My ballot: Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Andy Pettitte, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins.
The last time I interviewed Ichiro Suzuki was spring training of 2019, when he was trying to earn a spot with the Seattle Mariners. He was 45 and could no longer hit at the level of his heyday.
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The Mariners brought back Ichiro for the sole purpose of having him play in a pair of season-opening games at Tokyo Dome against the then-Oakland A’s. But he had other ideas. He showed up to camp in Peoria, Arizona, in his usual great shape, trying to make the team. But time is the usual master. And that wasn’t in the cards.
The Mariners picked him up again last season. But his return after five seasons with the New York Yankees and Miami Marlins lasted just two months. He strained a right calf muscle early in that spring’s tour and never got back into shape. They released him on May 3, 2018, with nine singles in 44 at-bats, his batting average of .205 well below what turned out to be a lifetime mark of .311.
As spring 2019 began, a few of us interviewed Ichiro in a small clubhouse scrum. He speaks fluent English, but still uses a personal Japanese translator, just as Shohei Ohtani does now.
I asked Ichiro if it was scary to come back as a major league pitcher after not swinging a bat in a live game in almost a year.
“How would you feel if you hadn’t written a story for a year?” he responded without even waiting for the translation.
“Let’s put it this way, Ichiro,” I said. “I’ve written a lot more stories in the past year than you have.”
We left it that way. As it turned out, he went 2-for-24 that spring and his legendary career ended with the games in his home country, where fans in the Dome gave him some rousing ovations.
Ichiro was the most problematic baseball player I’ve dealt with in a writing career that enters its 50th season next year. He was always available, but always curt, bordering on total disrespect. That day I promised not to interview him again until he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Well, that day has arrived. He’s the leading new candidate on a ballot with a few viable players, but not filled from top to bottom with Major League Baseball’s best and brightest. I’ve been voting since 1992, and long ago I came to the conclusion that this is the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of the Very Good.
Ichiro is an all-time great player and a sure first-ballot selection. Despite our strange relationship, he has my vote. He will be the first Japanese player to be inducted into the Hall on July 27.
He started his career in Seattle in 2001, coming from the Orix Blue Wave in the Japanese Pacific League and lasted there until mid-2012, when he was traded to the Yankees.
Along the way, he enjoyed 10 consecutive seasons of 200 hits or more, breaking the Major League record with 262 in 2004. During that span, he collected 2,533 of his 3,089 Major League hits.
Ichiro added his 1,278 hits in nine seasons playing for the Blue Wave, collecting 4,367 hits and a Hall of Fame career on two continents.
People have asked me if he will be the second unanimously elected official in history after Mariano Rivera in the Class of 2019. I doubt it because his relationship with many of the voting writers has been as tenuous as mine. Someone or two will keep him off their ballot.
During a lengthy interview in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse, he sat there clipping his fingernails. You could hear the clicking on the digital audio. In retrospect, it was funny, but disrespectful. If I had done that to him, he would have collapsed.
In the final days of his first stint with the Mariners, he reached the 2,500-hit plateau during a game in Arizona. He was asked if 3,000 was the next big milestone. He didn’t need a translation.
“Stupid question,” he barked, without batting an eyelash.
I turned to his interpreter and mused, “Well, I guess he didn’t like that question.”
When he was on his way to the 3,000-hit mark with the Marlins in 2016, I asked him about his goals as he got older.
“You know, I think you have your long-term goals and your short-term goals,” he said. “It just varies from player to player. Maybe you have that as a long-term goal. Some guys might not. We have a difference of opinion there, I think.”
Asked about his short-term goals, Ichiro replied: “No more interviews.”
In San Diego, he tied and passed Pete Rose’s hit mark of 4,256, tying his in the Major Leagues and Nippon Professional Baseball. The late Rose, of course, did it all in the Majors, leading him to joke:
“I’m not trying to take anything away from Ichiro, he’s had a Hall of Fame career, but next thing you know, they’re counting his high school hits.”
During the postgame presser, the balls from the two now famous hits were on the podium.
“Are those balls going to the Hall of Fame?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that I’m not giving them to you.”
John Boggs, his agent and business manager, presented Ichiro that day with a bat that Tony Gwynn once used during a career in which he had 3,141 hits before being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2007 with Cal Ripken Jr.
“Ichiro was pretty impressed,” said Boggs, who also interacted with Gwynn in the same capacity.
Ichiro has always had a keen sense of baseball history. He has visited the Hall of Fame many times under the guise of secrecy, where several Hall officials have taken him to the basement archives to view an exhibit of interesting artifacts. A very small portion of these artifacts can actually be seen in the museum itself.
Barring unforeseen setbacks on January 21, it will no longer be a secret. He will forever be a member of the Hall. I look forward to that next interview.
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