SEATTLE -- If Ichiro Suzuki is elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Tuesday -- which he could potentially do as the first position player with a unanimous vote -- it¡¯s widely expected that when he¡¯s enshrined this July, his plaque will feature him in a Mariners cap.

Suzuki might prefer not to have a logo included out of respect for the Yankees and Marlins, with whom he played from 2012-17. But that seems unlikely given that his MLB career was largely defined by his time with the Mariners -- and that he remains a fixture with the organization today as a special assistant to the chairman.

If Suzuki opts for Seattle¡¯s logo, it¡¯ll be a celebration of the player but also the franchise, one more than three decades in the making, going back to the early 1990s, when the Mariners began their pursuit to eventually sign him in November 2000.

¡°It's really emotional because he's more like one of my children than he is a ballplayer,¡± said Ted Heid, who was a key figure of the Mariners¡¯ scouting in the Pacific Rim from 1997-2015, and as such, courting Suzuki.

In a paneled interview with MLB.com, Heid, Jim Colborn -- a pitching coach in the early 1990s for Suzuki¡¯s Orix Blue Wave team in Japan before becoming a Mariners scout -- and Chuck Armstrong, the Mariners¡¯ team president for 28 years, offered insights on recruiting and eventually signing Suzuki.

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Colborn was with Orix during Suzuki¡¯s rookie season in 1992, and Suzuki was already dreaming big.

¡°He would constantly ask me about going to the States,¡± said Colborn, who played in the Majors from 1969-78. ¡°He¡¯d corral me, and say, ¡®You think I can play in the Major Leagues? What do I have to do?¡¯ I¡¯d say, ¡®Just be yourself, and you¡¯ll be all right,¡¯ and he said, ¡®No, maybe I need more home runs?¡¯¡±

Two years later, Suzuki, whose reputation as an elite hitter was via a contact-oriented, all-fields approach, crushed 25 homers for Orix, simply to show that he could.

This was wildly early, and Suzuki wouldn¡¯t be eligible to play in MLB for years due to regulations that eventually became the Japanese posting system. That doesn¡¯t account for the hesitation that most MLB clubs had about Japanese position players at the time, questioning if their skills would translate to elevated competition.

But Colborn, whom the Mariners hired in 1997 as a scout for the Pacific Rim, was clearly onto something.

¡°To a scout¡¯s eye, it was fairly obvious to me that he¡¯d succeed,¡± Colborn said.

Ultimately, however, signing Suzuki became an edict from ownership.

¡®You must not fail¡¯

Nintendo held a majority stake in the Mariners for more than two decades before selling that majority in 2016 to the current ownership group. Nintendo¡¯s most monumental contribution -- along with many political and social ones -- helped to keep the Mariners in Seattle after a legitimate push from the previous ownership group to relocate.

Spearheading those efforts was Hiroshi Yamauchi, the Nintendo chairman who stepped in to buy the club in 1992 as a favor to the region, which was home to his Redmond, Wash., based Nintendo of America.

Yamauchi delegated the team¡¯s inner workings to many already in place before the transition, including Armstrong, but he developed an obvious affinity for Japanese players. When Suzuki was eligible to be posted ahead of the 2001 season, Yamauchi made his interest clear.

¡°You must not fail,¡± Yamauchi told Armstrong, to which Armstrong added in retrospect, ¡°I was worried for my job. ... It was very important to him.¡±

The Spring Training trial run

Armstrong didn¡¯t meet Yamauchi in person until a trip to Japan after the 1997 season, which coincided with the first time he saw Suzuki in person. During that visit, Yamauchi expressed discontent that the Mariners had failed to sign pitcher Hideo Nomo, who joined the Dodgers out of Nippon Professional Baseball and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award in 1995.

By the time of that 1997 meeting, Ichiro had blossomed into a bonafide superstar in Japan on and off the field. One example of such were the commercials he shot each winter for a car company in Santa Monica, Calif.

It was around these annual visits that Colborn got to thinking about coordinating a meet-and-greet with the Mariners¡¯ organization, which began with a visit at the Kingdome. A boat show at the since-destructed venue kept Suzuki from seeing the field, but he got to mingle with Edgar Martinez in the batting cage.

After that meeting, and leveraging his ties to Orix, Colborn pitched the Japanese club the idea to invite Suzuki and two other Orix players to the Mariners¡¯ Spring Training. It was 1999, two years before Suzuki would be there for good.

¡°It was eye-opening to see the Japanese media that year,¡± said Tim Hevly, long-time head of the Mariners¡¯ public relations staff. ¡°I don't think we had any context of what was going to happen, both that first day -- he was there for four days -- and then in 2001, just the volume of media that came out and the level of excitement they had to have him in a Major League camp.¡±

Suzuki¡¯s brief stay was marred by a bout of food poisoning that limited his playing time in Cactus League games. He made an impressive throw in live action and Colborn recalled a stolen base, but other than that, Suzuki¡¯s at-bats featured just a few base hits.

