The Only Way Is the Steady Way by Andrew Forbes

Author:Andrew Forbes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: baseball, suzuki ichiro, mlb, t-ball, sports
Publisher: Invisible Publishing
Published: 2021-01-20T13:57:53+00:00

Ichiro Runs the Numbers Down

After his first stint with the Mariners, Ichiro drifted. Traded to the Yankees in July of 2012 while the Bombers visited Seattle, he simply switched clubhouses and suited up in New York’s road greys. Batting eighth, he patiently endured a lengthy ovation from the Mariner crowd, then rapped a single and stole second base. He was primarily a fourth outfielder for his new team, helping the first-place Yanks ground the Orioles in the Division Series before being swept by Detroit in the AL Championship Series. He re-signed with New York for 2013 and ’14, when injuries allowed him to fill in at all three outfield spots, as well as at DH. Neither of those Yankee teams made the playoffs, and when his two-year deal expired, he was cut loose.

Before spring training in 2015, he signed with the Miami Marlins, who already boasted a starting outfield of Marcell Ozuna and future MVPs Christian Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton. It seemed unlikely that Ichiro would see much action, but injuries again intervened; he played over 130 games for Miami in each of the next three seasons.

In 2016, in the ninth inning of a mid-June getaway matinee at San Diego, the stands half-empty, Ichiro stepped up and rapped a double down the right-field line, moving Giancarlo Stanton to third. Ichiro stood on second base, the sudden holder of another record, albeit an unofficial one: his 4,257th professional base hit—combined from the NPB and MLB—moved him past Pete Rose in career knocks.

Grey-haired, a bit weathered, but otherwise appearing for all the world like the same limber, catlike enigma he was when he notched number one, the Marlins’ outfielder/interleague DH/bench player doffed his batting helmet and nodded with the same hint of solemnity and apparent desire to return to business that he’s displayed with every record he’s broken. And there have been many.

You’re welcome to split hairs all you like, cling to the go-go, vial-in-pocket exuberance of Charlie Hustle’s heyday and say, as Rose cantankerously did, that Ichiro’s great and all but he sure as hell isn’t the all-time hit leader because he collected his first 1,278 in Japan which, sorry, ain’t no major league. We can have that debate, if you’re dead set on digging your heels in. Or we can say that they’re different accomplishments, and agree that the only loser in this scenario is the already besmirched respectability of Rose, who spent decades clutching with deathlike desperation at the remaining tatters of his relevance.

Meanwhile, Ichiro remained an elegant figure amid inelegant times, quiet, rigorous, determined to the point of doggedness. Watching him over the years, it was apparent that, whether or not he possessed any more English than he was willing to publicly let on, he wasn’t one to use language superfluously anyway. He would rather just do his job.

He began that job in 1992, played nine seasons, and then relocated to Seattle in 2001. The world was different then, if only by a million disparate increments, recognizable at this present-day remove but subjectively alien to us in its lack of concerns.

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