It’s Hall of Fame consideration season. Until the announcement of the new class, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot.
During the 2001 season …
Barry Bonds reached 500 homers on his way to establishing a single-season record with 73 big flies. Rickey Henderson joined the 3,000 hits-club while also establishing new all-time records for walks and runs scored, passing Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, respectively. Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn and Mark McGwire played their final games. The World Series – for the ninth time ever – ended on a walk-off hit, giving the Diamondbacks the franchise’s first title and denying the Yankees in their bid to become just the third club to capture four in a row. Álex Rodríguez became the first shortstop ever to hit 50 homers. Four different players – Bonds, Luis Gonzalez, Todd Helton and Sammy Sosa – amassed 100 extra-base hits; no other season in history had ever produced more than two (and that had happened just twice, in 1930 and 1932). Sosa also drove in 160 runs, the most for an NL’er since 1930. Albert Pujols set NL rookie records for extra-base hits, total bases and RBI. The 2001 campaign produced unforgettable, awe-inspiring moments and performances, notably in what the novelist and baseball writer Donald Honig liked to refer to as “He-Man” categories. Heck, even Rickey’s record-setting run scored came via a longball.
Amid all that blasting and booming, Ichiro Suzuki scripted a vastly different submission for what can be mesmerizing and enduring, a contrapuntal melody that significantly elevated the song of that season. To wit, his 192 singles that year, a tally that found its numerical companions in the late 19th century (at the time, Ichiro’s total of 192 was the fourth highest ever; seven of the other sums in the top-10 came in the 1890s). Chops and slashes, drives in front of outfielders and rollers through every conceivable bit of open space in the infield, daring dashes from base to base – this was his offering, and it was plentiful. He set a new rookie record for hits in a season (242) and posted the highest average (.350) for a first-year qualifier since 1930. Those 242 knocks were the most in the Majors since 1930. He was the first player since 1944 to lead the Majors in both hits and steals. He was the first to post a .350+ average with at least 50 stolen bases and have both of his numbers lead his league since 1922. Throwback, callback, sit back and beam – Suzuki swept through the Majors with an individuality that electrified. Of course, he was just getting started.
Even while in the throes of that extraordinary season – one that saw him join Fred Lynn (1975) as just the second player ever to claim his league’s MVP and Rookie of the Year Awards, nab a Gold Glove and, not to be drowned out by all the thunder, pocket a Silver Slugger – witnesses would have been challenged had they forecasted his ultimate heights. After all, Ichiro’s debut (featuring two singles in five at-bats, naturally) on April 2, 2001, came when the Mariners outfielder was nearly 27-and-a-half years old.
A couple of less-prolific seasons followed Ichiro’s debut, setting the stage for the wonderment of 2004, when the perennial All-Star and Gold Glover hit the peak of his hit-heavy presentation: 262 hits to break George Sisler’s single-season record set in 1920; the fifth .370-average, 30-steal season seen in the bigs in the liveball era (Gwynn in 1987, Sisler in 1920, 1921 and 1922); 225 singles to establish a new record (besting Willie Keeler’s 206 in 1898); the most multi-hit games in a season since 1937. He paced the AL with a 9.2 bWAR, despite posting only a 130 OPS+, a numerical match not seen since 1927 – this particular combo affirming both the value Suzuki brought in so many other areas and his “from another era” installation in the current game.
Six more 200-hit seasons followed, five of them producing league-leading tallies. He was the first ever to post 200-hit campaigns in each of his first 10 years, the seven total times leading his league in hits tying him with Gwynn and Pete Rose for the second most in Al-NL history, behind Cobb’s eight. He had more hits through his first 10 seasons than anyone in history (he also had more hits through his first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth campaigns). Even though he had completed his age-36 season, the signs of a slowdown were minimal. Ichiro was a certified and established star, a constant presence – such a model of steadiness that it no longer seemed preposterous that he even might join the one club that was made for celebrating his distinctive talent in the batter’s box*. On Opening Day in 2011, he was 37 years and 161 days old; with yet another two-hit game to open the season, he owned 2,246 knocks.
There are 41 players in history to have collected at least 2,900 hits. 10 of them got started in a teenage season, while 11 others debuted in an age-20 campaign. Another 10 opened things in an age-21 season, and another five in their age-22 year. That’s 36 of the 41. The rest look like this:
| Player | Age-Season for Debut | Career Hits |
| Honus Wagner | 23 | 3,420 |
| Paul Waner | 23 | 3,152 |
| Wade Boggs | 24 | 3,010 |
| Sam Rice | 25 | 2,987 |
| Ichiro Suzuki | 27 | 3,089 |
Suzuki’s membership card arrived on August 7, 2016, in career game number 2,452, as he was 42 years and 290 days old. In a twist, it wasn’t a single that gave him 3,000 safeties (Ichiro would finish his career with the sixth most singles ever), but a triple; not the category of hit most associated with his profile but somehow perfect in its recollection of his style and flair.
The laser beam unleashed from his right arm. The set-up in the box, a singular approach that was entrancing in its own right: part challenge to the pitcher (and those poor fielders having to cover what seemed like extra ground when Ichiro connected); part maestro tapping his baton as if to say to the audience, “Wait till you experience this.” The inside the park home run in the 2007 All-Star game (as part of a three-hit night). A career .346 average in the postseason, bookended by a debut explosion in 2001 (12 hits to tie the Division Series record; a .600 average to match the DS high mark) and a final flourish in the 2012 ALCS (a four-hit game featuring a homer). Ichiro’s panache was integral to the experience, was the perfect accompaniment to his artistry and devotion to his art.
It still feels miraculous that Suzuki produced 3,000 hits – history had warned us that such a feat (and its cousins) are almost exclusively reserved for those who get started early, whose ascension coincides with their early twenties. But this was the Ichiro Suzuki experience – a startling introduction made all that much more magnetic by being a singular figure in an era of boom, an apex that forced some editing in the record books, an ability to hold off the more common structures of aging, a verve of performance, a steady and unrelenting sequence of strides toward achieving the unfathomable, a package that managed to bridge decades of performance and breathe new life into the names of long ago. A Hall of Famer in every sense of the phrase.
*I was curious about the position players and pitchers who, if they had only compiled numbers starting in their age-27 season, would still have accumulated enough to enter into one of the four big clubs:
300 Wins From An Age-27 Season and On
Cy Young (406), Warren Spahn (334), Phil Niekro (316), Pete Alexander (304)
3,000 Strikeouts From An Age-27 Season and On
Randy Johnson (4,526), Nolan Ryan (4,509), Roger Clemens (3,457), Phil Niekro (3,285), Steve Carlton (3,185), Gaylord Perry (3,137)
500 Home Runs From An Age-27 Season and On
Barry Bonds (620), Babe Ruth (552), Henry Aaron (536)
3,000 Hits From An Age-27 Season and On
Pete Rose (3,357) and Ichiro Suzuki (3,089)
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.
