Background

Ichiro Suzuki was born in Kasugai in the Aichi Prefecture of Japan on October 22, 1973. He is the son of Nobuyuki Suzuki and Yoshie Suzuki. Ichiro has an elder brother, Kazuyasu Suzuki.

Education

By the age of three, Suzuki was playing with a toddler-sized bat and ball outside his home. When he was only eight years old, Ichiro convinced his father to let him join a local baseball club. Since the local ball club played only on Sundays, Suzuki prevailed on his father to play catch and pitch to him whenever possible during the rest of the week. His father, Nobuyuki Suzuki, later became a coach for his son's baseball club. The younger Suzuki's talents as a ballplayer were already abundantly evident by the time he entered Nagoya Electric High School, also known as Aikodai Meiden. While in high school, Suzuki participated in Japan's National High School Baseball Tournament, or Koshien.

Career

Fresh out of high school, Suzuki was drafted in the fourth round of 1991's Japanese free agent draft by the Orix Blue Wave of Kobe, a member of the Pacific League and one of the leading Japanese pro baseball teams. During his nine seasons with the Blue Wave, he collected seven consecutive Pacific League batting titles, was named Most Valuable Player three times, and in 1998 led his team to a Pacific League pennant. In 1992, his first year with the Wave, Suzuki split his time between one of the team's minor league ball clubs and the majors. He hit .366 in fifty-eight games with the minor league club before he was called up to the majors where he batted .253 in forty games. The following year, Suzuki started off again with the minors, hitting .371 in forty-eight games but only a disappointing .188 in 164 at-bats with the majors. He hit his first home run in the majors on June 12, 1993, off a pitch from Hideo Nomo of the Kinetsu Buffaloes. His first exposure to baseball outside Japan came in 1993 when he played a season for the Hilo Stars in Hawaii Winter Baseball.

Suzuki really came into his own during the 1994 season with the Blue Wave, batting .385 and setting a Japanese record with 210 hits in only 130 games. That same year, he scored in sixty-nine consecutive games between May 21 and August 26. In 1995, Suzuki led the Pacific League with forty-nine stolen bases and knocked home a career-high total of twenty-five home runs. Suzuki in 1996 led the Blue Wave to a Pacific League pennant and the Japanese championship with a win over the Yomiuri Giants. In 1997 with Akira Ogi as the new manager of the Blue Wave, Suzuki enjoyed a string of 216 consecutive at-bats without a strikeout. He won his fifth straight Pacific League batting title in 1998.

Suzuki's 1999 season was cut short when he was struck by a pitch in late August, breaking the ulna bone in his right hand. He nevertheless managed to lead the league for the sixth straight year with a batting average of .343. In 2000, his final year with the Blue Wave, Suzuki maintained a batting average of .387, a Japanese record. For the second year in a row, an injury in August cut short his season. Suzuki's magic on the ball field elevated him to super-celebrity status in Japan, where a poll in the 1990s showed him to be the country's best-known person, trailed closely by Japanese Emperor Akihito. So popular was Suzuki in his homeland that it became difficult for him to go anywhere in Japan without being overwhelmed by fans and the media.

Suzuki's outstanding performance on the baseball diamonds of Japan had not gone unnoticed on the other side of the Pacific. So excited were the Seattle Mariners about the possibility of landing Suzuki that the team paid the Blue Wave just over $13 million for the right to offer the dynamic batter a contract. On November 18, 2000, Suzuki signed a three-year deal with the Mariners. The contract was reportedly worth about $16 million. The ballplayer and his wife flew to Seattle and fell almost immediately in love with their new home. They were particularly pleased to find a city where they could go out in public without being mobbed by fans and the local paparazzi.

America's Suzuki fans were not disappointed when their hero finally made his debut in Major League Baseball in April 2001. The Japanese import kicked off his American baseball career with a 23-game hitting streak that fell only one game short of the club record set by Joey Cora. With two home runs and a total of eleven RBIs, Suzuki batted .336 in his first twenty-five games with the Mariners. But his statistics only seemed to get better with time. By the season's end, he boasted a batting average of. 350 with a total of 242 hits. Suzuki also became the first rookie ever to garner the most ballots for the All-Star Game. A big factor in his All-Star balloting popularity was the decision by Major League Baseball to distribute ballots in Japan. After the end of the regular season, Suzuki became the first rookie since Fred Lynn (in 1975) to win both the MVP and Rookie of the Year awards.

