Teammates Hate Ichiro, We Hate Teammates
In his second part of his rebuilding series, Geoff Baker writes about specific hostility towards Ichiro in the clubhouse during the early part of the season. Quoting the relevant portion:
And it was a clubhouse in need of some direction, given the problems engulfing it as the season came undone. When it came to Ichiro, who got off to a typically slow start in April and part of May, the internal turmoil nearly hit its boiling point.
“I just can’t believe the number of guys who really dislike him,” said one clubhouse insider. “It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him.”
The coaching staff and then-manager John McLaren intervened when one player was overheard talking — in reference to Ichiro — about wanting to “knock him out.” A team meeting was called to clear the air.
Now, you might wonder, what could Ichiro have done to foster such open anger? Clearly, he must have offended someone pretty severely.
Ichiro this year had to battle a midseason hamstring problem, and he was shifted from center field back to right because McLaren thought Ichiro was a better defender in the corner. While Ichiro is said to have recovered from his injury, his stolen-base totals dropped as the season progressed. He also did not get to some balls in the gap and the right-field corner at times, prompting more clubhouse complaints that he cared only about piling up hits instead of sitting out to heal properly.
Yep – the explanation given is that teammates want to “knock him out” because he plays when he’s less than 100% healthy. What a bastard. How could he possibly garner the respect of his teammates when he’s selfishly hurting the team by playing at a diminished level and keeping guys out of the line-up who could have helped the team win? If only he would learn how to be a clubhouse leader, such as Raul Ibanez, who would never struggle through pain, costing the team valuable runs in a playoff race while a ready replacement was waiting in the wings.
Oh, wait, that’s EXACTLY what Raul Ibanez did last year. You remember last year, right, where the team managed to stick in the race despite the fact that Ibanez had a .697 OPS the first four months of the season while playing absolutely brutal defense in left field. Remember last July, when he hit .184/.241/.262 as the team was trying to figure out if they were a legitimate enough contender to make a trade deadline acquisition, then later admitted that he had played through a painful shoulder problem that limited his power and affected his swing. Meanwhile, Adam Jones toiled in Tacoma, unable to get any playing time while Ibanez killed the team with some brutal performances.
Why was no one threatening to beat up Ibanez last year? Why is he a revered clubhouse leader while Ichiro is a selfish one dimensional egomaniac?
Because the stated reason is total crap. The players aren’t mad at Ichiro for playing hurt, even if that’s what they’ll state publicly. They’re mad at him because he’s Japanese, or he stretches by himself, or he wears funny clothing, or some other non-baseball reason. I’m not denying that they really do dislike Ichiro – this isn’t the first time this has come up – but I am calling BS on their reasoning. MLB players don’t get aggravated to violence because a guy won’t sit out when he’s hurt. Just the opposite, in fact, has been the case with Erik Bedard, where members of the team reportedly have no respect for him because he wouldn’t pitch with pain.
So, what is the real reason? It could be racially based (let’s be honest, MLB players aren’t the smartest crowd in the world), it could be personality based (“His shoes are pink – how gay!”), or it could be something else entirely. I have no idea, and I don’t pretend to know. But I do know this – I don’t care what a bunch of replacement level, washed up, overpaid and entitled career losers think about Ichiro’s efforts or value, and neither should the M’s front office. If Carlos Silva thinks Ichiro is selfish, then maybe Carlos Silva should look into being more selfish and pitching well enough to win a game once in a while.
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I’ve seen Silva coughing up fur.
I believe that’s actually how he threw out his back originally.
That thing I said would be ignored up there? The comment I made timestamped 4:20 PM? Notice that dang and wallywwu have both already ignored it, repeating the Ichiro-can’t-be-criticized line.
Would either of you care to at least argue with it?
Wow, just when you thought this season could not get any worse, it does so with these reports of teammates who supposedly wanted to physically attack Ichiro. What a horror show.
I know that some people think it’s Silva given his past comments and Baker says that person would “shock you,” but there is only one logical conclusion as to whom the ringleader of these anti-Ichiro mob is.
It is none other than … WFB!
I would pay good money to see WFB and Ichiro! throw down in a cage.
The point is that one side says “you are not objective regarding Ichiro”. The blog response is “you are not objective about our objectivity regarding Ichiro”.
“I have no doubt that the stories of Junior were true–they simply didn’t matter while he was helping us try to win…and I think he always helped us try to win.”
