Ichiro Suzuki is set to become the first Japanese player to make it to baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is likely to be the next.

Shohei Ohtani instantly became a force to be reckoned with during his 2018 rookie season in the MLB. He played in 104 games that season, hitting .285/.361/.564 with 22 home runs and 61 runs batted in.

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.

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.

With Ichiro Suzuki somehow not getting inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame unanimously on the first ballot, all signs point to this next icon of the game potentially being able to do what one voter decided should not be Suzuki's destiny.

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TOKYO – Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball ... Nomo had a similar effect when he debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995. Ichiro topped that interest level, wrote Robert Whiting in ...

Global baseball's hit king Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player elected to the Major League Baseball's (MLB) Hall of Fame on Tuesday (Jan 21), just one vote shy of unanimous selection.

TOKYO — Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball ... Nomo had a similar effect when he debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995. Ichiro topped that interest level, wrote Robert Whiting in ...

FILE - Seattle Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki, of Japan, hits a solo home run during the sixth inning of a baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels, Sunday, May 31, 2009, in Anaheim, Calif.

During the gestation period for the place that would become baseball’s sacred shrine, Time Magazine, the New York Times and other periodicals referred to it as the “Baseball Hall of Fame.” Then, when the stately brick building housing the Hall officially opened in 1939,

So the first “true” Ray in Cooperstown — whether elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America or one of the era committees (that handle older players and non-playing candidates) — likely will be someone who spent most of his career in Tampa Bay and/or did much of his best work there.