Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he is much more than that at home in Japan. Ichiro is a wellspring of national pride — like Shohei Ohtani now — and his fame across the Pacific was therapeutic as the national economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades.

At a Hall of Fame news conference, Ichiro joined the ranks of many people around the globe in wondering why he didn’t get that one vote.