It’s a good thing that the 394 ballots cast in this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame elections were anonymous. If not, one voter would have seen the city of Seattle forever closed to them.
That’s because Seattle Mariners all-star Ichiro Suzuki was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown with 99.7% of the vote—the joint second-highest score ever; short of perfect by the opinion of one single person.
MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer described the entry as a conclusion to “one of the sport’s most remarkable journeys.”
Retired in 2019, this is Ichiro’s first year of eligibility for Cooperstown, and like his debut season—all the way back in 2001—he didn’t worry about needing to make a second impression.
That year he set the tone for the most consistently excellent career in baseball, leading the league in hits, stolen bases, and batting average all whilst shining defensively and collecting both the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year Awards, becoming only the second man to do so.
This deluge of stats, led by Ichiro’s “mystic” bat control, saw him claim the MLB record for best season batting average (.372) and most hits in a season (262)
A release from the Hall of Fame website said that from 2006 through 2010, Ichiro led MLB in hits every season. His 10 straight years with 200 or more hits tied the MLB record. Over his first 10 seasons with the Mariners, he was named to 10 All-Star Games, won an All-Star MVP after scoring the first-ever in-the-park home run, won 10 Gold Glove Awards, and earned AL MVP votes in nine different years.
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At the close of his career, Ichiro had played 2,653 MLB games, batted .311, and maintained a .355 on-base percentage. He had already totaled 1,278 hits before he ever played for the Mariners, leaving him with 4,367 total hits—which if one includes Nippon Professional Baseball as a ‘major league’ makes him the hittiest baseball player in the sport’s history.
He is one of only seven players in history with at least 3,000 hits and 500 stolen bases in the MLB.
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Kramer however opts for his impact as a human: a cultural icon and international bridge-builder who played with “a singular focus on perfecting his craft,” and demonstrated a never-before-seen work ethic and professionalism to a new generation of players on both sides of the Pacific.
In Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, every time Ichiro stepped up to the plate it became an event. He played the starring role in the Mariners 2001 MLB record season of 116 wins. Kramer suggested the city will see Ichiro as not just a Hall-of-Famer, but their Hall-of-Famer.
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