Do we like Ichiro Suzuki?
Our score: 8 out of 10. No harmful words or company found, a record of promoting girls' baseball, and no pattern of mistreating anyone, though the public record on his views is thin.
Ichiro grew up near Nagoya, and his father, a former high school pitcher, bought him his first glove at three. From seven he trained daily with his dad. He went on to bat .502 in high school and was drafted by Orix in 1991.
The arc is wild. He broke Japan's single-season hit record in 1994, won three straight MVPs, and then came to Seattle in 2001, where he took Rookie of the Year and the AL MVP. In 2004 he set the single-season hits record with 262, and he reached 3,000 major-league hits in 2016 before retiring in 2019.
The rookie years weren't all cheers. He told NBC fans often yelled “Go back to Japan” at him, and a teammate said objects were thrown from the stands. Ichiro's own take was “I never took it as racism. I never thought anything of it.”
On the harm check, there's nothing to hang on him. Searches for comments on LGBTQ+ people, women, vaccines, climate, immigration and politics turned up none from him, and no trail of dodgy company either. He keeps his politics to himself, so that's a gap in what we know, not a gold star.
The good stuff is quieter. He has repeatedly played exhibition games against girls' high school teams in Japan, events set up to encourage girls to play baseball, including a 2023 complete-game shutout. He also became certified to coach high school ball in Japan after the amateur body made an exception for him.
The recent news is a laugh. At the April 2026 statue reveal the bat broke near the grip. Ichiro joked that Mariano Rivera had got the better of him, and tied it to missing a unanimous Hall of Fame vote by one.