CC Sabathia officially became the latest longtime Yankee to reach the Baseball Hall of Fame when the voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America was announced Tuesday night, sending Sabathia to Cooperstown along with Ichiro Suzuki and former Mets reliever Billy Wagner.

Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees legend CC Sabathia can now say he has entered baseball immortality. The tall, imposing lefty received a call that changed his life on Tuesday: it was Cooperstown,

Other bits of intrigue ahead of Tuesday's 6 p.m. announcement: Will CC Sabathia be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and is this the year Billy Wagner gets in?

Suzuki came in first in terms of voting with 393, making history as the first Japanese-born player elected to the Hall of Fame. He was close to making history again as he was nearly unanimous– and he would have been in some pretty weighty company to share with Yankee legends Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter.

Ichiro Suzuki had already cemented a strong, and likely everlasting baseball card market long before Tuesday’s almost unanimous vote for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, headlining the class of 2025.