(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Illustration Hall of Fame Class by Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame)
 Ichiro Suzuki one of three players elected into Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame
Nederlands
  BUNKYŌ / TŌKYŌ (Japan) -
The Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame introduced four new members on Thursday (January 16), three players and one umpire.
The announcement was made in the Yakyū Dendō (Hall of Fame) of the Yakyū Taiiku Hakubutsukan (Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum), which is located in the Tōkyō Dōmu in Bunkyō, which is a special ward in the Tōkyō Metropolis.
The Tokyo Dome is the home-site of wellknown Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB)-club Yomiuri Giants.
Players Ichiro Suzuki, Hitoki Iwase and Masayuki Kakefu and Umpire Hiroya Tomizawa are the four newest members and were all in attendance during the introduction.
They were introduced by dignitaries from the Hall of Fame and all gave acceptance speeches.
The new inductees were also addressed by legendary Sadaharu Oh, who is a Hall of Fame-member since 1994.
51-year old outfielder Ichiro Suzuki received 323 of 349 votes (92.6%) in his first year of eligibility.
He and 50-year old pitcher Hitoki Iwase were inducted into the Players Division of the Hall of Fame.
69-year old third baseman Masayuki Kakefu was selected for the Experts Division and 93-year old former umpire Hiroya Tomizawa also entered the Hall of Fame.
A total of 222 players have now been elected into the Hall of Fame, which opened in 1959.
Players are eligible for the Japanese Hall of Fame five years after retirement.
Candidates need 75 percent of the votes to get elected.
In this case, a minimum of 262 votes were needed.
Ichiro Suzuki became the seventh player in history to be elected into the Japanese Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
The first was righthanded pitcher Victor Starffin in 1960.
Starffin, who was born in 1916 in what wat then the Russian Empire, was the first professional pitcher with 300 wins and is the all-time leader with 83 shutouts.
The second was wellknown first baseman Sadaharu Oh in 1994.
Oh played in 22 NPB-seasons (1959-1980) for Yomiuri Giants and is the all-time homerun-leader with 868, which also makes him the world-leader (106 more than Major League-leader Barry Bonds, who has 762).
After his career, Oh was a longtime Manager of Yomiuri Giants (1984-1988) and Fukuoka Daiei/SoftBank Hawks (1995-2008).
Oh, who became a worldwide baseball-ambassador, won 20 Japan Series (11 as player, two as manager, seven as executive).
In 2006, Oh was the Manager of the National Team of Japan that won the first World Baseball Classic with Suzuki as one of his players.
The other first-year electees are righthanded pitcher Hideo Nomo (2014), lefthanded pitcher Kimiyasu Kudoh (2016), leftfielder Tomoaki Kanemoto (2018) and outfielder/DH Hideki Matsui (2018).
...Ichiro Suzuki...
...Baseball Card 1997... |
Nomo played in five NPB-seasons (1990-1994), then twelve in the Major League (1995-2005; 2008).
In 1988, he played for Japan during the Olympic Games in Seoul (South Korea).
Kudoh is the NPB-recordholder with 29 seasons (1981-2010) and won 16 Japan Series (eleven as player, five as manager).
Kanemoto played in 21 NPB-seasons (1992-2012), then was a manager for three years.
He is the world-record holder for most consecutive games played (1,492) without missing a single inning.
And Matsui played in ten NPB-seasons (1993-2002, nine All-Star Games, three times MVP, won three Japan Series), before playing in ten Major League-seasons (2003-2012).
Rightfielder Ichiro Suzuki played in 19 Major League-seasons (2001-2019), appearing in 2,653 games and collecting 3,009 basehits.
After completion of his first Major League-season, Suzuki was named both Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player of the American League.
In his first ten seasons (2001-2010), he was selected for the All-Star Game annually.
In 2016, Suzuki set a record for Most Basehits in one season with 262 at age 42.
Before coming to the Major League, the outfielder already had played in nine seasons (1992-2000) in NPB for Orix BlueWave.
In 1994, he became the first player in NPB-history with 200 basehits in one season.
In Japan, Suzuki played in 951 games and recorded 1,278 basehits, including 118 homeruns.
In his NPB-career, Suzuki played in seven All-Star Games and was the MVP of the Pacific League three times.
He also was the Best Hitter in seven consecutive seasons and in 1996, he won the Japan Series.
In his 28 seasons combined, Suzuki played in 3,604 games, hitting 4,367 basehits, including 235 homeruns.
His total hits are the most all-time worldwode for players in NPB and the Major League combined.
In 2006 and 2009, Ichiro Suzuki played for the Samurai Japan-team that won the first two editions of the World Baseball Classic.
...Hitoki Iwase...
...Baseball Card 2010... |
...Masayuki Kakefu...
...Baseball Card 2013... |
Closer Hitoki Iwase played in 19 NPB-seasons (1999-2014; 2016-2018), all with Chunichi Dragons, with whom he won the Japan Series in 2007.
Iwase was selected for ten All-Star Games between 2000 and 2013.
The lefthanded closer set a season-record with 46 saves in 2005 and is the all-time leader in NPB with 407 saves and 1,002 games pitched.
He finished his career with a 59-51 record, 841 strikeouts and a 2.31 ERA.
In 2007, Iwase threw a combined Perfect Game with Daisuke Yamai during the Japan Series.
In 2004, Iwase was a member of the National Team of Japan that won the Bronze Medal in the Olympic Games in Athens (Greece).
A year earlier, he won the Gold Medal with Japan in the Asian Championship, which then was held in Sapporo (Japan).
In 2007, Iwase again won Gold in the Asian Championship in Taiwan.
In 2008, Iwase participated with Japan in the Olympic Games in Beijing (China), where the team finished in fourth place.
In 2010, Iwase was credited with his 250th save and was inducted into Meikyukai, a Hall of Fame that honors played born after 1926.
When a player reaches 2,000 basehits, 200 victories or 250 saves in NPB or the Major League or combined, he automatically enters this Hall of Fame.
Third baseman Masayuki Kakefu, nicknamed 'Mr. Tigers', played in 15 NPB-seasons (1974-1988), all for Hanshin Tigers for whom he was a coach in 2016 and 2017 and then also managed a Minor League-team.
In his career, Kakefu collected 1,656 basehits, including 349 homeruns, playing in 1,625 games.
He batted in 1,019 runs.
Former Umpire Hiroya Tomizawa, nicknamed 'Tommy', was the fourth inductee, voted in by a special committee.
He was an umpire in the Central League, one of the two leagues in NPB, for 36 seasons (1955-1990) in which he was assigned to 3,776 games, which was the record through 1991.
Tomizawa worked nine NPB All-Star Games and nine Japan Series in his long career.
During the 1978 Japan Series, there was a famous moment in Game 7 between Yakult Swallows and Hankyu Braves.
Tomizawa was an outffield-umpire when Katsuo Osugi homered for Yakult.
Hawks-Manager Toshiharu Ueda then argued for over an hour with Tomizawa, stating that the homerun was foul.
(January 16)
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