Ichiro Suzuki’s 3,089 hits, 509 stolen bases and 10 Gold Glove Awards tell only part of the story of a player who didn’t appear in a big league game until he was 27 years old.
A legend in Japan before he ever appeared in the majors, Ichiro had a passion for baseball like few before or since.
Born Oct. 22, 1973, in Nishi Kasugai-gun, Japan – a Nagoya suburb – Ichiro was a schoolboy legend but slipped to the fourth round of the 1991 NPB Draft due to his small stature (5-foot-9 and less than 130 pounds as a teenager). But his uncompromising work ethic brought him to Japan’s top level with the Orix Blue Wave in 1992, and by 1994 he was a star. He led the Japan Pacific League in batting seven straight years before Orix made him available to MLB clubs via the posting route.
The Seattle Mariners won the bidding rights to negotiate with Ichiro and signed him to a three-year deal. He would debut with Seattle as the team’s Opening Day right fielder on April 2, 2001, becoming the first position player to jump from NPB to MLB. With hits in 39 of his first 41 games, Ichiro quickly proved he not only belonged at the MLB level but was going to be a star.
He finished the 2001 season with 242 hits, 56 steals and a .350 batting average – all of which led the American League. He won the first of his 10 Gold Glove Awards and three Silver Slugger Awards and was a runaway winner of the AL Rookie of the Year Award. Shortly after that accolade, Ichiro was named the AL Most Valuable Player – becoming just the second player to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season.
After totaling 420 hits from 2002-03, Ichiro broke George Sisler’s longstanding MLB record of 257 hits in 2004, topping the mark by five. He also notched his second batting title with a .372 mark that led all of MLB.
From 2006 through 2010, Ichiro led MLB in hits every season. His 10 straight years with 200-or-more hits tied the MLB mark. Over his first 10 seasons with the Mariners, he was named to 10 All-Star Games, won 10 Gold Glove Awards and earned AL MVP votes in nine different years. In 2007, he was named the All-Star Game MVP after going 3-for-3 with the first inside the park home run in the history of the Midsummer Classic.
Appearing in at least 161 games a season eight times over nine years from 2004-12, the durable Ichiro was traded from the Mariners to the Yankees on July 23, 2012. He would remain with the Yankees through his age-40 season in 2014 before signing with the Marlins as a free agent and spending three seasons in Miami, where he recorded his 3,000th big league hit on Aug. 7, 2016. After appearing in 136 games with the Marlins – mostly off the bench – in 2017, he returned to Seattle in 2018 before being released after playing in 15 games.
But Ichiro returned for two games at the start of the 2019 season as the Mariners and the Athletics opened the season in Tokyo. His remarkable career was celebrated throughout the world on those two days.
In 2,653 MLB games, Ichiro batted .311 with a .355 on-base percentage. He had already totaled 1,278 hits before he ever played for the Mariners, leaving him with 4,367 total hits. He is one of only seven players in history with at least 3,000 hits and 500 stolen bases.