In his second season with the Mariners, Suzuki slipped slightly from the stellar performance of his debut year, but only slightly. His batting average fell to. 321 from .350 in 2001. Suzuki's hits in 2002 totaled 208, down from 242 in 2001. Although the total number of Mariners selected to play in the 2002 All-Star Game was down sharply - from eight to three - from the previous year, Suzuki led the major leagues in the total number of votes received. More than 2.5 million votes were cast for the Seattle right fielder. He was joined by fellow Mariners Freddy Garcia and Kazuhiro Sasaki, both pitchers.

In November 2002, Suzuki went 4-for-4 to help lead the Major League Baseball All-Stars to victory over their Japanese counterparts in the seventh game of the annual exhibition series in Japan's Sapporo Dome. The Japanese team took the first three games of the series, but the MLB team bounced back to take the next four games and win the series. In the final game, Suzuki hit three singles and a double for the major leaguers.

In 2004, Suzuki broke George Sisler's 84-year-old record for most hits in a single season, ending the year with 262 hits and a .372 batting average. Five years later, in 2009, he became the all-time leader in hits by a Japanese player, with 3,086 for his career in both Japan and the United States, and later in the year, he recorded his 2,000th major-league hit, reaching that plateau faster than any other player in history except Al Simmons. He collected more than 200 hits - and was named to the AL All-Star team - in each of his first 10 seasons with the Mariners. Not only did his 10 200-hit seasons tie Pete Rose's all-time record, they also set the mark for most consecutive years in which a player reached the 200-hit plateau.

Suzuki's level of play fell off in 2011. That season he failed to hit .300 or amass 200 hits for the first time in his tenure in the major leagues. He was batting a career-worst .261 during the 2012 campaign when the Mariners suddenly traded the fan-favorite Suzuki to the New York Yankees in July of that year. In 2013, he became the third person in top-flight professional baseball history - after Pete Rose and Ty Cobb - to record 4,000 total career hits (counting both his Japanese and American production). In his two and a half seasons with the Yankees, he batted .281, and his total of 136 hits in 2013 was his best single-year hit total with New York.

Suzuki signed with the Miami Marlins in January 2015. On June 15, 2016, he notched his 2,979th hit in Major League Baseball (MLB), which, combined with his 1,278 hits in Japan, gave him one more total career professional hit than MLB record holder Rose. Two months later, he became the 30th player in MLB history to record 3,000 career hits. Suzuki served primarily as a substitute outfielder and pinch-hitter in 2017, amassing a career-low 196 at-bats that season. In March 2018, he rejoined the Mariners on a one-year contract. Suzuki appeared in just 15 games with the Mariners before abruptly transitioning to a position with the team's front office on May 8, ending his 2018 season.

In January 2019, he signed a minor-league deal with the Mariners, which contained a provision that he appear on Seattle's major-league roster during the team's season-opening games in Japan. He retired immediately after the two-game Japanese series. He finished his major-league career with 3,089 hits, bringing his combined professional hit total to 4,367. Suzuki also amassed 509 career major-league stolen bases (becoming one of only seven major-leaguers with at least 3,000 hits and 500 steals) and retired with a .311 lifetime batting average.

Achievements

• Ichiro Suzuki is more than just a baseball player. He is a national institution. He is considered by many to be the greatest hitter in Japanese baseball history. Suzuki became the first Japanese position player (meaning a nonpitcher) to be signed by a United States team. Since then the fleet-footed, left-handed outfielder has broken dozens of records and has garnered an enormous American following.
  
  Ichiro established a number of records, among which is MLB's single-season record for hits with 262. He also achieved 10 consecutive 200-hit seasons. It is the longest streak by any player in history.
  
  During his career, Suzuki received 17 consecutive selections both as an All-Star and Gold Glove winner. He won nine league batting titles and was named the most valuable player four times. Ichiro also won seven consecutive batting titles and three consecutive Pacific League MVP Awards.
  
  Ichiro Suzuki was the first MLB player to enter the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and a ten-time MLB All-Star. He won the 2007 All-Star Game MVP Award for a three-hit performance. Suzuki attained a Rawlings Gold Glove Award in each of his first 10 years in the majors. He has an American League-record seven hitting streaks of 20 or more games.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ichiro on Ichiro

    (Ichiro Suzuki, one of the New York Yankees' newest outfie...)