¡°[Then-manager] Lou Piniella wasn¡¯t particularly impressed,¡± Colborn said. ¡°I don¡¯t know what the other people thought, but ... it¡¯s hard to see a skill until he gets in a game.¡±

Nonetheless, Suzuki relished the experience from a camaraderie perspective. And he knew he wanted to return for good.

¡°He said he had grown up and had a picture, a poster, of Ken Griffey Jr., on his bedroom wall,¡± Armstrong said. ¡°And his dream was to play with Junior, which, it turned out, Junior was gone by the time [Suzuki] got here full-time.¡±

¡®Why the bid was so ultra important¡¯

Suzuki returned to Orix for two more seasons and put up more numbers to suggest that he was prepared to become the first Japanese position player to make the MLB leap. Knowing this, and knowing that they¡¯d lose Suzuki in another year without getting anything in return, Orix posted Suzuki one year before he would¡¯ve been eligible to become an outright free agent.

Throughout the process, Heid said he¡¯d ¡°become very, very close¡± with Orix president Yutaka Okazoe, conducting ¡°many, many meetings with him¡± that led to a number they felt was fair: $10 million to secure the Mariners exclusive negotiating rights with Suzuki, separate from whatever contract they offered.

¡°[Okazoe] felt like that was what Ichiro was worth to them in ticket sales and souvenir sales and things like that,¡± Heid said. ¡°And Orix was in real trouble at that time financially.¡±

The stage was set in Seattle, or at least the Mariners hoped.

Much of their groundwork was suddenly out of their hands, given the new posting rules installed the year prior. MLB and NPB overhauled the system to curb complications from the existing rules.

The new posting system essentially created a blanket bid procedure in which the MLB club that made the highest offer would win exclusive negotiating rights. These offers were not public, nor were they shared by the league to other bidding teams, who could in theory make subsequent, higher offers as if in auction, as long as it was before the deadline.

¡°That¡¯s why the bid was so ultra important and had so much drama in it,¡± Colborn said, ¡°because we weren't sure we would even get it, get the guy after all. He wanted to come to the Mariners, and we'd done all our work, but it wasn't a slam dunk.¡±

To this day, Heid, Colborn, Armstrong and Hevly are unsure which teams bid for Suzuki, but they¡¯ve guessed through correspondence with other scouts and executives.

Various reports linked the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox, but the Dodgers were believed to be the runners-up. After Suzuki won the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP Awards in 2001, Armstrong said that Bob Daly, the longtime Hollywood executive who pivoted to the Dodgers and became their chairman from 2000-04, approached him at that year¡¯s Owners Meetings.

¡°He told me that would never happen again, that any other Japanese player that came out, rest assured, that the Dodgers would outbid the Mariners, no matter what,¡± Armstrong said. ¡°But it was a blind bid. No one knew what anybody else was bidding.¡±

The Mariners ultimately went to $13.25 million, which got it done. Colborn said he heard the Dodgers capped theirs at $9 million, meaning that Seattle¡¯s original planned offer would¡¯ve been enough. But that¡¯s how badly the club wanted him.

A press release went out on Nov. 9 at that year¡¯s General Managers Meetings in Amelia Island, Fla., sharing that Seattle had 30 days to sign Suzuki. The next day, player and team settled on a three-year deal for $14 million, or $27.25 million total when accounting for the posting fee that went to Orix -- a hefty sum for a promising but unproven player.

The logic was rooted in Yamauchi¡¯s extreme interest, but the Mariners also justified the spending since they didn¡¯t have a first-round Draft pick that year.

¡°We kind of thought that he was going to be a great player, but to do what he did, I don't think any of us knew,¡± Heid said. ¡°We were just glad we were able to keep our jobs after we signed him.¡±

Added Armstrong, laughing: ¡°That¡¯s true. If we hadn¡¯t signed him, we might¡¯ve been out of work.¡±

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The rest of Suzuki¡¯s well-chronicled career is history. So much has been covered about one of the most fascinating players of his era, but his path to the Majors -- and the Mariners -- is a story that remains worth revisiting.

The organization was already on solid footing at the time of his arrival, on the heels of the region¡¯s reinvigorated interest in the sport following the season that saved baseball in Seattle in 1995, and the superstars that became synonymous with that success such as Griffey, Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson and more.

But Suzuki ushered in a new era with his arrival, ascended the franchise further and became one of the most beloved figures across the game.

His legacy will be further cemented in formal fashion when he gets the coveted call to the Hall of Fame -- and those who were instrumental in bringing him to Seattle anticipate great emotion when that comes to fruition.