Players are elected to the Hall of Fame provided they are named on at least 75% of ballots cast by eligible voting members of the BBWAA. With 394 ballots submitted in the 2025 election, candidates needed to receive 296 votes to be elected.

Ichiro Suzuki has 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.

Yankees legend Hideki Matsui played seven seasons for the Yankees. It wasn’t until his final one, in 2009, with the addition of lefty ace CC Sabathia, that he managed to get that elusive World Series ring.

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Ichiro Suzuki, whose outstanding play in Japanese baseball led him to international stardom in the major leagues, was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he's much more than that in Japan. Back home, he's a wellspring of national pride, much like Shohei Ohtani now. His triumphs across the Pacific buoyed the nation as Japan's economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades of the 1990s and into the 2000s.

The five newcomers, including Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 27, 2025, in Cooperstown, New York.

Ichiro falls a vote short of being the second unanimous choice ever. CC makes it in his first year of eligibility, Wagner in his last. The recent ballot glut has cleared.