おめでとう Omedetō Ichiro! (congratulations Ichiro!)

MLB's Hall of Fame roster extends to another nation. And who's the guy who didn't vote for him?

Its official. Ichiro Suzuki will be Japan's first Japanese Hall of Famer. With all due respect to the late Matthew Perry (Chandler Bing on “Friends”)…

Could global baseball BE any hotter?

Depending on when your formative baseball-loving years were, Ichiro might be the modern version of Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs. Or perhaps Rod Carew and Lou Brock.

George Sisler anyone? You know, the Hall of Famer who retired 95 years ago, after a pair of batting titles and setting the single season record for hits (257) in 1920. That record stood until 2004 when a kid named….Ichiro Suzuki…broke it.

I had the absolute pleasure of watching Ichiro live many times at the tail end of his career with the Miami Marlins. Believe me, even a pinch hit AB from that guy was worth the price of admission!

Ichiro is an obvious first-ballot Hall of Famer, except to one unnamed voter who kept him from being the second player ever to be voted in unanimously (Mariano Rivera). 99.7% of the vote will have to do, I guess.

But with Japan finally getting its first HOF inductee this summer, Ichiro joins many other firsts, such as Fernando Valenzuela (Mexico), Fergurson Jenkins (Canada - and the only “Fergie” many of us knew until the band Black Eyed Peas came along, and then modern British royalty. And of course, several Latin American nations have had their “firsts” in the Hall.

To those of us at Classic Baseball World and our collegues at the Africa Baseball Project, this is yet another signal that global baseball is ready to accelerate its growth.

And if you want to see why Ichiro is also a hall of fame comedian, here’s just one small sample.