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.

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

Ichiro Suzuki is the Japanese Zen master who was so dedicated to baseball that he carried his bats in a moisture-proof case and apologised to their creator when he broke one. "In Japan we take care of our instruments,