    2002

Views

Ichiro Suzuki donated about $1.25 million to the Japanese Red Cross for earthquake and tsunami relief efforts.

Quotations: "Chicks who dig home runs aren't the ones who appeal to me. I think there's sexiness in infield hits because they require technique. I'd rather impress the chicks with my technique than with my brute strength. Then, every now and then, just to show I can do that, too, I might flirt a little by hitting one out."

"I can do that (foul off pitches) intentionally. They were borderline. And I was trying to get the pitcher to make a mistake."

"I didn't know I hit that way (.625 with runners in scoring position). Maybe not knowing is my secret. If I chased numbers, maybe I wouldn't have as good results."

"I'm anxious to face them (major league pitchers) all, but in reality I'm looking forward most to (Boston's) Pedro Martinez. He was with the major league team that came to Japan in 1996, just before he became a superstar. I'm anxious to see how much he's improved. And I'm anxious to see how much I've improved against him."

"I'm not a big guy and hopefully kids could look at me and see that I'm not muscular and not physically imposing, that I'm just a regular guy. So if somebody with a regular body can get into the record books, kids can look at that. That would make me happy."

"I'm told I either look bigger than I do on television or that I look smaller than I look on television. No one seems to think I look the same size."

"In baseball, even the best hitters fail seven of ten times, and of those seven failures there are different reasons why. Some are personal failures, others are losses to the pitcher. You just get beat. In those personal failures, I felt I could have done better."

"When I look at the records and see where my place in the history of the game (in Japan with Orix) might be, I guess you could say it was a good decision to come here. It's not just me. Maybe I'll have an effect on others in the international part of the game."

Personality

Ichiro Suzuki is known for his work ethic and for his calisthenic stretching exercises to stay limber.

Ichiro and his spouse have a Shiba Inu dog named Ikkyu, which name is a combination of owners' names - "Ichi" of "Ichiro" and "Yumi" of "Yumiko".

Physical Characteristics: Ichiro Suzuki is 5 ft 11 inches (180 cm) tall and weighs 175 lb (79 kg).

Quotes from others about the person

• Billy Beane: "Everything he (Ichiro Suzuki) does has such a grace about it. Even now, this last postseason, people would say to me, 'You must be rooting against the Yankees.' But you know, maybe because of Jeter, the Yankees know how to win. It's not an act. The Yankees' brand name in this era is that it is Jeter's era. It's similar to what DiMaggio was in his era."
  
  Lou Piniella: "Ichi's more confident. He went through the wars last year, and I don't think he has any doubts now. He knows he's good. Of course, he might not have had any doubts last year. But you still have to go out and do it, and he did it. There's a big difference from knowing you're good but you haven't done it. He knows now he belongs."
  
  Tony Attanasio: "When you mail Ichiro something from the States, you only have to use that name on the address and he gets it (in Japan). He's that big."

Interests

• watching movies

• Artists

  Tom Cruise, Emma Watson

• Sport & Clubs

  baseball

• Athletes

  Buck O'Neil

Connections

On December 3, 1999, Ichiro Suzuki married Yumiko Fukushima. The couple has no children.

Father:

Nobuyuki Suzuki

(born December 8, 1942)

Mother:

Yoshie Suzuki

Spouse:

Yumiko Fukushima

(born December 10, 1965)

Brother:

Kazuyasu Suzuki

Friend:

Buck O'Neil

(November 13, 1911 - October 6, 2006)

Buck O'Neil was a first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs.

References

• Ichiro Suzuki: the Inspiring Story of One of Baseball's Greatest Outfielders In Ichiro Suzuki: the Inspiring Story of One of Baseball's Greatest Outfielders, the readers will learn the story of one of baseball's greatest outfielders, Ichiro Suzuki.
  2020
• Ichiro Suzuki The book introduces the life and accomplishments of champion baseball player Ichiro Suzuki, the first Japanese position player to switch from the Japanese League to the Major Leagues.
  2003
• Ichiro Suzuki The book discusses the life and accomplishments of Ichiro Suzuki, the first Japanese position player to make it into the American major leagues.
  2004
• Ichiro Suzuki: a League of His Own A book by Budd Bailey.
  2017
• Ichiro Suzuki: Best in the West A biography of the Seattle Mariners hitting and fielding star who won the MVP and Rookie of the Year Award in 2001 and became the first successful Japanese player in the Major Leagues.
  2002