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This Day In Sports…August 7, 2016, 10 years ago today:
Ichiro Suzuki becomes the 30th-player in Major League history—and the first from Japan—to record 3,000 career hits. Ichiro did it as a 42-year-old Miami Marlin, legging out a triple in a 10-7 win over the Colorado Rockies in Denver. Amazingly, he collected 1,278 hits in Japan before signing with the Seattle Mariners in 2001. Ichiro could hit on any continent. And his speed was a big factor in his annual hits barrage. Ichiro beat out a lot of infield singles, in fact, he had more than 700 of them in his career.
Ichiro didn’t get started on his quest for 3,000 until he was 27 years old—nobody in the 3,000-hit club has ever started his MLB career older. And he impressed right out of the gate, going 2-for-5 in his Mariners debut. He led the majors as a rookie with 242 hits and set a big league record with 262 hits in 2004, breaking George Sisler’s 84-year-old record. In the 22 years since, no one has come close to matching it. Amazingly, Ichiro topped 200 hits in each of his first 10 seasons.
He was meticulous in everything he did. Ichiro stored his bats in a humidor to keep the moisture in the wood consistent, and he carried them to and from the bat rack himself so that no one else would touch them—batboys included. Ichiro had a designated spot on the dugout bench for his bat and treated it as an extension of himself.
During a frustrating night at the plate in a game in Japan, he angrily slammed his bat on the ground. Then a remorseful Ichiro took the bat back to the hotel with him as an apology of sorts. And there’s a reason his career lasted until he was 45 years old: he worked out every single day and was famous for his stretching regimen, especially in the on-deck circle.
Ichiro is an indelible part of baseball history. Masanori Murakami was the first player from Japan to make the jump to the bigs when he pitched for the San Francisco Giants in 1964-65. But Ichiro was the first Japanese position player to make the majors—after winning seven straight batting titles as a member of the Orix Blue Wave. Ichiro spent 10½ seasons as the most popular Mariner before being traded to the New York Yankees in 2012 and signing as a free agent with the Marlins in 2015. He returned to Seattle in 2018 and retired as a Mariner in 2019.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
