#Shortstop: Swung with Reverence
Respect your equipment and it will respect you. For years these words have been echoed by parents and Little League coaches across the country.
Is there a chance they were just saying it so that they would not have to continue to buy their young athletes new gear over and over again? Absolutely. However, that does not make it any less true. Elite athletes understand that without their equipment, they cannot play the sport they love so dearly.
No athlete modeled this value quite like Ichiro Suzuki.
Ichiro took care of his bats as if they were his own flesh and blood. He always carried his own bats to and from the dugout, he wiped all grass and dirt off between every at-bat and stored them in cases specifically designed to prevent excess moisture from “water-logging” the bat.
The one time he ever broke a bat on purpose during his professional career – in 1999 when he played for the Orix Blue Wave of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan – he wrote an apology letter to the craftsman that had made his Mizuno by hand.
"This is my tool," Ichiro stated in regard to his bats. "You never see a great carpenter throw his best hammer. I care for my bats."
A bat with which he recorded his 261st and 262nd base hits in his record-breaking 2004 campaign was no exception to the rule. That bat is now a part of the Hall of Fame collection.
Stating that Ichiro’s 2004 campaign was one for the books would be a dramatic understatement. He led the league in plate appearances, ABs, batting average (.372) – and in the biggest achievement of all, he broke the 84-year-old record for most hits in a single season.
Ichiro secured the record on Oct. 1 with his 258th hit of the season, passing George Sisler’s previous record of 257 in 1920. Sisler’s 81-year-old daughter, Frances Sisler Drochelman, was in attendance to watch history unfold. After accomplishing the feat, a ground ball single right up the middle, Ichiro took a moment to walk over and shake Ms. Drochelman’s hand and pay his respects to her late father.
Two days later, Ichiro landed his final two hits of his record setting campaign, capping off one of the most historic individual seasons of all time.
Haydon Evenson is a 2025 programming intern in the Frank and Peggy Steele Internship Program for Leadership Development
