SEATTLE – You won’t hear from the know-it-alls.
You won’t hear from the “experts” who said he would be lucky to hit .280.
You won’t hear from the naysayers who predicted he would be out of his league in the Major Leagues.
That silence you hear is tellingly loud. They vastly underestimated Ichiro Suzuki.
Or Ichiro, as he is now known throughout baseball.
Some people earn the one-name reference.
Cher. Michael. Ringo. Elvis. Ali.
Now, Ichiro.
He’ll be OK.
That’s what Mike Cameron said one morning as he relaxed in the Mariner clubhouse during spring training.
A few feet away, Ichiro sat treating his feet.
“Won’t you Ichi?” Cameron said, flipping a wad of paper at him.
Feigning anger, Ichiro quickly looked up with a stern expression, flashed a little smile, asked “what the (heck)?” and went back to caring for his feet.
Cameron turned out to be right. Ichiro was OK. If you consider .350 OK. If you consider an American League batting title OK. If you consider a stolen base title OK.
OK?
How about magnificent?
He gave us a season that was logic defying.
You heard why he would have difficulty over here. It would take time for him to get used to the way the American game was played. He would have to learn the pitchers. The ballparks. The culture. His body wouldn’t hold up to the longer season.
Yada. Yada. Yada.
As early as spring training, there were concerns that he couldn’t pull the ball. Then he hit the ball over the right-field fence one day. “Yeah,” manager Lou Piniella declared, “he can pull the ball.”
“He made it clear he wanted to get his hand-eye coordination down to hit the ball the other way,” said Mariner hitting coach Gerald Perry.
His timing was fine. To all fields.
The little man with the big bat was the best thing to happen to baseball this year. Yes, even better than 73 home runs.
If only he had … shown some emotion.
Whether he got a hit or grounded out, he remained stoic.
Just once, you would like to have seen him turn to an umpire after a questionable call and mutter something.
Or give him a look.
No, he just turned and walked back to the dugout.
When he was asked about that after the M’s final regular-season game on Sunday, he paused for a few seconds, then replied, “Until the last minute of my career, I want to be humble as much as possible.”
Then the wit, that he sometimes lets show through, surfaced.
Humble like Bret Boone? someone asked.
“He is positively 180 degrees different,” Ichiro said, his eyes evoking humor.
Asked about his batting title, he said that he hadn’t heard whether he won it or not. When someone confirmed that he had, he didn’t smile. He said he wanted to “do my best and I have done that all season.”
As for his body breaking down, he addressed that issue day after day after day.
He sat out five games and probably would have played in them if he’d been making out the lineup card. “I’m still young,” the soon-to-be 28-year-old said. “I’m not too sore. I really appreciate all that Lou and the coaches did for me. They gave me days off and because of that I did not have a day that I could not be on the field.”
He got one hit Sunday, a leadoff double in the first. That gave him 242 hits for the season, rewriting his American League rookie record.
Usually, even the great hitters have three or four mini-slumps during a season. Ichiro went through one slight dip after the All-Star break. “He’s been as consistent as I don’t know what,” Perry said.
The coach was one of those who thought Ichiro could bat .300. “But to get as many hits as he had … “
The only significant batting tip Perry gave him in spring training was “not to move as much in the batter’s box. Not to run up on the ball as much.”
As an everyday starter, Ichiro has now won eight consecutive batting titles, the first seven, of course, having been attained in Japan. He never got more than 210 hits in a season over there.
His high in steals was 49. He got 56 this year to top the majors.
Jackie Robinson was the last player to win both the major league batting and stolen base titles, in 1949.
Some fast company.
Did you learn anything by watching Ichiro, teammate Mark McLemore was asked.
“Yeah,” the all-everything player said. “He’s good.”
Anything else?
“Yeah, I can’t do what he does.”
That’s it?
“His hitting style is … foreign.”
But effective.
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