The Seattle Mariners are bringing Ichiro Suzuki home to wrap up his career, and that’s good for baseball.
In another time or place, a future Hall of Fame baseball player returning home to finish up his career would not be news. This is how the game operated for most of its long history. Franchise icons were always given the chance to go out on their own terms. Hank Aaron, for example, spent the final two years of his legendary career hitting .232/.326/.360 at the age of 41 and 42. It may not have been pretty, but there was a special sentimentality of seeing Aaron finish his career in Milwaukee, where it had started 21 years earlier.
That same sentimentality has been replaced by something much colder these days. Spreadsheets and datasets have pushed human emotion completely out of MLB front offices. Jose Bautista, who delivered the most iconic moment in Toronto sports history this side of Joe Carter, sits without a job as the season is three weeks away. Little to no effort was made to ensure that the best player in Blue Jays history finished his career in blue and white.
Players don’t so much retire anymore as they fade away when the powers that be decide it’s time to move on. MLB, in so many ways a polar opposite of the NFL, is finally beginning to treat its players as nothing more than a line in a ledger. Why keep a past-his-prime veteran around as catnip for the fans when a 22-year-old with minor-league options can do the same job for a fraction of the cost.
Baseball’s offseason has become a game of chicken between established veterans in their thirties and the bean counters that occupy the front offices. A competitive team could be built out of the free agents left twisting in the wind while general managers wait for their asking prices to come down.
Considering the current climate, it is remarkably refreshing to see the Seattle Mariners bring Ichiro Suzuki back home to end his career. Seventeen years ago, American baseball fans waited with baited breath for the arrival of the best ball striker in Japanese baseball history. Ichiro did not disappoint, hitting .350 and winning the batting title, Rookie of the Year and MVP in his debut season. Ten All-Star seasons later, Suzuki departed Seattle as an icon. He set the single-season hits record in 2004 with 262, shattering George Sisler’s record that had stood for 84 years. It is a record that will likely never be topped.
Ichiro departed Seattle in a mutual split due to the team’s desire to get younger. He happily moved into a roving part-time role with the New York Yankees and Miami Marlins. If possible, Suzuki somehow became more beloved in this lesser role, the legend growing ever stronger. He is now the ever-youthful 44-year-old who just wants to continue playing ball.
Part of what makes Ichiro so endearing is the way he has always kept himself cloaked in mystery. He has cultivated an image of a wizened hitting sage but has never been shy about letting out little flashes of personality that keep us coming back for more. Suzuki exudes the happiness of a man who knows exactly what he is doing, and is more than happy to let the rest of us in on the fun. For all the singles he slapped between first and second base, we all bought into the myth that all that stood between Ichiro and a 30-homer season was his own desire to stay true to himself.
"Chicks who dig home runs aren’t the ones who appeal to me. I think there’s sexiness in infield hits because they require technique. I’d rather impress the chicks with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might flirt a little by hitting one out.”"
No one knows exactly what role Ichiro will fill with the Mariners in 2018 and beyond. He played in 136 games last season and batted 215 times for the Marlins. The opportunities for him to contribute for Seattle will be much more sporadic, but that isn’t the point. The Mariners are going against the grain and showing that it is possible to honor the past while keeping an eye on the present. It’s obvious that Jerry Dipoto could have found a younger option to match whatever level of production Ichiro will provide, but it’s about more than that.
Next: Best all-time player for each MLB team
Sentimentality does have a place in baseball, a sport that is largely sustained by the relationships fans form with it at a young age. MLB gets knocked at times — and rightfully so — for relying too heavily on the past, but the pendulum is now swinging too far in the opposite direction. Ichiro’s final year(s, please) with the Mariners will be largely unremarkable in many ways, but so, so meaningful in many others.