September 26, 2008 – 11:39 am
Jim Riggleman on why someone would say that stuff about Ichiro. Forget what I said about Ned Yost, you’re cool with me dude.
Pettiness, seventh-grade mentality, just pettiness of whatever jealousy, pointing fingers, deflecting responsibility, lack of accountability, just a lack of a character. These things happen when you’re losing; you’re not seeing that happen with winning teams now. But those winning teams go out and lose a couple games and you’ll see it.
JJ Putz had this to say.
People have a lot of differences of opinion on a lot of things, but to say something like that in the paper and not fess up as to who it is, whoever said it is a coward.
I guess we can count these guys out. Regardless, in the end it probably doesn’t matter. Whoever said these things is probably not 1/5th the contributor Ichiro is and shouldn’t be around next year (if he’s even around now). Let him go to the Yankees and say that stuff about Jeter so ESPN can devote entire episodes of PTI, Around the Horn and E:60 to it. We don’t need it.
September 25, 2008 – 1:48 pm
Geoff Baker, the Mariners excellent beat writer from the Seattle Times, has been writing about the Mariners rebuilding and within there is talk about Ichiro and his popularity in the Mariners clubhouse. The more I read it, the more it doesn’t make much sense to me.
“I just can’t believe the number of guys who really dislike him,” said one clubhouse insider. “It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him.”
The coaching staff and then-manager John McLaren intervened when one player was overheard talking — in reference to Ichiro — about wanting to “knock him out.” A team meeting was called to clear the air.
It was a repeat of May 2007, when Mike Hargrove was in charge and a team meeting had to be called during a series at Tampa Bay because of clubhouse bickering over Ichiro being a “selfish” player.
Now there is a certain part of me that can see that. His goal of getting 200 hits a season is in itself, selfish. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that working the count for a walk is more valuable than grounding out because you’re stuck on 199 hits, but facts are facts. 200 hits, 100 runs, stealing at over 75% and stellar defense help the team, period. Calling him “selfish” is clearly a mask for some other reason that they really don’t like him. Ichiro is a weird guy and he’s Japanese and he works out by himself, he doesn’t exactly appeal himself to guys from La Crosse or guys with OPS+s of 65. But as Bob Sugar said to Jerry Maguire it’s not show friends, it’s show business. Who cares if you like the guy? Ichiro is a good baseball player whose contributions give the team a chance to win and to want to punch him for that is completely unintelligent.
It’s also stupid because I’m pretty sure Ichiro could beat up every single player on the 40 man roster.
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.