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Baseball's Hall of Fame has three new members this morning, including Seattle Mariner star Ichiro Suzuki, the first Japanese player in the Hall. NPR's Becky Sullivan has his story.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: It took only eight games in the Major Leagues for Ichiro Suzuki to command the nation's attention.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: Ground ball, base hit in the right field.
SULLIVAN: His Mariners were playing the Oakland A's. Seattle had a slim lead in the eight inning when the As came out swinging. With a runner on base, someone slapped a hit to right field, where the Mariners' new outfielder from Japan was waiting to throw the runner out.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: Holy smoke, a laser beam strike from Ichiro.
SULLIVAN: By the time Ichiro came to the states in 2001, he had been a star for years in Japan, where he played for a team in Kobe. He debuted there in '92, at a time when the national mood in Japan was at a low. The bubble economy of the 1980s was bursting. and in 1995, disaster struck in Kobe when a massive earthquake killed thousands. People needed something to feel hopeful about, said Kiyoteru Tsutsui, a sociology professor at Stanford who follows Japanese baseball.
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KIYOTERU TSUTSUI: And in that year, remarkably, I mean, it's like a Hollywood movie, his team, based in Kobe, won Japan's championship after the earthquake hit Kobe hard. I mean, everybody in Japan knew him, and he was the superstar in Japan's baseball.
SULLIVAN: Here in the U.S. though, there was skepticism about Japanese players. Only a few had made it to the major leagues, and they were pitchers who didn't have to field or bat every day. Ichiro was an outfielder, a pretty small guy, too, and there were a lot of doubts about him.
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TSUTSUI: Whether he's too small, he doesn't have the stamina to withstand the rigors of Major League schedule of 162 games, actually, some experts predicted that he would fail.
SULLIVAN: When he arrived in Seattle in 2001, the reception was not all good.
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ICHIRO SUZUKI: (Speaking Japanese).
SULLIVAN: During his first training camp, he said, people told him to go back to Japan. but things changed fast. That year, Suzuki won rookie of the year and American League most valuable player, just the second player in baseball history to do that. At the plate, he was a terrific batter in the small ball way, with singles and stolen bases to spare. He was an All-Star 10 times. He had more than 3,000 hits over his Major League career. After stints in New York and Miami, Suzuki retired a Mariner in 2019. His last game with the Mariners was in Japan. The crowd at the Tokyo Dome gave him an enormous ovation.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Ichiro Suzuki.
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UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: For the final time coming off a Major League field.
SULLIVAN: Suzuki told reporters afterwards his records and achievements didn't feel important anymore by comparison.
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SUZUKI: (Speaking Japanese).
SULLIVAN: That moment, he said made everything else seem so small. Now he's come to the Hall of Fame at a moment when Japanese players are more prominent than ever in Major League Baseball, and the doubts about them are gone for good. Becky Sullivan, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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