Mariners Have Been Elevated to Higher Plane Behind Amazing Powers of Dynamic Suzuki

It’s as if the Safeco Field chant of Ich-E-row is drowning out the memories, as if this one man with a preference for one name is condemning Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez to the distant past--even though it has only been in the last 22 months that they have left.

“You always wonder how a team is going to handle the loss of three impact players, mentally, physically and attitude-wise,” relief pitcher Jeff Nelson is saying in the Seattle Mariner clubhouse. “But you look back now and say, ‘Who needs any of those guys? We’re doing fine without them.’ I mean, our pitching is good, our speed and defense are very good, we don’t make mistakes, and Ichiro is making just about everybody forget those guys all by himself.”

The Seattle Mariners are 31-9, one of the best 40-game starts in baseball history, and Ichiro Suzuki, the seven-time Japanese batting king and seven-time Gold Glove winner, is treating his adjustment to the U.S. game as if he were still playing for the Orix Blue Wave.

It’s mid-May, but the 27-year-old right fielder--with a cannon for an arm and machine gun for a bat--has helped kick-start the Mariners into a stunning 12-game lead in the American League West, elevating his teammates’ play, enhancing his own candidacy for the rookie-of-the-year and most-valuable-player awards--only Fred Lynn won both in the same year, 1975--and easing the sting of the Johnson, Griffey and Rodriguez departures.

Maybe that’s saying too much too soon, but as Manager Lou Piniella said, “I don’t think there’s any question but that he’s lifted the level of the entire team, that guys feed off his adrenaline and execution. I mean, it all starts with the leadoff man. He plays hard, plays right and plays to win. Is it fun watching him? Sure it is, just as it was fun watching Randy pitch and Junior and A-Rod play. Ichiro is a different type player but he’s just as productive.”

The claustrophobic Kingdome is gone. In spacious Safeco, Ichiro is the quintessential trigger for a team rebuilt during the last two years to feature pitching, speed, defense and an opportunistic offense.

The Mariners are more persistent than powerful now, and Ichiro’s persistence reminds Piniella of a guy playing the kids’ game of pepper, seemingly slapping the ball wherever he wants whenever he wants--”a pretty nice feeling to have at the plate,” said the manager. Piniella, once a professional hitter himself, has such confidence in Ichiro that when ESPN analyst and former pitcher Rob Dibble said recently he would run around Times Square naked if Ichiro won the batting title, “I told him he better start working on his tan.”

The blistering Mariners open a three-game series against the New York Yankees tonight with an eight-game winning streak. They are on pace to win 124 games and Ichiro is on pace to shatter major league records for hits in a season and games with at least one hit in a season, scoffing at the cultural and artistic adjustments. A .353 hitter in nine seasons with Orix, he is batting .371 as a Mariner and will face the Yankees having hit in 38 of his first 40 games, including the last 22 in a row, the longest streak in the majors this year.

Said Piniella, “I hear people say, ‘Wait till the pitchers catch up to him,’ and my answer to that is, ‘Wait until he’s more familiar with the pitchers.’ However, I don’t like to put pressure or expectations on players. As far as I’m concerned, all he has to do is maintain. What I’ve seen is good enough.”

The Mariners may be built for Safeco, but pitching and defense work anywhere. They are 17-4 on the road, and Ichiro is a league-leading .508 with men on base, and .563 with runners in scoring position, picking up some of the production slack from Griffey and Rodriguez. The Seattle lineup still includes the professional bats of Edgar Martinez, John Olerud and Bret Boone--who has driven in as many runs as Rodriguez has with Texas. In addition, the No. 2 batters, Mike Cameron and Mark McLemore, are the most productive in the league because they consistently get pitches to hit with Ichiro consistently on base.

Even without Griffey and Rodriguez’s home run thunder, the Mariners are second in the league in runs and first in walks and stolen-base percentage, and Ichiro is 13 for 17 on steals, a left-handed batter who gets to first base generally in an eye-popping 3.7 seconds. Scouts say there has been no one faster for several years, which is the reason there is no such thing as a routine ground ball with the 5-foot-9, 160-pound Ichiro involved.

“He keeps infielders on their toes,” reliever Nelson said.

Veteran Chicago White Sox broadcaster and former player Ken Harrelson stood by the batting cage Wednesday, cited the unorthodox movement of Ichiro’s head and feet as he swings, and said, “Ted Williams would be in shock.”

Perhaps, but illustrative of how often Ichiro centers the ball on the sweet spot of the bat is that he seldom gets jammed, having broken only four bats as a Mariner, and once made 216 consecutive plate appearances without striking out.

Said Piniella, “A lot of people say he reminds them of Rod Carew, the way he serves the ball anywhere he wants, but I think he’s more like Ralph Garr. Gator was a contact hitter who used the whole field and ran a little out of the box as he hit the ball, like Ichiro does. He didn’t strike out much and didn’t walk much, but he hit an occasional home run and had gap power.”

