By Ken Rosenthal / The Athletic
Ordinary people go on vacation. Ichiro Suzuki goes to Cooperstown.
“I don’t like to visit places,” Suzuki said, speaking through his interpreter, Allen Turner. “Out of anywhere in the world, besides the places I’ve lived, Cooperstown is the place I’ve visited the most.”
Suzuki, 50, trekked to the village in upstate New York, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, seven times from 2001 to 2016. He has toured the museum more than any active or recently retired player, according to Hall officials. And he almost certainly can start planning trip No. 8 for July 2025, when he is a virtual lock to become the first Japanese player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
No one will need to walk Suzuki through the Hall’s corridors or even through its basement, where other collectibles are stored. During his private tours, he studied the Hall’s artifacts, especially the equipment used by players of the past and the achievements of those who came before him.
As Suzuki ascended on various career lists, he wanted to learn more about the players he was passing. One of his visits came after he broke George Sisler’s single-season record with 262 hits in 2004. Another came after he surpassed Wee Willie Keeler with his ninth straight 200-hit season in 2009. Yet another came after he moved past Lou Gehrig on the career hits list in 2013, coinciding with his 4,000th hit between Japan and North America. (Pete Rose and Ty Cobb are the only players to reach 4,000 in the majors.)
“As players, you read about the players of the past, you see their numbers,” Suzuki said. “But when players of the present pass players of the past, that’s when the names come back. You go to Cooperstown and are able to get that connection. That’s what I think is important. By getting close to their numbers, their names come up and their history is told.”
Suzuki knew of the Hall while playing in Japan, but only in the abstract. After he arrived in the majors at 27, his skills made him an almost immediate sensation. His curiosity about the sport’s past grew.
“At the core of it all, Suzuki is a Renaissance man who loves every aspect of the game and his profession,” said Jeff Idelson, a past president of the Hall who hosted each of Suzuki’s visits. “In order for him to fully appreciate playing in the United States, he wanted to embrace the history as deeply as he could.”
The first under-the-radar journey Suzuki made to Cooperstown was after his rookie season with the Seattle Mariners. The night he was named the 2001 American League rookie of the year, he was sitting in Idelson’s office. During his news conference, a writer asked where he was.
“In the United States,” Idelson recalled Suzuki saying, without revealing anything more.
Idelson knew of Suzuki well before then, procuring for the Hall a bat from the outfielder’s run of seven straight batting titles with the Orix Blue Wave in Japan. When Suzuki broke Shoeless Joe Jackson’s rookie record for hits in a season, Idelson asked him for the bat. Suzuki sent another one he used that September.
During his first visit, Suzuki mostly wanted to see the museum’s art collection, Idelson said. But seeing the care with which the Hall treated its artifacts, he came to realize he should have donated the bat he used to break Jackson’s record. The next spring, he apologized to Idelson, and vowed to contribute whatever he could in the future.
The Hall’s current president, Josh Rawitch, said the museum now contains more than 25 artifacts from Suzuki. They include everything he wore, head to toe, for his 261st and 262nd hits in 2004 — not just his uniform, but also his elbow guard, sunglasses, wristbands, batting gloves and cleats. Suzuki also donated his batting helmet from Japan in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, the ball from his inside-the-park home run in the 2007 All-Star Game and his Miami Marlins uniform from his 3,000th hit in the majors.
The year before that hit, Idelson said he visited Suzuki’s home in Miami to dine with the player and his wife, Yumiko Fukushima. At the end of the night, Suzuki raced upstairs to retrieve the spikes he wore when he passed Babe Ruth on the career hits list. “Take these to Cooperstown,” he told Idelson. “They belong there.”
Five years after retiring, Suzuki continues to view equipment as almost sacred. When visiting the Hall, he said, he is especially fascinated by the old-timers’ bats and gloves.
“The basement, the archives, I don’t think everyone gets to go there,” Suzuki said. “To be able to touch the equipment of the players of the past, what they went through, what they dealt with ... you realize how blessed we are today to have the equipment we have.”
Every time he visits the Hall, Suzuki engages in the time-honored practice of holding bats to his ear, tapping their barrels and listening to how the wood vibrates.
“On my first visit I got to hold Shoeless Joe Jackson’s legendary bat, Black Betsy,” Suzuki told the Hall’s magazine, Memories and Dreams, in 2013. “I was overwhelmed by the high-pitched sound that resonated from that nearly 100-year-old instrument. I was astonished a bat could even produce such a beautiful sound. It was as if the wood was made of solid gold or silver, not wood.”
More than a decade later, Suzuki still marvels at how the older bats sound, “like metal bats, almost.” And he appreciates that even when he handles his own equipment at the Hall, the museum requires him to wear special gloves. “If we’re going to look after it for the rest of time, we kind of have to hold to that,” Rawitch said. “We don’t want anyone’s hand oils ruining the artifacts.”
Considering Suzuki’s love for the Hall, he surely is excited about his potential enshrinement in 2025, not that he is ready to discuss the possibility. One of his former managers, Bob Melvin, believes he should be the second unanimous selection, joining Mariano Rivera. Suzuki played 28 seasons in Japan and North America. He finished his career with a combined 4,367 hits, more than Rose’s major league record of 4,256. He was a rookie of the year, an MVP, a 10-time All-Star and a 10-time Gold Glove winner.
And yes, his seven visits to the Hall give him a different perspective.
“I don’t like to talk about what-ifs and what’s going to happen in the future,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But I think because of the relationship I have with the Hall of Fame, because I’ve been there so many times and how special I hold that place, I would have a little different experience than maybe a guy who hasn’t been there.”