Ichiro is about to get his Hall of Fame moment

TOKYO (AP) — Ichiro Suzuki is passionate about baseball, but he is much more than that in Japan.

Back home, he is a source of national pride, as is Shohei Ohtani NOW. Its triumphs across the Pacific buoyed the country as Japan’s economy faltered during the so-called lost decades of the 1990s and 2000s.

“He healed the wounds of Japan’s national psyche,” Kiyoteru Tsutsui, a sociology professor at Stanford University, told the Associated Press.

On Tuesday, he is expected to be the first Japanese player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and perhaps only the second player chosen unanimously after the New York Yankees’ closer Mariano Rivera.

Ichiro made his Major League Baseball debut in 2001 with the Seattle Mariners, the first Japanese player to cross the Pacific and an instant star. Right-handed pitcher Hideo Nomo preceded him, and Hideki Matsui arrived just after, both boosting the country’s confidence in a period of national unease.

Tsutsui called Ichiro a “great cultural export”, similar to Hello Kittysushi, manga and other creations from Japan.

“It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that Ichiro represents Japan’s transition from a faceless economic animal to a producer of global cultural icons,” Tsutsui said.

There Was Something in Ichiro for Every “Yakyu” Fan

Ichiro began playing baseball at age 7 on a Little League team near Nagoya, central Japan. Of course, baseball is baseball, but the culture around the game – known as “yakyu” (ball on the field) – is special.

It was run by his father, Nobuyuki Suzuki, and followed what is often described as a regimented baseball training system that some associate with martial arts and even samurai history.

Ichiro became hip in the majors, fitting with the country’s branding as “Cool Japan”. Along the way, he encountered pressure in Japan to comply, expressed by the saying “deru kugi wa utareru.”

Basically in English: “The protruding nail is driven in.” »

“Young people flocked to watch him because they saw his rebellious and strong-willed spirit,” William Kelly, professor emeritus of Japanese studies at Yale University, wrote in an email. “Old fans were drawn to his seriousness of purpose and his strength of focus.”

Ichiro developed his unique swing early, lifting his right leg and almost running to first base before hitting the ball. In Japan, he was asked several times to change it, but he refused.

His first name Ichiro – “ichi” means “one” in Japanese – began appearing on the back of his jersey in 1994 with the Orix BlueWave. Suzuki is a very common last name and manager Akira Ohgi wanted to draw attention to Ichiro.

“I consider Ichiro an artist, a craftsman,” said Shimpei Miyagawa, an assistant professor at Temple University in Japan. “The fact is that Ichiro is someone who stands out for both his singular talent and his longevity in a game that, ironically, is played as a team sport.”

Japanese, Miyagawa taught high school in Massachusetts and remembers students wearing Ichiro jerseys – the heart of Boston Red Sox country.

“To me, that says a lot about the cultural breakthrough,” Miyagawa said.

Ichiro was must-watch TV in Japan

Ichiro’s games were broadcast live and on tape when he began playing with the Mariners.

Nomo had a similar effect when he debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995. Ichiro surpassed that level of interest, Robert Whiting wrote in his book “The Samurai Way of Baseball.”

“Ichiro was the first to come to the forefront each day – a slender Japanese man among muscular men, pushing tall American teammates to victory – and the audience simply could not get enough of this delectable spectacle,” he said. -he writes.

Whiting wrote that few Japanese saw much of Ichiro when he played in Japan for BlueWave in the western city of Kobe.

“His face adorned billboards all over Japan. Yet he almost always played to half-empty stands, in games that were almost never televised nationally.

Ichiro will enter the Hall of Fame as professional baseball’s all-time leader with 4,367 hits (3,089 in MLB and 1,278 in Japan), more than Pete Rose’s 4,256. He broke George Sisler’s single-season hit mark of 257 in 2004. The new mark is 262.

He played his last two matches in 2019 at the Tokyo Dome against the Athletics, with a score of 0 out of 5 for the Mariners then giving up at 45.

“I really wanted to play until I was 50,” he said after his final match. “But I couldn’t do it. But it was a way of motivating myself. If I had never said that, I don’t think I would have gotten this far.

Now 51 years old, Ichiro is still going strong

Ichiro made world news a little over a year ago when he broke a window with a 426-foot home run while teaching students batting skills at a Japanese high school.

A large part of Ichiro’s debut is documented in the modest Ichiro Exhibition Hall in his hometown of Toyoyama. It is located in a residential area, a discreet four-story building; a shrine filled with memories of Ichiro.

It’s only open on weekends, and it’s sure to become popular as Cooperstown’s induction approaches this summer. A marker guiding tourists to the office is adorned with a silhouette of Ichiro hitting left-handed – his right leg raised as he begins his swing.

Ichiro’s call-up to Cooperstown comes amid a wave of Japanese talent

Baseball was introduced to Japanese schools in 1872 by an American teacher, and many have used it to gauge the country’s march toward modernization after centuries of isolation from the West.

Ichiro’s induction into the Hall of Fame coincides with a wave of Japanese players shining in the MLB. Ohtani is a singular talent in sports history, and he was among a dozen Japanese exports to the majors last season, including Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga and $325 million Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto .

“Ichiro and Ohtani command a lot of respect from their peers and the public because they focus on perfecting their craft,” Tsutsui wrote.

Phenom Pitcher Roki Sasakiwho announced on Friday that he was leaving Japan for join Ohtani on the Dodgerscontinues the evolution.

“The Hall of Fame vote caps this process,” Tsutsui added. “And many Japanese recognize him as one of the greatest players to ever play in the Majors.”

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This story has been corrected to show that Hideo Nomo is right-handed, not left-handed.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb