COOPERSTOWN, New York (Kyodo) -- For years, Ichiro Suzuki has been making the trek to the U.S. National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, where he might soon be enshrined as the first Hall of Famer from Japan.

Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch said Suzuki is special, not just because of his accomplishments in Major League Baseball but also because of his career in Japan and his unusually strong connection with baseball history and the Hall itself.

"I don't think you can say enough things about what Ichiro means to baseball in Japan and in the United States," Rawitch said in a recent Kyodo News interview. "It's a very exciting time for people in baseball because we've never had anybody who had such a global impact on our ballot before."

Suzuki did not begin collecting hits in MLB until he was 27, with three MVPs and seven batting titles from Japan's Pacific League under his belt.

In the same way as Hideo Nomo proved in 1995 that Japanese pitchers could star in MLB, Suzuki winning a batting championship and an MVP award in his 2001 debut season opened the door for Japanese position players and changed TV coverage of U.S. games to a daily morning event in Japan.

"To get 3,000 hits in America on top of what he did in Japan is just so impressive," Rawitch said.

Suzuki retired after a March 2019 game at Tokyo Dome and is on the ballot in his first year of eligibility. He might conceivably become just the second player to be inducted by a unanimous vote.

While Suzuki's rare attributes included his speed and skill, rifle arm and uncanny ability to hit safely, his connection to the museum itself, nearly a four-hour drive from New York City, also makes him an outlier.

"What makes him stand out in so many ways is the respect he has for the history of the game," Rawitch said. "He used to come here many times and visit Cooperstown when he was a player. Most players don't come here in the wintertime and quietly walk around Cooperstown."

In 2004, Suzuki broke the record for hits in an MLB season with 262, snapping George Sisler's mark of 257, set in 1920, and celebrated with members of the Hall of Famer's family.

"It's a combination of a player who not only did all of the things that he did, but understands and respects the history of the people that came before him," Rawitch said.

"Talking to him about the history of the game and why he likes coming to Cooperstown, and why he felt like it was important for him to come here, (I think it) was because if he could come here and hold George Sisler's bat, he could feel the special powers of that."

"Many baseball players, when they're playing...they don't think about the history of it."

The timing of having Suzuki on the ballot could not have been better for the Hall of Fame, which opens a new exhibit next year about the exchange of baseball between Japan and the United States.

"It's the first time we've really talked about the history of baseball between Japan and the United States," Rawitch said.

"And we hope that many Japanese fans are going to want to come and see, not just anything that has to do with Ichiro or (Shohei) Ohtani or Nomo-san, but all of the history between the two countries is going to be a big part of what we're doing next year."

And just as so many of his countrymen have followed in Suzuki's footsteps to play baseball in the United States, perhaps even more from all walks of life will follow him to Cooperstown.