Skip to main contentAs the Seattle Mariners face the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series this week, they have already become the winningest team in league history. Without departed superstars Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey Jr., the Mariners won with balance and execution, taking their cue from the player who last spring was their biggest unknown: right fielder Ichiro Suzuki.
While he had seven consecutive batting titles and a .353 lifetime average in Japan, many major-league experts looked at his 5-foot-9, 170-pound frame and slap-happy hitting style and scoffed. Nobody's laughing now. After taking the league batting title with the most hits in a season since 1930, Ichiro has seen his rock-star popularity in Japan translate to North America. He's the only player to have his first name on his jersey (a holdover from Japan, where three other teammates had the same surname) and he led fan All-Star voting.
Still, Ichiro remains the Austin Powers of American baseball: an international man of mystery. While most players are interviewed incessantly on the air, Ichiro is rarely heard and seldom seen without a bat or a glove.
The language barrier (he uses a translator for radio interviews) is a big part of his media reticence, Ichiro has explained, but his use of idiomatic phrases in a pre-All-Star game ESPN interview indicated his command of English is better than he has let on. And other elements of the persona Ichiro has revealed suggest that his silence is an extension of an intentional cloak of intrigue. His teammates, for example, nicknamed him the Wizard. Fans dubbed right field Area 51, alluding to his uniform number and a place where fly balls, not UFOs, disappear. The spiky hair, scraggly beard and dark sunglasses he favors make him look more like a shaman than a jock.
Three recent paperbacks provide further evidence of Ichiro's otherworldliness.
In Baseball Is Just Baseball: The Understated Ichiro, David Shields presents 112 short Ichiro pronouncements culled from newspaper articles and radio interviews. Through his introduction and quote selection, Shields turns Ichiro's comments into Eastern wisdom, revealing a person who values Zen qualities such as simplicity and harmony and who revels in challenge, not achievement. "Every at-bat, there's something to learn from, something to improve," Ichiro says. "It's in the seeking that you find satisfaction."
Rob Rains' Baseball Samurais--Ichiro Suzuki and the Asian Invasion recounts numerous instances of the awe Ichiro has earned from opponents and teammates for his skill, versatility and self-discipline. "Most of us try to groove one swing," says Mariner second baseman Bret Boone. "He's got about five different grooves, and he breaks out a different one depending on what the situation is." Former Texas Rangers manager Johnny Oates marvels, "During each at-bat, he knew what to do. If they needed a man on base, he got on base. If they needed a fly ball, he hit the fly ball." Rains' book also includes chapters on other current Japanese big-leaguers and Japanese baseball, which by all accounts is a different strain from America's pastime. Ichiro embodies that tradition, which stresses wa, or group harmony, as illustrated in the proverb, "The nail that sticks up shall be hammered down."
Jim Allen, a sportswriter for Tokyo's English-language Daily Yomiuri, has covered Japanese baseball since 1984, and his 96-page paperback Ichiro Magic!, predominantly a photo book, details Ichiro's development. Writing about his high-school years, Allen describes the Spartan existence and taunting Ichiro endured, and how he persevered. "He was something else when it came to his powers of concentration," his high-school coach recalls.
Sports commentators compare Ichiro's bat control to Rod Carew and Tony Gwynn, his leadoff threat to Rickey Henderson. They note parallels between the arrival of seasoned Japanese players and the immediate impact Jackie Robinson and other Negro League veterans had in breaking baseball's color barrier 50 years ago.
But Ichiro's supernatural start also mirrors two literary figures, Joe Hardy of Douglas Wallop's The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (which became the musical Damn Yankees) and Roy Hobbs of Bernard Malamud's The Natural (later a Robert Redford film). Both players arrive suddenly and mysteriously, new to their leagues but already at the top of their games. Both have a past nobody knows and few care to explore. Both lead the way to improbable victories with inspirational Ruthian exploits, only to vanish at their ultimate triumphs.
Unlike Hardy and Hobbs, Ichiro won't disappear. Instead, he'll mature into an even more complete player. Inevitably, he'll start speaking English in public and become facile with the media, and his agents will unleash a tsunami of publicity and endorsements.
At that point, the Mariners will again have to find a way to hang onto a superstar, and the answer to Ichiro's final mystery will be revealed: Will he follow his wallet or the wa?
by David Shields
(TNI Books, 120 pages, $10)
by Rob Rains
(St. Martin's Paperbacks, 209 pages, $6.50)
by Jim Allen
(Kodansha America, 96 pages, $14)
WWeek 2015