Ichiro Suzuki walked into the visitors’ clubhouse at Petco Park on Monday wearing sunglasses, a white button-down shirt un-tucked over jeans rolled up beyond mid-calf and bejeweled sneakers.

Baseball royalty in two countries had arrived for the start of a three-game series.

He did not have time, he said through his longtime interpreter, for a few questions about what it was like to be Ichiro, playing at an absurd level at 42-years-old, defying the calendar as he makes history.

Ah, well. A legend is sometimes better appreciated as a mystery.


We are graced with greatness here this week, something to celebrate and cheer even if you’re rooting for the home team. This is a rock star with a .314 career batting average.

That graceful windmill, bat pointed to the heavens in the batters’ box. The steely stare as he awaits a pitch, eyeing the holes he is still finding with regularity. That swing that has slapped 2,977 major league hits, including three in four at-bats Monday.

Ichiro – the only player in MLB history to wear a jersey with just his first name stitched across his back – is closing in on baseball immortality as he seems to be staving off the end of his career.

He will, with his next hit, unofficially tie Pete Rose for the most in a career. Ichiro’s current total of 4,255 hits includes 1,278 in nine seasons with the Orix Blue Wave in Japan.


It is a milestone sure to be celebrated in Japan far more than it is here. While the dozen or so Japanese media members at Petco on Monday were there to chronicle his stalking of Rose, that country’s Nippon Professional League is considered a level of baseball perhaps a tad higher than our Triple-A. By no means can we entirely discount Ichiro’s accomplishments before he got to the States, but neither can we consider his hits total on par with Rose.

However, that Ichiro is 23 hits from becoming just the 30th major league player to reach 3,000 on its own makes him worthy of the Hall of Fame.

His plaque will certainly hang in Cooperstown one day. If he ever stops playing.

At an age when many men can hardly last seven innings of beer league softball, Ichiro led off a major league baseball game on Monday night and proceeded to up his season batting average to .350. With three hits (plus two walks and three runs) in six plate appearances Monday, he is hitting .370 over his past 73 at-bats.


“He’s swinging the bat like we shouldn’t be talking about his age,” Miami Marlins manager Don Mattingly said. “It’s like he’s 30 or 25.”

Not the 30-year-old Ichiro, who at that age was in the fourth of what would be 10 straight seasons with at least 208 hits. But Ichiro did enter Monday batting 144 points better than the guy he replaced, 26-year-old Giancarlo Stanton.

Ichiro, in his 16th major league season, is the Marlins’ fourth outfielder and gets more than a spot start mostly when someone is struggling or injured. He was playing here as slumping Stanton was getting a day off.

“Getting him in there is enticing right now,” Mattingly said, “because of what he’s been able to do for us.”


Ichiro, the majors’ oldest position player, doesn’t play as much as he used to. Mattingly, a six-time All-Star in his 14 major-league seasons, said Monday he “had a hard enough time (playing) at 34,” after which he retired in 1995. Ichiro, too, was overworked last year, as injuries compelled him to play in 153 games, more than any other Marlin and he batted a career-low (by far) .229 in 438 plate appearances.

So he has participated in just 53 games this season. Monday was just his 22nd start.

But when he does play, he is often some sort of throwback – to himself. Rather than trip on his birth certificate, which shows he will be 43 in October, he seems to be running away from father time. Or at least jogging ahead of him.

Ichiro went 8-for-19 in four starts last week. He played eight games in nine days in late May and had 11 hits in 35 at-bats.


He has multiple hits in 12 of the 23 games in which he has at least two at-bats. Sure, that’s a smallish sample size. But by way of comparison, Xander Bogaerts has in 61 games got multiple hits an MLB-high 29 times.

It is preposterous what Ichiro is doing. So many of the brightest stars flame out at the end.

At a ballpark where there hasn’t been much to relish for some time, it is nice to see a star still shining as bright as any has in a while.