Ichiro Suzuki may be in the Mariners front office at the age of 44, but he is far from putting his 4,367 hits — accumulated over parts of 27 seasons in Japan and the United States — in cold storage. “He may be technically in the front office,” says one of Ichiro’s closest friends. “But he prepares as if he’s going to play every night. He works out, he does his stretches, he hits in the cages, he works in the outfield… keeping himself ready to continue playing. It might come this season, it might come next spring, but he will be ready.”



Ichiro remains one of the most fascinating persons of the half-century that some of us have covered baseball. He also fascinated the Marlins’ uniformed personnel. Two springs ago, while I was behind the batting cage watching BP with Barry Bonds, Ichiro came out to join in his hitting group. “Here’s something you might not know,” he told us. “Barry Bonds and I...