TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Ichiro Suzuki sped into the U.S. National Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday the same way he electrified baseball since he was a rising young star in Japan 30 years earlier by highlighting the absolute essence of the game.

Others have had bigger MLB careers, but few players have made the game his own in the way Suzuki did. When he stepped into the batter's box, Ichiro turned back the game's clock to when baseball was about putting the ball in play, outrunning, and outthinking the opposition.

Instead of trying to drive every pitch over the wall or work walks, Ichiro was a throwback to baseball's roots. Watching Ichiro impose his will on a game harked back to a time until 1887, when batters could dictate whether the pitcher threw high pitches or low ones.

John McLaren, who coached and later managed Ichiro with the Mariners, recalled how the youngster tormented opposing infielders in 2001.

"The other teams tried every defense imaginable to try and stop him that first year," McLaren told Kyodo News by telephone. "If the shortstop played him up the middle, it was almost as if Ichiro would say, 'Ok. I'll put one in the hole (between short and third).'"

By being able to hit anybody, the anticipation of how Ichiro would put the ball in play was often followed by him flashing his speed and skill on the bases.

Suzuki's speed and defense kept the excitement going when he was in the outfield, where he denied hits to opposing batters and dared runners to test his amazing throwing arm.

While Ichiro's style of play is long treasured in his homeland, it opened eyes in America, where fans went wild over the difference.

"In an era when America's game was all about power, it is no exaggeration to say people now talk about 'small ball' because of the changes Ichiro brought," former MLB pitcher Masato Yoshii said when Ichiro retired in 2019.

The analytic revolution popularized by Bill James in the 1980s identified the basic elements of offense as getting on base and advancing base runners. This has increased appreciation for home runs and walks, long undervalued by many within the game.

Watching Ichiro play, however, has never required much big thinking, other than perhaps to marvel at his skill to hit virtually any pitch.

What Ichiro did was maddeningly difficult to achieve but, from a fan's view, something very pure, human and appealing.

Because of this, Ichiro's legacy is not only measured in his prodigious hit totals, and his runs scored and prevented, but in his ability to reduce baseball to its essence. Ichiro let fans see and touch the very human heart of the game.

(By Jim Allen)