The legend of the great Ichiro Suzuki continues to grow.
I’ve always loved the culture of Japan. Their food is superb, history is long and extremely interesting, and they’ve given the world all sorts of great things, like martial arts, Nintendo, camera phones, CD players, and a list of scientific advances that’s too long to even start listing.
But another thing Japan does right is sports and entertainment. They have many top level sports leagues and MMA promotions, including a professional baseball league that almost rivals that of the MLB in terms of talent.
That league, called Nippon Professional Baseball, has brought us many great MLB stars, including league MVP Shohei Otani, but none have had the impact of Ichiro Suzuki.
After playing 9 suburb seasons in the NPB, he made his MLB debut back in 2001 and had one of the greatest “rookie” seasons of all-time, winning the Rookie of the Year and MVP after batting .350, stealing 56 bases, and racking up 242 hits, all while being pretty much the best outfielder the league has ever seen.
He played for 19 season until age 45, where he retired and moved back home to Japan to live out his life as one…
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