This summer, longtime Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki will travel to Cooperstown, New York, for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Lots of televisions in Seattle and of course Japan will be tuned into the broadcast. But so will at least one in Leesburg, Florida, a small city about an hour from Orlando. 

For 15 years, Ray Gerkey has been amassing what is almost certainly the world’s biggest collection of Ichiro baseball cards and memorabilia. The 45-year-old father of two owns more than 4,000 unique cards (not counting another thousand or so duplicates and triplicates) dating back to Ichiro’s career with the Orix BlueWave. He also has amassed a surfeit of shirts, bobbleheads, even a pair of game-worn socks. 

“He has the socks where, like, each toe fits into, like, its own little sleeve,” Gerkey says. 

Most of Gerkey’s collection, including the toe socks, has been photographed and cataloged at icollectichiro.com. Between the website, a YouTube channel, and a Facebook group, Gerkey has found himself at the center of a small global community of Ichiro-
focused collectors.

This is not necessarily something Gerkey, who has never been to Seattle, and never got to see Ichiro play in person anywhere, anticipated—but it is something he chose. A
longtime card collector, in 2010 he decided his hobby needed a focus. He racked his brain for a team or player to narrow in on, and he realized that Ichiro had all the qualities he wanted: greatness, obviously, but also humility, discipline, and a love for the game (fittingly, also the qualities required to build an epic memorabilia collection). 

In the course of building his collection, he developed a deeper connection with the player. Gerkey spent the January day the Hall of Fame vote was announced communicating with fellow collectors. 

“Watching all the highlights, it was something I never felt for a player, ever really,” Gerkey says. “But because I dedicated so much time and effort and reading about him—you know, his upbringing, the hard relationship he had with his dad, just everything—I felt like I got to know him quite a bit just from all the research I’ve been able to do.

Now, Gerkey is thinking of slimming the collection down. All those bins take up a lot of space, he says. And in the end, it’s not about having the most stuff. It’s about finding joy in the stuff you have. 

“You can build an amazing collection—and one that makes you happy, and one you can look at in life when things get tough. You know, it’s a hobby. It helps take your mind off real-world situations sometimes and sit back and look at some baseball cards and reflect on when you were a kid.”