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 Suzuki is the Japanese Zen master who was so dedicated to baseball that he carried his bats in a moisture-proof case and apologised to their creator when he broke one."In Japan we take care of our instruments,

Ichiro Suzuki, whose uncanny hitting talent made him a Seattle Mariners icon, became the first Japanese player elected to Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame on Tuesday.