Ichiro Suzuki is set to become the first Japanese player to make it to baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is likely to be the next.

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,