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Twittah
Despite claiming that Ichiro sounds like a lunatic, it made no mention of his “mental signals” speech, which really was the most off-the-wall thing he’s ever said.
If I said that Ichiro! isn’t the coolest baseball player in the history of the game, I would have to punch myself in the face, because I would be lying.
Flat out…the guy can hit, run, throw, and give the most interesting interview on the planet. Why does everything have to be so simple? Are all sportswriters that lazy?? Would they rather be browbeat by Barry Bonds? Ichiro!!
Ichiro! is to baseball what Iced Tea is to Flamingo’s. If you understand that, you get Ichiro!
Ichiro is made entirely of awesome.
Its not like Ichiro is a maniac, he is like the Pig who chooses not to eat from a full trough when he is not hungry.
I’ve alwasy thought that Ichiro is playing a game with the reporters. His way on handling the same inane questions day after day. Basically the same as Costner teaching Tim Robbins how to use cliches in Bull Durham. Ichiro probably has a great laugh reading the articles where people try an interpret his Zen like musings.
There have been some great ones this year, but my favorite was Bavasi’s on the teachings of his mother.
It seems a little unfair to be reprinting the Cleveland quote without the context of the incessant day-trips back there on what had been off days.
I’m a 40-something 6-foot tall 240 lb. Caucasian mediocre outfielder in the bottom division of my local rec softball league. For Ichiro to be my hero is nothing less than ludicrous. But absurdity be damned, Ichiro is my hero on, like, eight different levels. This article just adds another one.
increasingly??
I think we need a thread where everyone is required to write in Ichiro!-speak.
# 5, Jeff Nye Says:
“Ichiro is made entirely of awesome.”
No doubt.
And do not forget that the Ichi-meter has no red-line.
nuff said.
Love his offseason activity. Found a clip of the segment the article talks about: http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/2007/03/21/ichiro-versus/
Sigh, how do I love Ichiro, let me count the ways…
True, Bavasi might have the best Mariner quote this season.
(expletive) Dave Samson.
If you’re like me, you mourn the lost heyday of Doug Glanville.
When C Grand first hit the scene, erudite and affable, I thought he would bring me back to quotability heaven. But he’s not wacky enough, or isn’t wacky enough yet.
Here’s hoping Ichiro’s oddball ways had nothing to do with contract-speak diversion tactics, and that his future activities make me forget the great Glanville altogether.
For being a supposedly “clever” magazine writer he completely doesn’t get it.
(makes “whoosh” over his head sign…)
And yeah, the context of the Cleveland remark would have been nice. After all, how many times can you visit the RnR HoF?
I’ve since used Bavasi’s own quote in reference to him. LOL
I’m sure after you’ve been asked 1,000 times by 998 different reporters (yes, two reporters who forgot they had already asked the questions) “how you do your job and why you wrote that particular memo yesterday”…you would respond saying:
When I first got the idea, the tiny barometer in my head seemed to beat like the drums of long lost natives in the jungles near Sequim, so I followed the example of leaders past and bunted. It all came together rather well didn’t it?
#16– what else would you expect from a Systems Engineer?
me, I love Dan Quisenberry, quotesmith
and
poet
My love for Ichiro is like a Flaming Moe.
Burning, tasty, and a bit intoxicating.
Ichiro’s the best.
“He will be missed,” Ichiro said of recently departed manager Mike Hargrove, “Although I’m not sure in what fashion.”
My favorite Ichiro performance was actually off the field, when he made a guest appearance on Koki Mitani’s Furuhata Ninzaburo, a Japanese detective show that had a 12+ year run on Fuji TV. Initially, the part was for a fictitious ballplayer, but Ichiro insisted on playing himself.
In the episode his brother had murdered someone, and Ichiro helped him cover up the crime. It was Ichiro’s first major acting role and he was pretty convincing. When he retires from baseball he may have a future as an actor, if he so chooses.
haha I love the Cleveland one and the one in post 22.
His VORA (Value Over Replacement Actor) will be off the charts.
Until then, let’s enjoy his infinite wisdom and game-saving catches.
Seems to me Ichiro is just finally allowing hiself to relax and let his sense of humor out.
He’s finally allowing the laid back ways of Seattle and the US to give himself permission to just roll with flow and not have to be so 100% Japanese 24/7.
There were times, reading that, that I wasn’t sure if I was reading Slate or The Onion. Which makes me think that in the years after his retirement, there will be the same sort of proliferation of apocryphal Ichiro quotes as there have been of fake Yogiisms.
wow, kinda hard on Ichiro’s real brother … I hope he asked him if he minded being portrayed as a murderer
Superb. As a Twins fan, I never knew about the verbal wonders of Ichiro! Another reason your center fielder is better than ours.
“Yesterday when I played, inside my head I said ‘I want to go home quickly,’ and I swung and I was able to get a hit because I wanted to go home. Today I thought, ‘I want to hurry up and get something to eat,’ and I swung and got a hit today.”
Am I the only one to be somewhat offended by the notion that there’s something wrong with being 100% Japanese?
And so as not to be too dour: Ichiro!
http://100percentinjuryrate.blogspot.com/2007/06/existential-angst-of-ichiro-suzuki.html“>ooh, more!
well, crap.
I bet Ichiro! would know how to do angle brackets.
I <3 Ichiro.
