OT - Ichiro has 3,000 hits

Submitted by MGoGrendel on

No love for 3,000 hits?  I know it’s old news (Aug 7th)*, but we did get an A-Rod retirement thread on that day.  I went back 7 pages looking for an Ichiro post and was surprised no one posted anything.  

Ichiro is now one of 30 MLB players with 3,000 hits.  Pretty cool that the 42 year old legged out a triple on his 3,000th hit.  Ichiro and Rose are the only players with 3,000 hits in their first 16 seasons and he is tied with Rose for most 200 hit seasons (10).  He started his “rookie” season as a 27 year old helped usher in the influx of Asian position players. 

IMHO - Class act player with a beautiful swing and sure to be in the HOF.  His jersey, cleats, arm guard and batting gloves he wore when he hit #3,000 were sent to the HOF.

My cool story – I met (briefly) his parents and wife after a Braves game last summer. 

 

* I’ve been busy and neglected this blog recently.  SIAP - I looked!

mgoblue0970

August 11th, 2016 at 12:21 PM ^

I lived in Japan for quite awhile... that's most Japanese people actually.  I was up north in Aomori but when I made it to the central parts of the country, most everyone there speaks English.  They are just reserved about using it.

The grammar is quite different than Germanic languages... there's special rules for possessives, the subject is always at the END of what's considered a "sentence", counting (and cardinality) has dozens of rules -- for example, a different numerical modifier is used when referring to something short and fat shaped than would be used with say something long and thin shaped... I could go on and on.

The one thing which is easier about Japanese than English is Japanese is purely a phonetic language.  It doesn't matter if the Roman spelling of a Japanese word is five miles long... just break it up into consonant/vowel pairs, consonant/vowel pairs, consonant/vowel pairs, and so on and it's impossible to mispronounce a word unless you're just not trying at all.

@Butch-dontcallm... is being a little harsh.

I was afraid to speak Japanese too for fear of messing it up... and I did badly one time.  I took my pup to the vet for being sick and instead of saying the dog had the runs, I said I had diarrhea... the receptionist shrieked and ran to the back.  Fortunately the vet was Western educated and we had a good laugh about it.

Quailman

August 11th, 2016 at 11:23 AM ^

Is that you, Todd Grisham?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/espn-anchor-has-it-all-wrong-about-ichiro-not-speaking-english-181616723.html

Ichiro can in fact, speak english. His pre-All-Star-Game pump up speeches (laced with profanity) are the stuff of legend. And he even took the time to learn spanish, which he speaks on the field to his hispanic teammates. 

Primo

August 11th, 2016 at 10:49 AM ^

Basic math would indicate yes. He started playing in Japan at 18, but let's assume he would have started in MLB at 20. He would have then played 7 more years of MLB baseball. To get 4K hits, then, he would have had to average 143 hits. In each of his first 10 MLB seasons he had well north of 200 hits. I think it's safe to say he would have crushed Rose if he played his entire career in the US.




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LSAClassOf2000

August 11th, 2016 at 10:23 AM ^

Fun fact:

The only other MLB player with 3,000 hits to reach that particular plateau with a triple is Paul Molitor, who did it back in 1996. The two most recent players to achieve this are, perhaps not shockingly, Alex Rodriguez (last year) and Derek Jeter (2011), both with home runs. 

 

MgoRayO3313

August 11th, 2016 at 10:25 AM ^

I've been extremely busy and out of touch with anything other than HS football lately... Are Ichiro's 3,000 hits all Major League Baseball hits? Or did they count his Japanese mlb hits as well?

As a major leaguer he sure was under appreciated. But I think fans have been conditioned to ignore pure volume batters. Very Ty Cobb like (who played in the dead ball era). Not a ton of power but always hit for a very solid %. Congrats to Ichiro.




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Humanity’s Mos…

August 11th, 2016 at 12:37 PM ^

The hits numbers, side by side from ages 22 and up, are remarkably similar in scale.

"... it is reasonable to argue that pitchers Ichiro faced in Japan from 1992-2000 were better than those Rose saw in the Majors in the early 1960s."

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/06/ichiro-suzuki-4256-pete-rose-hits-japan-mlb-npb

After Ichiro left the Orix Blue Wave (as a 4-time league MVP) and became a 27 yo Mariners rookie, he smacked a whopping 242 hits with Seattle and won the AL MVP. He then hit 208 hits at 28; 212 at 29; 262 at 30.

Rose, at 27 with the '68 Reds, had 210 hits. Then 218 at 28, 205 at 29, then 192 at 30 ...

Which leads me to believe that Ichiro's 153 hits in his final season with Orix (in a 144 game season) is likely similar to what he would have recorded if playing with Seattle instead. He hit 141 in Japan in 1999. 181 in 1998. 185 in 1997. 193 as a 22-year-old.

I believe Itchy Balls would have broken Rose's record straight-up had he played here his entire career.

UncleLeo

August 11th, 2016 at 11:03 AM ^

Calling Ichiro a pure volume hitter is fair, but that makes him much more like Rose than Cobb. Cobb led the league in HR once and finished in the top 10 on 10 other occasions. He is also 4th all-time in number of seasons leading the league in slugging percentage with 8, including 6 in a row. 4th all-time in doubles, 2nd in triples. Not exactly a pure singles hitter.

funkywolve

August 11th, 2016 at 2:55 PM ^

Without seeing Cobb's hits it's hard to say he was nothing like a power hitter because all his home runs were inside the park home runs.  Most ballparks in the early 1900s had huge dimensions and very few players hit the ball out of the park.  Before the Cubs moved to Wrigley, their ballpark was 560' to center.  Before the Red Sox moved to Fenway it was 635' to center at their old park.  In the early 1900s Tiger Stadium, then Briggs Stadium, was 467' to center.  

Without seeing his hits it's hard to know whether he was hitting worm burners that rolled forever or ripping the ball 300'+ .

funkywolve

August 11th, 2016 at 4:20 PM ^

is second all time in doubles with 746.  Ichiro has 351.

Triples is hard to compare because the game is so different now than when Cobb played.  The career leaders in triples is made up almost exclusively of players who played in the 1800s and early 1900s.  The only 'modern' day players that I recognize ahead of Rose in career triples are:  Musial, Mays, Willie Wilson, George Brett, Lou Brock and Roberto Clemente.  Musial has the most of those guys and he barely cracks the Top 20.

Agree on Cobb though.  HRs were so rare in his time that his power numbers are usually overlooked due to what he did with his batting average.

Sleepy

August 11th, 2016 at 10:36 AM ^

...is the fact that Ichiro hates Cleveland.

“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to,” Ichiro said. “If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”

mgoblue0970

August 11th, 2016 at 12:19 PM ^

There's nobody in the game with more respect for the game, better focus, or better preparation.  Read Ichiro on Ichiro sometime or just google how he considers his bats sacred.

Honey Badger

August 11th, 2016 at 2:49 PM ^

I was at the game he hit 2,999 and was out by a half step in that game for 3,000.  We were calling for him to look at us in right field, but he was all business.

Kevin13

August 11th, 2016 at 3:59 PM ^

and one hell of a player over the last 16 years. Still playing the game at a very high level for a guy that is almost 43 years old.  Congrats to him for #3000