions in the game.

But it all started with Ichiro. He turned baseball upside-down. And here’s a prediction: He’s not done.

Inside the Hall, they are widening their imagination as they look forward to life inside a museum that now has Ichiro as a part of it. They have no choice, of course, because this is happening.

“Ichiro’s election has the potential to bring an even wider international audience to the Hall of Fame and Museum than we have previously experienced,” the president of the Hall, Josh Rawitch, told The Athletic via text Thursday. “From those wanting to see his plaque or our new exhibit focused on the Transpacific Exchange of the Game, we expect even more fans to come from Japan and all around the world.”

We don’t know how many millions of baseball fans reside in Japan. But is it really that preposterous to visualize a world in which hundreds of thousands of them are about to place Cooperstown atop their list of North American travel destinations?

Or just think about six months from now, when Ichiro’s Induction Day arrives in Cooperstown on July 27. Nearly 90 years after the first Induction Day in 1936, the record for largest attendance at any ceremony is 82,000, for Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn in 2007.

Is it really a stretch to predict that we could see more than 100,000 spread out on the Cooperstown hillside to celebrate Ichiro, the immensely popular Sabathia and the rest of the Class of 2025? Why would it be?

Then also remember this: Is there any more passionate spokesperson for the magical baseball kingdom of Cooperstown than … yep … Ichiro Suzuki?

Have you ever heard of any other player who has visited the Hall of Fame seven times — all while still an active player? Want to guess why he kept traveling back to this place? Don’t bother. Ichiro told us himself this week why Cooperstown kept drawing him back.

On Tuesday evening, a few hours after learning he’d been elected, he told the media in Seattle all about his first trip to the Hall after his first season in America, in 2001. He’d just broken the all-time record for most hits in a season by a rookie, with 242. So he set off for upstate New York to learn more about the man who had set that record in 1911. That man was Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Suzuki was led into the basement back then, to the private archives, to hold the bat and feel the presence of Shoeless Joe. He was blown away by how the experience enabled him to “really get close” to a man who had been dead for half a century.

“So I was able to get close to him, and I was able to touch his stuff,” Ichiro said that night. “And I found out that he had shoes. I didn’t know that. I always thought that he didn’t wear shoes.”

But that day, he learned the truth — that there was only one game in which “Shoeless Joe” didn’t wear shoes. And from that moment on, Ichiro was hooked on Cooperstown. So he kept venturing back, year after year, to connect with the iconic players of yesteryear whose records he’d been chasing.

“It was almost like having a conversation with them,” Ichiro said. “And it’s just such a special feeling that you get there. So that’s why, for me, going to the Hall of Fame was special.”

Signs of greatness.

Ichiro reunites with the Ichi-Meter! pic.twitter.com/UitIjnLdLX

— National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum ⚾ (@baseballhall) January 23, 2025

He could have stopped this ad campaign with that. But no. He had more Cooperstown melodies to sing.

“You know, in this day and age, there’s so much stress, especially in the world we live in today,” he said. “But, man, there’s a town just for baseball. And you go there and you see maybe something that you experienced. … And you just feel that peace.”

There’s no indication that he’d been hired by the Cooperstown Travel Bureau to say any of this — but he still wasn’t finished. He then cast his gaze on the players of his sport. He needed to explain to them what they’re missing — by heading for the next tee time every winter instead of to “a town just for baseball.”

“I always felt like the Hall of Fame was for active players,” Suzuki said. “I really felt like all the players need to go, and they could feel just that peace that baseball brings. It’s not for retired guys. It’s for, really, the active players to go and get the peace that they need to keep playing.

“And so,” he said, “if there is a place that I recommend going to, that would be the place: Cooperstown, for sure, for everybody to go.”

Technically speaking, he was addressing those remarks to baseball players everywhere. But you know who else was listening? Japan was listening. All of it. Because his compatriots hang on every word he speaks and every move he makes.

Don’t you wonder how many of them have already booked their flights? Don’t you wonder how many of them will be streaming down Main Street in July? Don’t you wonder not just when that parade will start, but also when it will end … if ever?

We are thundering toward Cooperstown’s Summer of Ichiro, co-starring one of the most compelling classes in years, with CC, Wagner and the two men elected by the Classic Baseball Era Committee, Dick Allen and Dave Parker. But the Summer of Ichiro may never end.

So he walked through those massive red doors Thursday morning as a new Hall of Famer, ready to sign the placard where his plaque will reside, to tour the museum and to reconnect with Wagner and Sabathia — because they’ll be bonded by this shared experience forever.

But inside those doors, where an exhibit honoring baseball across the Pacific was under construction, there was already a different feeling in the air. Ichiro was back in town. And you could feel his footsteps reverberating — all the way from Cooperstown to Kyoto.

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(Top photo of Ichiro Suzuki: Hans Pennink / Associated Press)