It’s down to a mere few hours now, the time when five of the national pastime’s greatest receive the ultimate career-topping honor: Induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame with its corresponding bronze plaque signifying their eternal status.
But before those festivities take place, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s latest exhibit, Yakyu | Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game, opened on Thursday in front of Hall of Famers and special guests.
Yakyu | Baseball explores the longstanding exchange of teams and players between the two baseball-loving countries; the sport has been Japan’s most popular sport for almost as long as baseball has been the United States’ national sport.
Debuting in the same year as Ichiro Suzuki’s election to the Hall of Fame, the exhibit features artifacts and stories about a game that became the most popular sport in Japan less than 50 years after the United States and Japan established diplomatic relations.
Hall of Famers Jack Morris, Cal Ripken Jr. and Ozzie Smith joined longtime manager Bobby Valentine in addressing the assembled media at the exhibit opening.
“We trained in 1978 in Yuma, Ariz., with the Yakult Swallows,” said Smith, who was entering his rookie season with the Padres that year. “Watching the transformation from 1978 to where we are today, we now have one of the greatest baseball players that ever donned a pair of spikes [Japanese star Shohei Ohtani] playing today.”
Since the early 1870s, baseball has served as a powerful cultural bridge, fostering countless individual friendships and strengthening ties between the United States and Japan. The shared love for the game has been pivotal in shaping close-knit U.S.-Japan relations — promoting exchange and understanding during times of peace, conflict and reconciliation.
The Yakyu | Baseball exhibit, in the works for two years, underscores Japanese teams touring America, American teams touring Japan, players born in the United States playing in Japan (including Larry Doby and Warren Cromartie) and players born in Japan playing in the United States — starting with Masanori Murakami in 1964.
“This wonderful interactive and informative exhibit is unlike anything we’ve ever done in Cooperstown,” said Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch. “We had the chance to have several Hall of Famers walk through the exhibit seeing Ichiro Suzuki, the very first Japanese Hall of Famer. Walking through there was very, very special.”
Historical records indicate games were played in Japan as early as 1871 in Osaka and Yokohama between residents and the visiting Navy crew of the USS Colorado. These early matches laid the foundation for baseball’s introduction to Japan, sparking interest in the sport that would eventually become a beloved national pastime. By the late 1800s, baseball had become Japan’s most popular team sport.
The new exhibit also references the new wave of exceptional Japanese players who have made the leap to Major League Baseball, further strengthening the global connection between Japanese and American baseball.
Also included in Yakyu | Baseball are those American players who made the trek overseas and thrived in Japan, including Randy Bass, the first American player with no Japanese heritage to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo; brothers LeRon Lee and Leon Lee, who formed a formidable cleanup duo for the Lotte Orions; and Matt Murton, who in 2010 broke Ichiro’s single-season hit record by collecting 214 hits.
The Hall of Fame Class of 2025 — Ichiro, southpaw starter CC Sabathia, lefty closer Billy Wagner, five-tool outfielder Dave Parker and slugger Dick Allen — will be inducted at 1:30 p.m. ET on Sunday on the grounds of the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown.
The 2025 class will increase the total number of inducted members to 351.
Ichiro, Sabathia and Wagner will be speaking on a stage with more than 50 returning Hall of Famers behind them and thousands of baseball fans in front of them — and even more tuning in live on MLB Network and MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM.
In a locale where your baseball cards come to life, Thursday also proved to be the unofficial start of one of the game’s most prestigious annual events. The Village of Cooperstown was awash with early Hall of Famer arrivals, both rookies and veterans, with this year’s induction just around the corner.
“It’s hard to believe it’s my 10th season as a Hall of Famer,” said longtime Braves pitcher John Smoltz. “I missed Induction Weekend once because of a hip replacement and hope to never miss it again. It’s just one of those weekends that, until you go through it, when you have freedom of watching everybody else go through it, it is very relaxing. It’s calming. It’s an unbelievable place and getting to see the guys that you’re a part of is just surreal.”
