At a press conference after marking his 4,257th hit, Ichiro says: “Since I was a child, I’ve always achieved things that people laughed at me for trying. I take pride in that. When I was in primary school, I had baseball training every day. Some of my neighbors saw me and said with a laugh, ‘Does he really think he’s going to be a professional baseball player?’”

“When I moved to the United States to play in the majors, I said, ‘I want to be a leading hitter.’ Again, people laughed at me.”