I get Google Alerts, three of them to be exact for Phil Ivey, Felix Hernandez and Ichiro. One for my other site, one for my favorite pitcher and the final for awesome quotes like this:
“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to,” Ichiro said through an interpreter. “If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”
Regardless of my own personal feelings about the Cleve (If the whole world moved to their favorite vacation spots, then the whole world would live in Hawaii and Italy and Cleveland), this is an awesome quote. Sadly, those quotes don’t come along everyday and instead I get a lot of fantasy stuff (Ichiro batting .288 will do better in the second half, really? Do you think so doctor?) and a lot of blogs. Like Outsports, which seems to be either a blog about gay athletes or a sports blog written by homosexuals. Or maybe both I really can’t figure it out, but it’s cool with me. Anyways, one of the writers is reviewing the broadcasts of every team in the MLB and recently did the Mariners (who did well, suprisingly) but had this to say about Ichiro.
Furthermore, the on-screen displays (as well as the announcers) always referred to Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki as merely “Ichiro.” I know his uniform features his given name instead of his family name, but that doesn’t mean they should disregard his full name in the graphics. The broadcast shouldn’t be part of the Ichiro personal promotion machine, and let’s face it, he’s no Madonna.
Which brings me to the point of the post because as a Mariners fan, Ichiro is Madonna. He’s actually quite a bit bigger than Madonna, Cher, Evita, Donald and everyone else. I can’t imagine him being called anything BUT Ichiro. Oprah’s full name is Oprah Winfrey, but when you just hear Oprah is there any doubt about who is being referred to? The announcers don’t say Ichiro’s full name because they don’t need to. It’s not about promotion or anything else, it’s about who he is, Ichiro is a cultural icon with no peer in professional sports. I mean, he’s ICHIRO. I don’t really know how else to put it and it’s just surprising to me that not everyone knows it.
