If not for a bench coach who saw perfection where no one else did, Ichiro Suzuki might never have become the most prolific hitter in baseball history

On a chilly October night in 2003, Kenichiro Kawamura sat in the lounge of a hotel in Kobe, talking about the time he saved Ichiro Suzuki’s swing. It was story he rarely repeated, even though he was a known hitting coach in Japan and Ichiro an American sensation as the right fielder for the Seattle Mariners. Few, if any, in Major League Baseball had heard the story, not even Ichiro’s US agent. But that was Ichiro in those days: private, guarded and resentful of inquiries about his past. In many ways, he still is, even after recording his 3,000th major league hit against the Rockies on Sunday.

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In the early 1990s, Kawamura was the batting coach for the minor league team of the Orix Blue Wave in Japan’s top-flight Nippon Baseball League. Ichiro was a decent high school pitcher in Japan, generating surprising speed from his lithe 5ft 9in, 170lb body. The Blue Wave used a middle-round draft pick on the 19-year-old Ichiro in 1992 because of his pitching. But Ichiro’s father, Nobuyuki Suzuki, had drilled his son for years on the art of hitting baseballs, building his child a painfully awkward-looking swing that nonetheless produced effective results. When Ichiro reported to the Blue Wave, based in Kobe, he told team officials he didn’t want to be a pitcher, he was going to be an outfielder.

Their manager, Shozo Doi, did not see Ichiro as an outfielder. Doi had been a second baseman for the Yomiuri Giants back when thet were the Yankees of Japanese baseball and was not impressed with Ichiro’s spinning, almost lunging swing. Ichiro was a pitcher, he said. Ichiro said no. He wished to play outfield. Finally, Doi relented sending Ichiro to Kawamura.

Years later, in the hotel lounge, Kawamura could still remember the terse order Doi gave him.

“He said: ‘Fix his swing,’” Kawamura told me through an interpreter who sat with us at the table.

They were an odd match, Kawamura and Ichiro. The hitting coach was big and robust, a gregarious baseball man, while Ichiro was tiny and limber. But the first time Kawamura watched Ichiro hit he was amazed. The lunging, reaching, left-handed swing that almost spun Ichiro in a half-circle was not ugly. It was one of the most beautiful swings he had ever seen.

“I found his center of gravity was very strong,” Kawamura said for a story I wrote in the Seattle Times. “He makes a perfect triangle with his body, which makes a perfect center of gravity. His head always sits on the top of the triangle. He looks like he goes forward, but he doesn’t. It looked awkward, but when he hits the ball it becomes the perfect form.”

Kawamura defied Doi’s demand. He knew he was watching brilliance when he saw Ichiro swing. And because Ichiro was very fast, he would get hits even when he didn’t hit the ball well. Given the way Ichiro also threw from the outfield, his heaves low and hard and straight, Kawamura was sure Ichiro was right. The player was an outfielder, not a pitcher.

He gave Ichiro a workout program to strengthen his legs and said he would make him a top hitter in Japan’s major leagues within two seasons. Ichiro stormed through the workout program and when the season started he was the minor league team’s best hitter. Even Doi took notice, calling Ichiro up to the major league team in June. The promotion was too early. Against the major league pitchers, the still-teenage Ichiro looked ordinary, hitting just .253 in 40 games. Doi sent Ichiro back to Kawamura again demanding that Kawamura change his swing. Once more, Kawamura refused.

“I was so confident he would be a good batter if he gained his strength,” Kawamura said. “He hadn’t found his potential yet. I protected Ichiro. Going to the majors was too quick for him.”

Still, Doi insisted that Kawamura remake Ichiro’s swing. The more Kawamura said no the angrier Doi grew. They argued regularly about Ichiro with Kawamura telling Doi that destroying Ichiro’s swing would ruin a player destined to be one of Japan’s greats. All Ichiro needed, Kawamura kept saying, was time to let his body mature. Doi was unmoved. His order remained the same.

Change the swing.

In the hotel lounge Kawamura’s face reddened as he recalled those arguments. He jabbed his stubby fingers into the table before him. “I would quit! I would quit! I would quit!” he said, rather than alter what he considered to be the best swing he had ever seen. Eventually, he won. After the 1993 season Doi was fired and replaced by Akira Ohgi, who accepted the swing of Ichiro, who was then 21 and stronger. In 1994, his first full season with Orix, Ichiro hit .385 and became one of Japan’s biggest stars. Seven years later, he joined the Mariners where again another league of baseball people questioned his swing and wondered if a player so small could be successful.

That was 3,000 hits ago.

None of which would have come without the persistence of a minor league hitting coach who saw perfection when no one else did.