{"id":18131,"date":"2019-03-22T18:51:02","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T22:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/\/?p=18131"},"modified":"2019-03-31T14:04:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T18:04:54","slug":"ichiros-greatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2019\/03\/22\/ichiros-greatness\/","title":{"rendered":"Ichiro’s Greatness Left a Tremendous Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ichiro<\/a> left the field Thursday in Tokyo, the fans roared. His opponents applauded, and his teammates all hugged him. Some wept. The Great Ichiro was retiring from professional baseball.<\/p>\n

Early Signs of Ichiro\u2019s Greatness<\/h2>\n

Ichiro wasn\u2019t a once-in-a-generation talent. He was more. He was a once-in-multiple<\/em>-generations talent. In Japan, he became a huge star with the Orix Blue Wave of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) starting from the age of 20 in 1994. Questions, of course, abounded as to whether he could be as successful in Major League Baseball. The Seattle Mariners certainly thought so, paying a pretty penny to bring him to the Emerald City in 2001 at the age of 27. He took the Majors by storm, batting .350\/.457\/.381 with 34 doubles, eight triples, eight homers, and 127 runs scored. His total of 242 hits \u2013 the highest in the Majors since 1930 \u2013 and 56 stolen bases each led the league. At the time, the record for hits in a season was still 257, so in his first year facing Major League pitching,\u00a0he was only 15 hits short of the Major League record.<\/em>\u00a0By comparison, Pete Rose<\/a>\u2019s career high was 230 in 1973. Since the establishment of the American League in 1901, 240 hits in a season had only been achieved 12 times before Ichiro did it in 2001. Wade Boggs<\/a> and Darin Erstad<\/a> reached 240 in 1985 and 2000, respectively, but those were the only two times since 1930. It was mind-boggling, but that was just the beginning.<\/p>\n

The Throw<\/h2>\n