I was going to say something pretty much along those lines.
I’ve been reading through all these rather soap opera-ish comments. Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to remember the statistical formula for evaluating a player’s “chemistry” or “likeability” or whatever. Then I remembered: I buy tickets and support advertisers to watch baseball players play baseball.
As far as what they are like as people, I don’t know, I don’t care and it doesn’t affect me. As I’ve often said after a Mariners win, “Twenty five people I don’t know and will never meet had a good day at work and I’m happy.”
I used to have a lot of respect for Gas on KJR, but as he was talking about this story, he said something like “Jose Guillen was tagged by the players as a leader. Next time (the M’s) have a player like Guillen, maybe they will reconsider releasing him.” Perhaps Gas didn’t notice Guillen’s outburst against his new teammates, calling them…was it babies? See ‘the media and Jose Guillen’ and ‘proven chemistry guru Guillen harming chemistry’ Anyway, I agree with much of what is being said here, whatever is going on in that clubhouse against ICHIRO is a shame. Some weird psychology thing, á la Gomez’s wonderful James quote. Also…It is none other than … WFB!
lol
Silva needs to lose 45 lbs….then maybe his back won’t be too sore to pitch. When your fat….you have to perform or you better shut up.
You had a lot of respect for Gas and because he says something you disagree with you no longer have respect for him?
Few other reasons why teammates/some fans might hate Ichiro and why he is considered “selfish”:
1) there has been several documented reports of how Ichiro did not agree to play CF in his first few seasons here (after Cammy was gone). Even USSM was endoring how more valuble Ichiro will be to the team if he plays CF, but he just said No. And finally after 6 years of prodding and a new 90 mil $ contract, he agreed last year; and after 1.5 years, he is back to RF. And there are documented reports on how happy he was to go back to RF (even though he is less valuable to the team in RF)
2) there is documented evidence of his disapproval to play anywhere in the lineup other than hit leadoff; some of his managers tried to ask him to bat at #3 on certain days, but the guy would just not agree to it easily. And he will publicly state that he wants to hit leadoff (very similar to how Jose Lopez keeps on saying that he does not want to play 1B currently – but Lopez is not paid 18 million $ and is neither considered a “franchise icon” or “superstar”)
Ichiro has supreme level of talent, is a iconic player, he brings in a LOT OF REVENUE for this crappy team; but he is not a selfless player who puts the team first. Stats and meaningless records like 8 consecutive 200 hit seasons matter to him a big deal; if the team is winning and in contention its a different story. But when the team is playing this crappy overall and is losing 100 games, who the heck cares about 8 consecutive 200 hit seasons?????? Only ichiro.
And?
Me. As a fan of this team, it’s nice to have at least one exciting thing to think about this season. He has a record. That is what makes baseball great, records and stats and all the fun number stuff.
Oh, and Felix’s grand slam, that was another thing to be excited about this year.
Congrats Ichiro for doing something no one else in nearly 100 years could do. Your amazing!
RE: dang: That’s not entirely correct. He doesn’t have all of the facts, he was operating under old assumptions, carried on by much of Seattle that Guillen was a good clubhouse guy. We now have evidance that he isn’t, or at least isn’t if his team is under .500 and he’s not hitting .300. I realize now that this may have been a bit of a rash judgement, but it just struck me weirdly as an uninformed statement. Saying that it would be better to spend $$ on Guillen rather than Silva is debatable, but Guillen’s recent track record on a losing team might indicate that he would not be a great influence on the worst team in baseball. Finally, I never said that I no longer have respect for him, it sort of took a little dip after his comments. Gas has said a great many things that I disagree with, but don’t think that just because he said something like that, I now hate him.
a fan thrilled to see someone finally on base, and desperately hoping to see some one else in the line up bat him in?
This is utterly ridiculous, and embarrassing as well, being a Mariners fan. What this whole issue is about is not that Ichiro is selfish or arrogant, or the truth of any of his alleged character flaws. No, this isn’t really about Ichiro at all; it’s about some insane, boneheaded Unknown Mariner Player who nearly got into a fistfight because Ichiro is stand-offish, played hurt and tried hard when games were already decided (and aren’t the last two good things?). This unknown player’s reasoning is just as logical as some guy cutting me off in traffic, so I follow him home and brutally murder him in front of his family. Why anyone here would criticize defending Ichiro here is beyond me, because we are defending Ichiro from COMPLETE AND TOTAL MADNESS.
