Ichiro becomes third Mariners legend to enter Baseball Hall of Fame

Adam Jude, The Seattle Times on Jul 27, 2025

Published in Baseball

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COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Baseball’s hit king has his crowning achievement.

Ichiro was formally inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, joining Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez as the third player to represent the Seattle Mariners at baseball’s most hallowed grounds.

Ichiro is the first player from Japan to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, after a 28-year career between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball during which he amassed more hits — 4,367 — than anyone in the history of the sport.

Ichiro’s 262 hits in 2004 broke George Sisler’s 84-year-old record, a feat that may never been surpassed.

“It’s definitely an honor at this time to be able to represent Japanese baseball,” Ichiro said Saturday, through longtime interpreter Allen Turner.

After nine seasons with the Orix BlueWave, during which he won three MVP awards and seven batting titles, Ichiro came to Seattle as a 27-year-old rookie in 2001 and took MLB by storm, winning the AL MVP and Rookie of the Year awards and lifting the Mariners to a record 116 wins.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred attended a party honoring Ichiro on Saturday night, hosted by the Mariners, and spoke of his visit to Japan this spring for the season-opening series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs.

Baseball’s popularity has reached a fever pitch in Japan over Shohei Ohtani, who helped deliver a World Series title for the Dodgers last fall.

“There was absolutely a mania over Shohei Ohtani, and it was really an amazing thing to observe,” Manfred said in a speech at the party.

Some of Manfred’s younger colleagues, as he described, remarked that they’d never seen anything like the hysteria surrounding Ohtani.

“I had a different thought. I thought, ‘I have seen something very similar to this,” said Manfred, who traveled to Japan twice in the 1990s for MLB all-star tours to play NPB stars, which included Ichiro.

“I do remember the reputation, the legend, the excitement that surrounded this player, and I thought it was very similar to what I saw this spring. Ichiro really is a trailblazer. There had never been a position player who came form Japan and enjoyed the kind of success at the height of his skills that Ichiro did. And in my view, he paved the way for the bevy of great Japanese players that we have in the game today. … And there is no doubt in my mind that he accelerated the internationalization of our game.”

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