Ichiro!

It looks like the game is finally up for Ichiro, my favorite player of all time. There was no good reason for Seattle to sign him this year. He obviously had nothing left in the tank. After an OK 2016 in Miami, last year he was pretty bad. His 44 at-bats this year showed the same. I feel bad for Ichiro–his father drove him to be an OCD hitter with nothing else in his life. He recognizes that his father was a bad person for this, but that hasn’t allowed him to recover and change his life, as this incredibly depressing ESPN profile from this spring shows.

In the end, Ichiro is the greatest hit kind in baseball history. He clearly would have passed Rose had he come to the US before he was 27. As it is, it’s amazing he easily cleared 3000 hits in his declining years. His baserunning and outfield defense were superb and of course he was just awesome to watch. Sure, guys like Ichiro (and Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew and Lou Brock and other such types of players) are probably a little overrated given that they ran up a bunch of numbers that didn’t always lead to a lot of wins. But that Ichiro came into the league and dominated as a singles hitter in the power era says a lot about his greatness. He’s obviously going to be a first ballot hall of famer, even if, again, he might not really be good enough to skate in that easy if he wasn’t Ichiro! and if he wasn’t a global ambassador for the game.

I’m glad the Mariners gave him a graceful way to exit the major leagues. Maybe he plays in Japan next year, maybe not. But he was a wonderful player to watch.

That he was the last player in the majors older than I am and that he retired in the same week I started wearing progressive lenses in my glasses makes me feel very, very old.