Ichiro Suzuki played professional baseball for so long that he apparently doesn’t know how to quit.
Suzuki’s career in Japan and North America lasted an astonishingly long 28 seasons, beginning in 1992 with Nippon Professional Baseball at age 18, and ending in 2019 with the Seattle Mariners a few months shy of his 46th birthday. Not many pro ballplayers have lasted as long in their careers, continuously or otherwise.
Even as he counted down toward the induction ceremony at baseball’s Hall of Fame, which are set for Sunday, Suzuki appeared to look back on his boundless career with half a hope that it still wasn’t quite over.
As recently as this past week, fans at T-Mobile Park in Seattle could find Ichiro, dressed in full uniform, performing the same types of drills before a Mariners game that he did (and would do again if invited) as a member of the team’s active roster. Shagging fly balls, running sprints, taking swings — doing whatever a ballplayer does to prepare. This isn’t a one-off thing, either. He might not do it before every home game, but it happens a lot — Ichiro preparing as if he’s going to play. It even happens in spring training, where Ichiro still trains as if he is competing for a roster spot. Or, at least as if the Mariners might activate him for a Cactus League game. The Mariners never actually have done so since he retired, or even indicated they’re considering it, but he’s preparing just in case they do. They did ask for Ichiro’s help during a simulated game at least once.
In a recent conference call with BBWAA reporters who wanted to know his state of mind before the big weekend, Ichiro put his workouts into the context of a coach or adviser leading by example, carrying on for the next generation of players.
But there almost certainly is another layer to it.
“I’m 51 years old now and I’m still trying to, you know, hang in there with them,” Suzuki said.
He doesn’t mean “hang” in a strictly figurative sense, either.
“I play catch, I run, I hit, I shag,” Suzuki continued. “I hope … that I can show them, even at this age, that you can still play this game.”
The Mariners have employed Suzuki as a special adviser to Jerry Dipoto, the M’s president of baseball operations, since 2019. Earlier in ’19, Ichiro played his final games as a professional on the M’s trip to Japan.
Or did he?
MLB history includes periodic examples of legendary ballplayers suddenly emerging from retirement to get in one more swing or one more pitch. The most notable example is, of course, right-hander Satchel Paige, who was (possibly?) 58 years old when he got nine outs for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965. Paige’s pro career began in 1927 when he was not quite 21 years old.
The Chicago White Sox twice brought back Minnie Miñoso while he was in his 50s, in 1976 and 1980, so he could say he played MLB in five decades. The St. Paul Saints, when they were still independent, did likewise for Miñoso for singular at-bats in 1993 and 2003. Miñoso was 79 years old in ’03.
Paige and Miñoso’s returns were crafted as warm-hearted gimmicks by their respective teams, but both individuals appeared to take the appearances seriously, even competitively. No less than how Ichiro goes about working out.
It isn’t quite the same scenario, but a year after he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, right-hander Jim Palmer tried making a comeback with the Baltimore Orioles. An injury in spring training, among other hurdles, stopped Palmer from returning to the majors as a Hall of Famer at age 45. Nobody in baseball has done it — yet — going from the Hall of Fame to the active roster. Paige and Miñoso made it to Cooperstown only after they stopped playing entirely. Miñoso sadly gained entrance after he died.
Comebacks by Hall of Famers actually have born fruit in hockey, with legends Mario Lemieux, Guy Lafleur and Gordie Howe among those who were inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame and resumed their playing careers later.
Anticipate that Ichiro keeps himself limber enough for a Minnie- or Satchel-type reappearance at a future Mariners game. Just wondering: When do the M’s return to Japan for a regular-season series, like the one in ‘19 where Ichiro bid adieu? And would they later add Ichiro to the active roster in some future September so the Seattle crowd could watch, too?
It would be an amazing gimmick — one that Ichiro likely would handle with the utmost sincerity.