If I had to speculate, then I’d say that a good many players went into this season drinking Bill Bavasi’s kool-aid, and believed this team was going to contend. Well, it was pretty clear after the first month or so that this season was in the toilet, and then McLaren, Bavasi, Sexson and Vidro were all shown the door. It wouldn’t surprise me that a few of our srappiest players, instead than look themselves in the mirror and admit their own failure, would rather focus the blame elsewhere. And throughout the history of baseball horrible teams have had the knack of blaming their best players for the poor achievement of the team. So, as is human nature, unknown crappy player cast his resentment not at himself but at the the shy, eccentric, tiny Japanese guy who is also the star of the team.
I’m not going to play the race card here, but isn’t it TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE to wonder in this horrible situation would have occurred if Ichiro still stretched by himself and was always supremely confident and played hurt and still played hard when it didn’t matter, but that his name was Mike Smith and he went out for beers with his teammates after games and played practical jokes? I’m not sure, but evwn if race is the central motivating factor here I still believe this whole thing (if Baker’s report is 100% true, which I sort of doubt) is completely insane. If we ever find out who this mystery player is, then I don’t care who he is, even if it’s King Felix…..I don’t want that player on the Mariners for a second longer.
This whole mess just makes me sick; Ichiro doesn’t deserve it, the Mariner organization doesn’t deserve it, and we M’s fans don’t deserve it either.
Where have you gone Edgar Martinez?…….
I wrote 3 paras – everyone is jumping on the last one. What about the first 2? What arguments are you going to bring in to support Ichiro on those 2 well known positions of Ichiro?
Few other reasons why teammates/some fans might hate Ichiro and why he is considered “selfishâ€:
1) there has been several documented reports of how Ichiro did not agree to play CF in his first few seasons here (after Cammy was gone). Even USSM was endoring how more valuble Ichiro will be to the team if he plays CF, but he just said No. And finally after 6 years of prodding and a new 90 mil $ contract, he agreed last year; and after 1.5 years, he is back to RF. And there are documented reports on how happy he was to go back to RF (even though he is less valuable to the team in RF)
2) there is documented evidence of his disapproval to play anywhere in the lineup other than hit leadoff; some of his managers tried to ask him to bat at #3 on certain days, but the guy would just not agree to it easily. And he will publicly state that he wants to hit leadoff (very similar to how Jose Lopez keeps on saying that he does not want to play 1B currently – but Lopez is not paid 18 million $ and is neither considered a “franchise icon†or “superstarâ€)
Raul Ibanez has refused to DH despite being the worst defensive outfielder in franchise history – how is that not selfish? Why aren’t you going after him?
2) But Ichiro thinks he has the most value hitting first, and I don’t think anyone else in this orginization is any smarter than Ichiro. Can you dispute that?
That’s seriously your support for a “selfish” label? That he wants to play his position and bat his slot so that he can do his best? THAT ASSHOLE.
You’ve got people here actually complaining that he tries to get hits!
What kind of a jerk baseball player tries to get hits? The nerve.
Hm. Article about players wanting to physically assault Ichiro. What kind of a person wants to make the issue about Ichiro being selfish? Seriously.
It’s like reading an article about a wife beater and deciding that it needed to be pointed out that she was a bad cook.
Excellent point
I like USSIchiro.com! Best thing to come out of this thread.
As far as the “you guys are blind Ichiro fanboys and aren’t objective regarding him”, my only response is a gigantic yawn.
We’ve had the same thing said in regards to Doyle, and Felix, along with other players that I’m sure exist but are escaping me at the moment.
I get so tired of this Crap every time we have one of these threads on USSM!
Wait… he did? I know he’s stated that he takes pride in his defense and so on, but sources confirmed that he refused to DH?
He must be pissed about DHing these last few weeks.
Ibanez has refused to be a regular DH in the same way that Ichiro has refused to play CF. They both have said that they would do what the team asks them to while still making their preference abundantly clear.
One point I immediately thought of in regards to this story that I haven’t seen addressed: if the threat of physical violence against a teammate was known, then why in god’s name wasn’t that player punished/released? If this happened back in April/May, doesn’t it make Ichiro’s season even that much more impressive?
How well would any of us work with the looming thought of violence by those who I am supposed to be on the same team with? Good god! Could you imagine having to worry about that every day going to work, that some jealous buffoon is going to attack you because you are successful at what you do?