Garr batted .306 for 13 seasons. He won a batting title and had 200 or more hits three times. What he didn’t do, and what few do, is field and throw the way Ichiro does. Piniella said he is already the “barometer against which the league’s outfielders are measured,” and Harrelson put him in the class of former Boston Red Sox teammate Dwight Evans after watching Ichiro combine with second baseman Boone on a dazzling relay play Tuesday night. Ichiro went into the right-field corner to retrieve Josh Paul’s double opening the ninth inning of what would be a 4-3 Seattle victory, wheeled blindly, and threw a dart to Boone, who never has to leave the infield dirt because of the strength and accuracy of Ichiro’s arm, and who threw out Paul trying to make it a triple.

“Evans was the best I ever saw,” Harrelson said of the former Boston right fielder. “But it looks to me that Ichiro throws as good, is just as accurate, and definitely runs better than Dewey did. It’s not just the number of runs guys of that caliber save, it’s the number of runners they stop from going from first to third, and that’s critical to your pitchers.”

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the Mariners’ principal owner, has never been to Safeco Field, but he keeps an eye on Ichiro, his special envoy, because every Mariner game is televised in Japan and every Ichiro development is chronicled by the two dozen or so Japanese reporters at every game.

He and New York Met outfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo are the first Japanese position players to play in the major leagues and Ichiro, whose popularity in Japan was that of a rock star, doesn’t want a similar scrutiny to intrude on the Mariners.

He limits the Japanese media’s postgame access to a pool reporter and is more comfortable talking to American reporters through interpreter Hide Sueyoshi, although he has a basic grasp of English. He spent several winters in California filming Japanese commercials and has had a long friendship with Jim Colborn, the Dodger pitching coach who was the Orix pitching coach when Ichiro first broke in and later the Mariners’ Pacific Rim scouting director.

Asked Wednesday night about his hitting streak, Ichiro said, “This being the age of information and technology, it is inevitable not to know that kind of stuff through media people, but I’d rather just play baseball simply day in and day out. After I get a hit I say, ‘Oh, I got another one,’ but in a game situation I don’t think about it when I hit and it’s not my goal.”

Ichiro said that in his acclimatization he watches videos of opposing pitchers but knows they can change patterns and relies more on his instincts, looking for certain pitches in certain situations but more often just reacting to the ball. He added that since experiencing an attack of nerves in his first game with the Mariners, he is now comfortable, feeling he is playing the same game he did in Japan.

The Ichiro game often prompts teammates to use the word “amazing” when talking about his skills. They also applaud his universal humor and humility, pointing out he has turned down several opportunities to be on the covers of national publications because he doesn’t think he has proved anything yet and feels it would put him above the team.

Piniella cited his intelligence on the field and said, “I’ve seen some great instincts in the first [40] games.”

Of course, Seattle closer Kazuhiro Sasaki helped pave the way. He won the league’s rookie-of-the-year award last year and is the league leader in saves this year.

“What we’ve seen from Sasaki and Ichiro speaks well for the Japanese brand of baseball,” Piniella said. “We might have cherry-picked the elite, but [Hideo] Nomo has long been an excellent pitcher, and [Shigetoshi] Hasegawa is an excellent pitcher as well.”

It was during his last two years as Seattle’s Pacific Rim director that Colborn provided the persistent lobbying and key reports on both Sasaki and Ichiro.

The Mariners signed Sasaki to a three-year, $14-million contract before the 2000 season. They outbid the Dodgers, Mets and Angels for negotiating rights to Ichiro last winter by agreeing to pay Orix $13.125 million, then signed Ichiro to a three-year, $14-million contract.

General Manager Pat Gillick insists he was hoping to keep Rodriguez in addition to landing Ichiro, but the probability of Rodriguez’s departure freed money for the signings of Ichiro, Nelson and Boone.

The Mariners are reaping benefits at the gate--second-year attendance at Safeco is expected to exceed last season’s 3.1 million--and on the field, and Gillick said, “Given the cultural adjustment and different style of play in our game, with pitchers throwing more fastballs, I don’t think anyone could have predicted that Ichiro would be this successful this soon. We knew his talent and work ethic were A-plus, but I’m sure our players didn’t know how good he was. Now they realize they have a chance to do something special, and he’s added incentive, enhanced that chance.”

And, of course, deposited Johnson, Griffey and Rodriguez far deeper into Seattle’s memory bank.

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Fast Ball

Baseball’s fastest starts since 1950:

Team Start

1955 Dodgers: 30-10

1977 Dodgers: 30-10

1984 Tigers: 35-5

1998 Yankees: 31-9

2001 Mariners: 31-9

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MORE INSIDE

Smooth sailing: The Mariners see themselves as a largely anonymous, over-achieving team motivated to overcome the loss of three superstars. D9