MSB- Thanks for the link, love me some Ichi-isms.
Ichiro Versus actually sounds like one of the saner Japanese game shows.
and heck, you just have to look at the varied personalities across the leagues to see that it isn’t him being ‘Japanese’ so much as him being ‘Ichiro!’
“The ball became the same color as the sky. So, I wasn’t able to see it … I was sending mental signals for the ball not to come my way, because during that time of day it’s impossible for me to see the ball so I lacked mental signals. I lacked in that area. Usually, I don’t send mental signals. So, because this is the first time, I thought, please don’t come my way.”
Ichiro, you loony goofball. So glad you’re sticking around.
hey– Deanna should be en route to Japan by now– has anyone told her that we need her to take over for Jeff in the USSM Japan press pool?
I wonder if Derek missed the whole Dave Samson thing while he was in Clarion.
Love the article. Is Dave going to be on KJR today?
My favorite… In April after having a 4-hit day and raising his average from .192 to .290, Ichiro explains:
“Yesterday, I had two ice creams. Usually I only eat one.”
yup.
I love this one, Explaining why he missed catching a fly ball: “The ball became the same color as the sky. So, I wasn’t able to see it … I was sending mental signals for the ball not to come my way, because during that time of day it’s impossible for me to see the ball so I lacked mental signals. I lacked in that area. Usually, I don’t send mental signals. So, because this is the first time, I thought, please don’t come my way.”
42– Love that ice cream quote. If I were to say I didn’t love it, I’d punch myself, etc., etc.
The Cleveland comment is my all time favorite Ichiro quote. By any chance does anybody know if he catches flack from Cleveland fans now for that remark?
The guys over at Let’s Go Tribe certainly noticed.
Derek! You got a shout out on KJR!
But no book plug.
Love it
He’s so funny.
I also love Ichiro, but I’m pretty annoyed at most of the media coverage of his quotes. For example, that Salon article’s question about is he crazy or what? parallels a lot of other comments I’ve read (and I’m sure you have also), painting him as some kind of zany, zen-like, quizzical individual: this is textbook Orientalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism); Ichiro as this exotic oriental other who we admire but as someone who is outside of our own experience and who we are bemused by. Personally I think that Orientalism is not a good thing. I mean, come on. The press coverage of baseball, particularly in terms of quotes, is textbook Bull Durham: questions like “what was your motivation when you hit that double” are ridiculous – it was that player’s job to do so. It seems to me that the more accurate, less racialized way to cover these quotes is as Ichiro making fun of the stupid and mindless American baseball media (it would be interesting to look at parallel examples of Japanese media coverage). Geoff Baker is the only writer I’ve encountered (actually I think Keith Law also) who was like, this is funny, Ichiro is making fun of us.
Yeah, Jim Moore (not that we expect real journalism out of him, but still) had a really bad Ichiro as Charlie Chan article the other day in the print version of the P-I. I was pretty irritated by it.
I didn’t think the Salon article was too bad, but yes, I’m waiting hopefully for sportswriters to figure out a different angle to write about Ichiro.
I don’t know, it’s a tie between the Cleveland one and
“Having Felix back I’m sure allowed us to give the opposition major mental damage”
Ichiro is a smart and funny guy.
“Yesterday, I had two ice creams. Usually I only eat one.”
I prefer his witty responses to stupid questions, such as that one, to other responses. Like “Um… I was feeling good and saw the ball well.”
Yeah, Ichiro isn’t crazy, he isn’t a loon, he’s just witty, and if he was American, the sportswriters would actually realize it. =/
53 – Yeah – or someone who is not percieved through the filter of American Orientalist stereotypes – like, for example, Miguel Batista.
I think sometimes Ichiro likes to have a little joke at the media’s expense and they take him way too seriously due to the language barrier.
Or he could be nuts (I doubt it) but who cares? Gary Sheffield is nuts too, at least Ichiro doesn’t run his mouth off about every little thing.
57 – Bingo.
The whole thing with his dog telling him to stay was totally tongue in cheek if you heard the interview live. It was hilarious, and he was chuckling while he said it.
Transcribed it may have come off as weird, but that’s why you have to see/hear it in context.
I just want to see Ichiro pitch… i just have a feeling that he would be an amazing hurler from the mound.
…he has been quoted as wanting to pitch.
(As i type this i am imagining him practicing secretly with ninjas during the off season… waiting for his 40th birthday)
is this considered rosterbation?
That’d be super cool, having Ichi hit 40 y.o., get his 3000 hits and in one of his last games in the MLB, come trotting out of the bull pen in the 9th inning to mop up a laugher. I bet he’d say something like, “My dog told me to throw a curve ball.”
15: There have been some great ones this year, but my favorite was Bavasi’s on the teachings of his mother.
True, Bavasi might have the best Mariner quote this season.
(expletive) Dave Samson.
Not just this season, I think Bavasi’s quote instantly goes up there with the best of the all-time baseball quotes. So does Ichiro’s Cleveland quote, but I think Bavasi’s quote beats even the best of Ichiro!’s.
If only his management could match his wit.
Although, he does seem to finally be making the right moves. If Sexson is around for 2 more weeks with the same results we’ve seen lately, though, I’m going to hate him again. I’m pretty sure I could put the bat on the ball more than Sexson just out of swinging and praying…