
The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced the class of 2025, and they made some pretty historic choices this time around. Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese player to enter the MLB Hall of Fame, while CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner also made the cut.
Suzuki is the ten-time All-Star, who spent the majority of his MLB career with the Seattle Mariners, and he missed being elected unanimously by just one vote. He’s definitely the biggest star of the class of 2025 and the first Japanese-born player elected to Cooperstown.
“I don’t think anybody in this whole world thought that I’d be a Hall of Famer. As a baseball player, this is the highest honor you can achieve,” he said in a statement following the announcement.
CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner also made the cut, while Carlos Beltrán and Andruw Jones came up a few votes shy of election. CC Sabathia is a six-time All-Star, who played 19 seasons in MLB and won a World Series ring in 2009 with the New York Yankees. As for Billy Wagner, he gained entry to the Hall of Fame in his tenth and final year of eligibility, after pitching for five teams over 16 seasons in MLB.