Baseball Hall of Fame class will include five players. Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner will join Dick Allen and Dave Parker in Cooperstown this summer, the BB

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 will be the first Japanese player enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame during the induction ceremony on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Baseball legend Ichiro Suzuki was announced as a baseball Hall of Famer on Tuesday, becoming the 62nd first-ballot Hall of Famer and the first Japanese baseball player to be elected to Cooperstown. There was no doubt that Ichiro, who played nine years in the Nippon Baseball League in Japan before 19 years in the MLB, was getting into the Hall.

Ichiro Suzuki had already cemented a strong, and likely everlasting baseball card market long before Tuesday’s almost unanimous vote for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, headlining the class of 2025.

Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player chosen for baseball’s Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous when he was elected along with CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner.