When Bryan Woo gets to the field every day, Ichiro Suzuki is already there. Taking batting practice. Shagging fly balls. Playing catch. He hangs around after too, offering any advice he can to the current generation of Mariners players.

“Lou Piniella was very skeptical,” said Larry Stone, a Seattle Times baseball writer who has covered Ichiro’s career extensively. “That spring training, Ichiro started off not pulling the ball, not driving the ball. And Lou was like, ‘Who is this guy? When is he going to show me something?’”

When Steven Kwan was growing up in the Bay Area, he’d spend summers with his Japanese grandmother. And every day, the NHK network would be on the television.

Ichiro’s charisma accompanied an incredible performance on the field, one that came with no discernable adjustment period. Among his many accomplishments, he became only the second player in Major League history to win his league’s Rookie of the Year Award and MVP Award in the same year, joining Boston's Fred Lynn (1975).

This weekend, Mariners legend Ichiro Suzuki will become the first Asian player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.