“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?