The Ichiro Paradox

Who

sits like this? No American male over six years old and, Lord knows, no baseball player. Players slouch. Players hunch over with headphones on. Players sit like emperors with arms folded. Yet here is Ichiro, on a chair in front of his locker: feet drawn up, heels pressed against his butt, knees together—a position physically impossible, not to mention unacceptably precious, for the muscle-bound types populating major league clubhouses these days. Twenty minutes pass. Ichiro doesn't move. His head is tilted up to watch a TV set hanging from the wall. He stares, grinning. He would look like an amused child, except he's too alert. He looks about as harmless as a panther on a tree limb.

Ichiro is watching a tape of tonight's opposing pitcher. He does this before every game. After batting practice he sits oh-so-cozily amid the clubhouse bustle, looking for weakness. No teammate speaks to him. His eyes shine. He looks hungry.

		LATEST COVER STORY Should You Be a Vegetarian? July 8, 2002 Past Issues Understanding Anxiety Jul. 8, 2002 ----------------- Being Tom Cruise Jul. 1, 2002 ----------------- Asia's World Cup Jun. 24, 2002 ----------------- China's Labor Lost Jun. 17, 2002 ----------------- Asian Medicine Jun. 10, 2002   ASIA  Afghanistan: Losing the Peace  Indonesia: The President's Man  Pakistan: A Violation of Justice  China: War on the Web SPORTS  Baseball: The Ichiro Paradox ARTS  Music: Tokyo's Soul Sister  Books: Sounds of the River  Books: Longing TRAVEL  Get Lost in Indonesia's Sea NOTEBOOK  Person of the week  Milestones CNN.com: Top Headlines

Pitchers went straight at Ichiro Suzuki last year, figuring to dent his gaudy Japan League credentials, and the Seattle Mariners' 27-year-old rookie rightfielder made them all pay. He sliced up the American League with a .350 batting average, got more hits (242) than anyone else in 71 years, and became only the second man ever voted American League Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season. No one found a way to neutralize him then, and now, just a season and a half after he hit the beach, American baseball is waving the flag of surrender. On July 4, Ichiro—no one bothers with his last name anymore—was hitting .360.

"There's no secret way to get him out," says Boston Red Sox manager Grady Little. "All you can do is concentrate on the other eight guys."

"Impossible to defend," says Ray Knight, the bench coach of the Cincinnati Reds, "but he's a joy to watch."

Strange words from an opponent, but such is the nature of baseball's Ichiro paradox. He makes contradiction logical. Through June 30, he had but two home runs yet led the league in intentional walks. He speaks little English in a sound-bite era and yields no emotion in a culture that prizes personality; he's a contact hitter in a sport overdosed on power—yet he is baseball's most popular player. This year, for the second season in a row, Ichiro led every major league player in the fans' All-Star Game balloting. Yes, his 2.5 million votes were padded by Internet voters in Japan, but consider: even on hard ballots filled out mostly in American ballparks, Ichiro topped everyone with 1.7 million votes.

None of this leaves him the least bit mystified. "I'm unique," Ichiro says. "I'm a very rare kind of player."

More than even he knows. There's a Pepsi ad in Japan that pictures Ichiro swinging a bat above the words "change the world." It's not just marketing. His was supposed to be the tough adjustment, but in truth Ichiro has made few concessions. American fans, pitchers and general managers are the ones scrambling to adjust. Already his success has killed, once and for all, the long-held conceit that a small Japanese player (Ichiro is 1.75 m tall and weighs 72.6 kg) would be overwhelmed in the major leagues. In Japan, meanwhile, it has completely altered the landscape. A mere baseball star when he played there, Ichiro is now an omnipresent cultural icon.

Japanese mornings begin with unprecedented TV broadcasts of each of his games. His face stares from T shirts, newspapers, subway ads. He is, appropriately enough, both everywhere and nowhere to be found, dominating a nation while squatting in a chair half a planet away. But the Ichiro paradox cuts most deeply across the game he left behind. Ichiro has given Japanese baseball new life, yet by the time he's done, it may be crippled beyond repair.