BBWAA voters are a small group with a very big responsibility. We should be willing to talk about it. Or write about it. It’s what we do.

Ichiro Suzuki is all about baseball, but he is much more than that at home in Japan. Ichiro is a wellspring of national pride — like Shohei Ohtani now — and his fame across the Pacific was therapeutic as the national economy sputtered through the so-called lost decades.

Ichiro will be the first Japanese player enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame during the induction ceremony on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.