It’s apparent there are commenters in this thread who are either racist or the same type of haters that want to hurt Ichiro. How exactly do you criticize a guy like Ichiro, a guy who goes out every single day and kills it, despite being on the worst run franchise in all of baseball? But players who truly suck like Silva, and Washburn, and the others you are ok with?
In response to you, Mike Snow, Ichiro refused to play CF? Are you sure about that one, guy? Are you sure it wasn’t the manager making the move, and shifting Ichiro back to RF?
Ichiro made his ‘preference abundantly clear’? Can you please back this up with specific references or kindly retract your statement as the bald-faced lie it is?
Axtell, you’ve misunderstood what I wrote completely. Gomez pointed out that Ibanez has been a DH despite “refusing” to DH, I made the same point about Ichiro and CF. And McLaren himself said when he made the move back that RF was clearly Ichiro’s preference.
Ichiro refused to move to CF when they first had Winn out there and it was really rocky those first months. I believe this has come out since, though I don’t have a cite on me. He wanted at least a full off-season to prepare, and later when he got that, he played center and didn’t kvetch about it.
Now, we can argue that refusing to move mid-season to center but being happy about moving to right mid-season is a jerk move. But I think he felt right was his natural position, he’d been there for many years, and didn’t want to move to center full-time without adequate prep. I don’t see that as too selfish, especially considering that he did move later and did it well.
I’ve been parsing the words pretty carefully and trying to remember the season. In mid-May, the M’s had gone from a disappointing April completely down the drain, losing six straight and eleven out of twelve. The team was getting no production out of DH, 1B, C or RF, so the GM put the blame on Greg Norton. The manager had demonstrated that he had no ability to right the ship. If you were a Mariner who cared, you were intensely frustrated.
Different people express their frustration in different ways. Some throw chairs or put their fists through walls. Some decide to remember that next time up they should do something different and work on that.
If you’re one of the first kind and you see Ichiro, who in my observation is of the second kind, and you can’t really speak to him or understand what he’s thinking, and you’re frustrated because you bought the front office’s story that we were contenders this year, and you want everyone to react to games the way you do, and you see Ichiro not doing that, I can understand you getting angry. I am not justifying it, but I am understanding it. And maybe you say something to someone that “one clubhouse source” overhears. Something really stupid in your frustration like “I’d like to punch out Ichiro.” I imagine you say it far away from Ichiro, far away from any circumstance where you could in fact punch out Ichiro, but you know in your heart of hearts that punching out Ichiro is career-suicide on so many levels it’s not funny.
I can also imagine frustrated players expressing, to someone in the clubhouse, a dislike of Ichiro. Those same players who, when he does something to win a game, will be high-fiving him. People are hypocrites, and baseball players are people. Ichiro, like Ted Williams, is probably not everyone’s cup of tea.
Much ado about nothing.
Where have you gone Jay Buhner?…..
Actually, Ichiro did move to center mid-season because Reed got hurt and they had no other options at that point. But I remember that he said something along the lines of what Derek’s remembering.
What a dirty tempest in an unwashed tepot THIS story is!
Baker is a sportwriter, and therefore can be assumed, until proven otherwise, to be a sneaky, cranky, backstabbing shit. Here, he has reached no more than the level of a typical NY Post column.
It is all in good fun.
It’s really no big deal,…
…so I suggest surrounding the Seattle Times building as a mob; tar and feathering him; and riding him out of town on a rail.
Free South Pacific will be served to all mobbers, who can use the empties (there will be no extras after this season) to attempt to pelt said reporter on his pin head.
This is the quote that might have rubbed Silva the wrong way (from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2004315366_ichiro30.html
)
“Speed is a very important skill in my game, but more than that, if the day ever comes where I start getting a gut, that’s the day I will quit baseball,” he said.
When that statement is greeted with a laugh by both the reporter and Barron — Ichiro’s diabolically low body-fat measurement is the stuff of legend — he interjects quickly, “That was actually not a joke. I think that’s important.
“Baseball and golf are the only sports where the athletes can have a gut and still play well. None of the other sports is like that except perhaps sumo, which is a special case.
“I really don’t like the fact that baseball has that image. That’s why it’s important for me not to fall into that image.”
Asked if it embarrasses him to see portly, out-of-shape players, he replied, with an amused glint, “I can’t say that, because there’s people like that that are actually out there.”