Have tickets for three more games; Cubs-Padres; Indians-Athletics; Brewers-Rockies. I'm also planning to catch a Mariners game now that they've signed 44-year old Ichiro Suzuki who'll start taking the field for them in a few days.
Ichiro had gone unsigned this winter after spending last season with the Miami Marlins as a pinch hitter and substitute outfielder. At 44 and with more than 3,000 hits to his credit (over 4,000 including Japan) I had assumed he was retiring. I was wrong. It turns out he is serious about playing until he is 50.
To understand why read this compelling piece from Espn.Com When Winter Never Ends by Wright Thompson which I came across just as Ichiro's signing was announced. Thompson recently spent time with Ichiro in Japan as he prepared for the coming season not knowing whether he would play in America or Japan. He is quite the odd man, reminding me of a nicer version of Wade Boggs in his compulsiveness. Some excerpts to whet your appetite for reading the whole thing:
Last year, a Miami newspaperman asked what he planned on doing after baseball.The article makes clear Ichiro was not joking.
"I think I'll just die," Ichiro said.
Former teammates all have favorite Ichiro stories, about how he carries his bats in a custom humidor case to keep out moisture, how in the minors he'd swing the bat for 10 minutes every night before going to sleep, or wake up some mornings to swing alone in the dark from 1 to 4 a.m. All the stories make the same point: He has methodically stripped away everything from his life except baseball.
He gets stuck in patterns. In the minors, sometimes his 10-minute bedtime swinging ritual stretched to two hours or more. His mind wouldn't let him stop. For years, he only ate his wife's curry before games, day after day. According to a Japanese reporter who's covered him for years, Ichiro now eats udon noodles or toasted bread. He likes the first slice toasted for 2 minutes, 30 seconds, and the second slice toasted for 1 minute, 30 seconds. (He calculates the leftover heat in the toaster.) For a while on the road he ate only cheese pizzas from California Pizza Kitchen. He prefers Jojoen barbecue sauce for his beef. Once Yumiko ran out and mixed the remaining amount with Sankoen brand sauce -- which is basically identical -- and Ichiro immediately noticed. These stories are endless and extend far beyond food. This past September, a Japanese newspaper described how he still organizes his life in five-minute blocks. Deviations can untether him.
He is equally precise during the season, to the amusement of teammates. Dee Gordon says Ichiro even lint-rolls the floor of his locker. He cleans and polishes his glove and keeps wipes in the dugout to give his shoes a once-over before taking the field. The Yankees clubhouse manager tells a story about Ichiro's arrival to the team in 2012. Ichiro came to him with a serious matter to discuss: Someone had been in his locker. The clubhouse guy was worried something had gone missing, like jewelry or a watch, and he rushed to check.
Ichiro pointed at his bat.
Then he pointed at a spot maybe 8 inches away.
His bat had moved.
The clubhouse manager sighed in relief and told Ichiro that he'd accidentally bumped the bat while putting a clean uniform or spikes or something back into Ichiro's locker, which is one of the main roles of clubhouse attendants.
"That can't happen," Ichiro said, smiling but serious.
He loves old baseball players and their histories. He formed a relationship with former Negro Leagues star Buck O'Neil, and when the Mariners played the Royals in Kansas City, Ichiro took himself to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He didn't tell anyone, and they wouldn't have known except for someone in the business office noticing his name on a credit card receipt. When Buck died, Ichiro sent flowers to the funeral and wrote a personal check to the museum in his memory. He's visited the graves of old players whose records he's broken, George Sisler in suburban St. Louis and Wee Willie Keeler in Queens, and in Japan he visits the grave of the scout who discovered him.Ichiro no longer speaks to his father Nobuyuki who started him on a strict baseball training regime as a young boy.
Ichiro started this life in third grade and hasn't stopped. With people he trusts, he'll talk about how Ichiro Suzuki did not create Ichiro. In the past, he has hated Ichiro. Only rarely do his private feelings become public. When Ichiro finished his second season with the Mariners and returned home, the writer Robert Whiting was granted an interview. He was escorted to a private floor of a Tokyo hotel overlooking the flashing neon Blade Runner world below. Whiting is a best-selling author and Japanese baseball expert and among the world's most sophisticated translators of the two cultures. He asked Ichiro about a passage in his father's book describing their training sessions as fun for both father and son. For the first and only time in the interview, Ichiro switched to English.
"He's a liar," he said.
Everyone laughed but Whiting didn't think he was joking at all. The next day, Ichiro's manager successfully petitioned Whiting not to run that quote because of the importance of filial reverence in Japan. Whiting left in what Ichiro said next in Japanese. Ichiro said his dad's behavior "bordered on child abuse."
Ichiro has broken away from his father -- the man who invented Ichiro, the wellspring of all that's good and bad in his life -- but he cannot break away from the man his father created. He cannot escape the patterns burned into him as a boy. His American teammates all talk about how he still polishes his gloves and spikes, as he was taught. He works out every day without break, forsaking even a family, wearing shorts in the freezing Kobe winter. He's made a $160 million fortune and can't enjoy it. He's earned his rest but can't take it. He's won his freedom but doesn't want it.
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