By TYLER KEPNER The Athletic
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It should have been a rollicking buddy comedy, or maybe a sepia-toned documentary: Two ballplayers — a big guy and a little guy — driving together along winding country roads to Cooperstown, New York.

CC Sabathia wishes it had happened. His major league seasons matched precisely with Ichiro Suzuki’s, from 2001 to 2019. But while Suzuki, the wizardly hit king, has made seven pilgrimages to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Sabathia, the redoubtable ace, stayed away until a trip with his son after his playing career.

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“The first time I walked into the plaque room, I almost cried — like, I had no idea,” Sabathia said. “It’s something I think every player should see. It gives you a North Star to shoot for. I wish I would have taken Ichiro up and been driving up there every offseason to be inspired.”

Sabathia and Suzuki, who were teammates for three seasons with the New York Yankees, are now linked forever in baseball’s hallowed gallery of immortals. The two were elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot Tuesday, with Billy Wagner joining them on his 10th and final try.

All three will be honored in Cooperstown on July 27, along with Dick Allen and Dave Parker, sluggers who were elected by committee vote last month. Allen died in 2020.

Candidates need 75% of the vote to be elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and Suzuki was nearly unanimous, collecting 393 of 394 votes. Sabathia received 342 votes (86.8%), and Wagner, who missed by five votes last year, easily cleared the threshold this time with 82.5%. The welcome call moved him to tears.

“It’s not been an easy 10 years to sit here and swallow a lot of the things that you have to swallow,” Wagner said. “The only thing I thought I did well was I didn’t blow a save for 10 years.”

Wagner converted 422 saves, with a 2.31 earned run average, in a career that began in 1995 with a nine-year stint for the Houston Astros. He was later an All-Star for the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets, who traded him to Boston for a brief stop in 2009. Wagner pitched one more season, making another All-Star team for the Atlanta Braves in 2010.

He retired to spend more time with his family — a son, Will, made his MLB debut last summer as an infielder for Toronto — and ended with just 903 career innings, the fewest of any Hall of Famer. But those innings were dominant enough to make Wagner the first Hall of Famer since Addie Joss — who last pitched in 1910 — with a career WHIP, walks and hits per inning pitched, under 1.00.

Wagner was the prototype of the modern bullpen beast, ahead of his time with a career strikeout rate of nearly 12 per nine innings.

“It has evolved,” Wagner said. “I still think the game between the lines is the greatest thing ever. I still think the hardest pitch to hit is a good fastball.”

Wagner is the first left-handed reliever in the Hall of Fame, and Suzuki is its first Japanese member. He played his first nine professional seasons in Japan and joined the Seattle Mariners at age 27, seemingly too late to make it to Cooperstown.

“I don’t think anybody in this whole world thought that I would be a Hall of Famer,” Suzuki said, but the Mariners, who were bleeding superstars from their late-1990s heyday, believed he could be the first high-impact hitter from Japan.

They secured his rights in November 2000 with a $13.125 million posting fee to the Orix BlueWave — and from the start, Suzuki was one of a kind. He held his bat regally, like a fencer in an en garde position, engaging the pitcher with a tug of his sleeve. His slashing swing propelled him from the box, and he excelled with unrivaled consistency.

In each of his first 10 seasons, all with Seattle, Suzuki collected at least 200 hits and a Gold Glove award. Nobody else has ever done this in any stretch of five seasons. His 2001 debut was a sensation: He lifted the Mariners to 116 victories, tying the major league record, while winning a batting title (.350) and leading the majors in hits (242) and stolen bases (56).

Suzuki was named the American League’s most valuable player and rookie of the year for those efforts, and in 2004, he added another batting title, at .372. In doing so, he broke George Sisler’s single-season record for hits with 262.

Sisler had set the record, with 257, for the St. Louis Browns in 1920. When Suzuki traveled to St. Louis for the 2009 All-Star Game, he visited Sisler’s gravesite. The gesture exemplified the reverence Suzuki holds for the sport, as reflected in his visits to Cooperstown.

“Every time I go, I feel so good,” he said. “It’s like an at-home feeling.”

Suzuki, 51, will take up residence with a .311 MLB average and 3,089 hits.

Sabathia, meanwhile, can point to the exact moment when his pitching arm expired: In the last game of his career, for the Yankees in the 2019 American League Championship Series, his shoulder popped out of its socket. He gave everything he had, grinding through years of pain in his right knee, which absorbed the pounding of his 6-foot-6, 300-pound frame for 3,577 1/3 innings, the most for any pitcher born after 1966.

He peaked in a three-year, three-team stretch from 2007 to 2009, winning a Cy Young Award for Cleveland, then willing Milwaukee to the playoffs by pitching on short rest down the stretch in 2008. He signed with the Yankees, guided them to a championship in 2009, and said he would wear a Yankees cap on his plaque.

“This is home,” said Sabathia, 44, who works as a special assistant to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. “I found a home in the Bronx, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave this city. I think it’s only fitting.”

Sabathia finished 251-161 with 3,093 strikeouts. And while his career ERA, 3.74, is now the highest of any left-hander in Cooperstown, only two other lefties, Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson, can match him in both victories and strikeouts.

Another club of three gave Sabathia a sense of pride Tuesday: He is one of just three “Black Aces” to reach the Hall of Fame, with Fergie Jenkins and Bob Gibson. The club, named for the title of a book by former pitcher Jim Grant, whose nickname was Mudcat, refers to Black pitchers who have won 20 games in a season.

Sabathia is one of 15 pitchers with 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts. All are in the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, who peaked at 65.2% on the writers’ ballot and was not elected by an eras committee in 2023.

Of course, Clemens, like Barry Bonds, has been kept out of Cooperstown because of his ties to performance-enhancing drugs. Two other tainted stars, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, remain in Cooperstown purgatory, well over the 5% threshold to remain on the ballot but well below 75%. Rodriguez, who has six more years of eligibility, collected 37.1% of the vote, while Ramirez, who has one year left, got 34.3%.

Carlos Beltrán (70.3%) and Andruw Jones (66.2%) will be next year’s top returning candidates, headlining a ballot with Ryan Braun and Cole Hamels as the most prominent newcomers. Others still under consideration will be Chase Utley, Rodriguez, Ramirez, Andy Pettitte, Félix Hernández, Bobby Abreu, Jimmy Rollins, Omar Vizquel, Dustin Pedroia, Mark Buehrle, Francisco Rodriguez, David Wright and Torii Hunter.

All of them collected at least 5% of the vote, including Hernández (20.6%) and Pedroia (11.9%) in their debuts on the ballot. If their support seems low, Wagner’s example offers hope. He started at 10.5% in 2016, and at Thursday’s orientation, he will finally visit his village of dreams.

“My dad has been there a few times, and he raves about it,” Wagner said. “I know I’m looking forward to it.”

His new teammates can show him around.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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