Baseball season recently started here, and I told my kids I was looking forward to my first Hanwha Eagles game. They asked if I was a baseball fan, and they also asked who my favorite player is. Given the historical animosity between Japan and Korea, and the recent World Baseball Classic final defeat, I knew that mentioning Seattle's talismanic outfielder would be a mistake.
"You don't want to know," I replied.
"Who?" they pressed.
"You don't want to know." But they figured it out.
"Ichiro?"
"Yes."
"AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH."
They knew he plays for the Seattle Mariners though, which I think let me off the hook a bit.
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My favorite Ichiro story, from Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports:
A whisper here. A story there. Something about the greatest pregame speech since Rockne invoked the Gipper, one laced with profanity and delivered to the American League All-Stars every year.
“It’s why we win,” David Ortiz said.
He pointed to Ichiro Suzuki, the Seattle Mariners’ wisp of an outfielder, a man who still uses a translator to do interviews with English-speaking reporters – and happens to be baseball’s amalgam of Anthony Robbins and George Carlin. Every year, after the AL manager addresses his team, Ichiro bursts from his locker, a bundle of kinetic energy, and proceeds, in English, to disparage the National League with an H-bomb of F-bombs, stunning first-timers who had no idea Ichiro speaks the queen’s language fluently and making returnees happy that they had played well enough to see the pep talk again.
The tradition began in 2001, Ichiro’s first All-Star appearance, and the AL hasn’t lost a game since. Coincidence?
Um. No.
***
Which leaves the NL hoping for some kind of a miracle. Ichiro was asked how much he believes the speech has contributed to the AL dominance that has stretched more than a decade now.
“I’ve got to say over 90 percent,” he said.
That's inspirational.
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