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.

Ichiro, who rose to global superstardom with the Mariners, was elected in his first year on the ballot, but fell one vote short of becoming the second player voted in unanimously.