Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

It should have been a rollicking buddy comedy, or maybe a documentary backed by twinkling pianos: Two ballplayers — a big guy and a little guy — driving together along winding country roads to Cooperstown, N.Y.

CC Sabathia wishes it had happened. His major-league seasons matched precisely with Ichiro Suzuki’s, from 2001 through 2019. But while Suzuki, the wizardly hit king, has made seven pilgrimages to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Sabathia, the redoubtable ace, stayed away until a post-career trip with his son.

“The first time I walked into the plaque room, I almost cried — like, I had no idea,” Sabathia said. “It’s something I think every player should see. It gives you a North Star to shoot for. I wish I would have taken Ichiro up and been driving up there every offseason to be inspired.”

Sabathia and Suzuki — teammates for three seasons with the Yankees — are now linked forever in baseball’s hallowed gallery of immortals. Both were elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot Tuesday, with Billy Wagner joining them on his 10th and final try.

The trio will be honored in Cooperstown on July 27 with Dick Allen and Dave Parker, MVP sluggers who were elected by committee vote last month. Allen died in 2020.

Candidates need 75 percent of the vote to be elected by the writers, and Suzuki was nearly unanimous, collecting 393 of 394 votes. Sabathia received 342 votes (86.8 percent) and Wagner, who missed by five votes last year, easily cleared the threshold this time with 82.5 percent. The welcome call moved him to tears.

“It’s not been an easy 10 years to sit here and swallow a lot of the things that you have to swallow,” Wagner said. “The only thing I thought I did well was I didn’t blow a save for 10 years.”

Wagner converted 422 saves, with a 2.31 ERA, in a career that began in 1995 with a nine-year stint for the Houston Astros. He was later an All-Star for the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, who traded him to Boston for a brief stop in 2009. Wagner pitched one more season, making another All-Star team for the Atlanta Braves in 2010.

He retired to spend more time with his family — a son, Will, made his MLB debut last summer as an infielder for Toronto — and ended with just 903 career innings, the fewest of any Hall of Famer. But those innings were dominant enough to make Wagner the first Hall of Famer since Addie Joss — who last pitched in 1910 — with a career WHIP under 1.00.

Wagner was the prototype of the modern bullpen beast, ahead of his time with a career strikeout rate of nearly 12 per nine innings.

“It has evolved, (but) I still think the game between the lines is the greatest thing ever,” Wagner said. “I still think the hardest pitch to hit is a good fastball.”

Wagner is the first left-handed reliever in the Hall of Fame, and Suzuki its first Japanese member. He played his first nine professional seasons in Japan and joined the Seattle Mariners at age 27, seemingly too late to make it to Cooperstown.

“I don’t think anybody in this whole world thought that I would be a Hall of Famer,” Suzuki said, but the Mariners — who were bleeding superstars from their late-1990s heyday — believed he could be the first high-impact hitter from Japan.

They secured his rights in November 2000 with a $13.125 million posting fee to the Orix Blue Wave — and from the very start, Suzuki was one of a kind. He held his bat regally, like a fencer in an en garde pose, engaging the pitcher with a tug of his sleeve. His slashing swing propelled him from the box, and he excelled with unrivaled consistency.

In each of his first 10 seasons, all with Seattle, Suzuki collected at least 200 hits and a Gold Glove award. Nobody else has ever done this in any stretch of five seasons. His 2001 debut was a sensation: He lifted the Mariners to 116 victories, tying the major-league record, while winning a batting title (.350) and leading the majors in hits (242) and stolen bases (56).

Suzuki was named American League Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year for those efforts, and in 2004 he added another batting title, at .372. In doing so, he broke George Sisler’s single-season record for hits with 262.

Sisler had set the record, with 257, for the St. Louis Browns in 1920. When Suzuki traveled to St. Louis for the 2009 All-Star Game, he visited Sisler’s gravesite. The gesture exemplified the reverence Suzuki holds for the sport, as reflected in his visits to Cooperstown.

“Every time I go, I feel so good,” he said. “It’s like an at-home feeling.”

Suzuki takes up residence with a .311 MLB average and 3,089 hits, a total that could probably rise if given the chance. Suzuki, now a special assistant to the Mariners’ chairman, still dresses for every Seattle home game, preparing as if he were on the roster — partly so he can demonstrate tips for players, but also as a personal challenge.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do this at a high level, so it’s also something that I work hard towards, because I want to see how far I can do this,” said Suzuki, who is 51 years old, matching his Mariners uniform number. “This will be something that I can, in the future, say, ‘Hey, I was able to do it til this age.’”

Sabathia, meanwhile, can point to the exact moment when his pitching arm expired: In the last game of his career, for the Yankees in the 2019 ALCS, his shoulder popped out of its socket. He gave everything he had, grinding through years of pain in his right knee, which absorbed the pounding of his 6-foot-6, 300-pound frame for 3,577 1/3 innings, the most for any pitcher born after 1966.

He peaked in a three-year, three-team stretch from 2007 to 2009, winning a Cy Young Award for Cleveland, then willing Milwaukee to the playoffs by pitching on short rest down the stretch in 2008. He signed with the Yankees, guided them to a championship in 2009, and said he would wear a Yankees cap on his plaque.

“This is home,” said Sabathia, 44, who works as a special assistant to commissioner Rob Manfred. “I found a home in the Bronx, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave this city. I think it’s only fitting.”

Sabathia finished 251-161 with 3,093 strikeouts. And while his career ERA, 3.74, is now the highest of any left-hander in Cooperstown, only two other lefties, Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson, can match him in both victories and strikeouts.

Another club of three gave Sabathia a sense of pride Tuesday: He is one of just three “Black Aces” to reach the Hall of Fame, with Fergie Jenkins and Bob Gibson. The club, named for the title of a book by the former pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant, refers to Black pitchers who have won 20 games in a season.

“I got a call from Fergie earlier today,” Sabathia said. “Me and him have sparked up a good relationship; we’ve become close. To get that call from him was very special.”

Sabathia is one of 15 pitchers with 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts. All are in the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, who peaked at 65.2 percent on the writers’ ballot and was not elected by an eras committee in 2023.

Clemens, of course, has been kept out of Cooperstown — like Barry Bonds — because of his ties to performance-enhancing drugs. Two other tainted stars, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, remain in Cooperstown purgatory, well over the 5 percent threshold to remain on the ballot but well below 75 percent. Rodriguez, who has six more years of eligibility, collected 37.1 percent of the vote, while Ramirez, who has one year left, got 34.3 percent.

Carlos Beltrán (70.3 percent) and Andruw Jones (66.2) will be next year’s top returning candidates, headlining a ballot with Ryan Braun and Cole Hamels as the most prominent newcomers. Others still under consideration will be Chase Utley, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Omar Vizquel, Dustin Pedroia, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez, David Wright and Torii Hunter.

All of them collected at least 5 percent of the vote, including Hernández (20.6 percent) and Pedroia (11.9 percent) in their debuts on the ballot. If their support seems low, Wagner’s example offers hope. He started at 10.5 percent in 2016, and at Thursday’s orientation, he will finally visit his village of dreams.

“My dad has been there a few times and he raves about it,” Wagner said. “I know I’m looking forward to it.”

His new teammates can show him around.

(Photo of Ichiro Suzuki in 2022: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)