Seattle Mariners legend Ichiro Suzuki was elected to the Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the votes, which means there was only one person out of 394 who did not vote for him.
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In view of Ichiro's resume, that one writer may have a hard case for defending his decision.
Notably, he is a 10x All-Star, earned 10 consecutive Gold Gloves, and currently holds the single-season hits record (262 hits- 2004 season).
Throughout his 19-year MLB career, Suzuki accumulated a total of 3,089 hits (.311 batting average). Not to mention, before coming to Majors, he played professionally over in Japan, where he already racked up 1,278 hits by the age of 27, this would make him the all-time hits leader if you combine the tally from both the NPB and MLB.
To emphasize his dominance, the Aichi, Japan native won the 2001 AL MVP and Rookie of the Year award during his first season in the Majors.
While speaking to reporters following the news, Ichiro had a message to the lone writer who didn't give him the vote.
Ichiro Suzuki offers to have the only writer that did not vote him into the Baseball Hall of Fame over to his house to "have a drink together and have a good chat" 🤣 pic.twitter.com/FlMzAbEp4R
— SNY (@SNYtv) January 23, 2025
"I was able to receive many votes from the writers," Ichiro said (via a translator). "I'm grateful for them. But there's one writer that I wasn't able to get a vote from. I would like to invite him over to my house and we will have a drink together. And we will have a good chat. Very grateful to be here and thank you."
To point out, Suzuki's former teammate, Derek Jeter, also was one vote shy of being an unanimous first-ballot inductee in 2020. That is to say, among all the legends to ever play the sport, there is only one player to ever get every Hall of Fame vote, and that is New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera.
Related: Ichiro Suzuki's Net Worth: How He Made More Than $50K Per MLB Hit
