Ichiro becomes third Mariners legend to enter Baseball Hall of Fame

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Shortly after he retired in 2019, Ichiro attended a Seattle Mariners game as a fan, sitting in the stands with his wife, Yumiko, for the first time.

“We did it the American way by eating hot dogs,” he said. “Of all the experiences baseball has given me, enjoying a hot dog at a game with a person most responsible for helping me reach this moment is the most special.”

It’s a story Ichiro told at the end of his 19-minute induction speech Sunday afternoon, the final one given among the five new members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ichiro delivered his speech in English, a speech his wife had helped him write and one he’d rehearsed many times, and then performed in front of thousands of fans here in Cooperstown, many of them wearing his Mariners No. 51 jersey.

Ichiro became the first Japanese-born player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and the third to formally represent the Seattle Mariners, after Ken Griffey Jr. (2016) and Edgar Martinez (2019).

He touched all the right notes in his speech. There was a hint of emotion in his voice as he talked about Yumiko. There was overriding reverence for the game. There was heartfelt inspiration as he detailed his soul-searching efforts to achieve his dreams.

And there was laughter. Lots and lots of laughter.

“People often measure me by my records: 3,000 hits, 10 gold gloves, 10 seasons of 200 hits,” he told the crowd, then pausing for effect. “Not bad, eh?”

He thanked the Hall of Fame and its staff; the Orix BlueWave, his team in Japan; the Mariners and the Yankees. He even thanked the voters from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who elected him.

“Well … all but one. And by the way, the offer for that writer to have dinner at my home has now expired,” he said, enunciating the last word and drawing a hearty round of laughs.

Which is what he’d hoped for, of course.

“Being a Hall of Famer wasn’t a goal,” he said soon after the induction ceremony, “but to make people laugh here was a goal.”

During his 19-year playing career in MLB, 14 with with the Mariners, Ichiro could be private and guarded. He loosened up around some teammates, but could seem reluctant to open up publicly.

Ichiro’s tone Sunday did not surprise CC Sabathia, a teammate with the New York Yankees, who joined Ichiro as part of the 2025 Hall of Fame class. (Sabathia, during his induction speech, joked that Ichiro “stole” the 2001 AL Rookie of the Year award from him.)

“For people to get to know his personality and how funny he is and how great of a teammate he was and how hard he worked, all those things you get to see day to day as a teammate, I think they came across here today,” Sabathia said. “He delivered a great speech.”

A theme of Ichiro’s speech was respect, and indeed that speaks to the ethos of his career.

“I could not have achieved the numbers the writers recognized me for without paying attention to the many small details every single day, consistently for all 19 seasons,” he said. “I personally cared for my equipment each day because I never wanted to risk a feeling of error due to a loose string on my glove or slip on the base paths because I didn’t clean my spikes.”

Ichiro also made his feelings about Seattle abundantly clear. He thanked the Mariners executives who originally brought him to the majors leagues — the late owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, along with Howard Lincoln, Chuck Armstrong and Pat Gillick — and the current front office (John Stanton, Jerry Dipoto, Kevin Martinez) that brought him back to Seattle in 2018.

“Thank you for bringing me back to the place I belong and allowing me to make Seattle my permanent home,” Ichiro said.

He spoke about dreams and goals — encouraging kids to dream big but also understand how to set goals for themselves — and thanked Hideo Nomo for inspiring him to dream about playing in MLB one day.

Nomo, in 1995, was the first Japanese pitcher in Ichiro’s lifetime to play in America.

“My eyes suddenly opened to the idea of challenging myself by going somewhere I never imagined,” Ichiro said.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred attended a party honoring Ichiro on Saturday night, hosted by the Mariners, and spoke of his visit to Japan this spring for the season-opening series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs.

Baseball’s popularity has reached a fever pitch in Japan over Shohei Ohtani, who helped deliver a World Series title for the Dodgers last fall.

“There was absolutely a mania over Shohei Ohtani, and it was really an amazing thing to observe,” Manfred said in a speech at the party.

Some of Manfred’s younger colleagues, as he described, remarked that they’d never seen anything like the hysteria surrounding Ohtani.

“I had a different thought. I thought, ‘I have seen something very similar to this,” said Manfred, who traveled to Japan twice in the 1990s for MLB all-star tours to play NPB stars, which included Ichiro.

“I do remember the reputation, the legend, the excitement that surrounded this player, and I thought it was very similar to what I saw this spring. Ichiro really is a trailblazer. There had never been a position player who came form Japan and enjoyed the kind of success at the height of his skills that Ichiro did. And in my view, he paved the way for the bevy of great Japanese players that we have in the game today. … And there is no doubt in my mind that he accelerated the internationalization of our game.”

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