Ichiro has no idea who Tom Brady is, and other reasons he’s perfect
By Josh Hill
Ichiro may not be playing baseball anymore, but he’s still an international treasure to the game.
Few baseball players truly established themselves as unique over the course of their careers. Ichiro, who retired-ish last week after almost 17 seasons, is very high on that short list of legends.
As we settle into a post-Ichiro world, there will be plenty of anecdotes from his career that surface. Whenever the definitive biography of his life comes out, it’s going to be must-read stuff, but until then we’re going to have to settle for stories popping up here and there.
One of those stories comes from Peter Gammons and is absolutely the stuff of legend.
There’s a lot to take away from the overall piece, from Ichiro’s almost psychotic work ethic to his dedication craft no matter what it may be. The primo takeaway is a story about how Ichiro received a text message from an unknown number asking him about stretching tips.
It turns out, the number belonged to Tom Brady. It also turns out, Ichiro doesn’t care about/know about Tom Brady.
That’s legendary. Ken Burns should make an entire inning of Baseball about this. Put him in Cooperstown and Canton. Everyone knows who Tom Brady is — he’s a Super Bowl-winning football legend who has starred in movies and hosted television shows watched by millions of people. That’s the type of person, with all those accomplishments and visibility, that still isn’t on Ichiro’s radar.
Of course, if you know anything about Ichiro then you’re privy to all the reasons he’s the best thing to have ever happened to baseball. If your entry point to
He met Michael Jordan wearing a Tom and Jerry sweater
When worlds collide.
People thought he was too skinny to withstand a 162-game season
It’s true. He followed up the criticism by playing in more than 162-games, winning Rookie of the Year and MVP along the way.
His 3,000th hit was a triple
For someone as fast and agile as Ichiro was his whole career, this is perfection.
Ichiro has more hits than Pete Rose
This is a controversial one to baseball traditionalists who like to foam at the mouth over the finer details, but it’s fact. Ichiro will finish his MLB career with just over 3,000 hits which is well shy of the record of 4,256 that Pete Rose holds. But consider that Ichiro didn’t start his career until he was 27-years old, and at that point had amassed 1,278 hits in his Japanese career. This brings his total hits over his career to 4,367 hits.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but that warm feeling you have in your soul right now is a growing love of Ichiro everyone should have.