The Japanese outfielder has all but retired from playing at the age of 44. And he showed you didn’t need huge muscles to make a Hall of Fame careerThe baseball world into which Ichiro Suzuki walked in 2001 was one of swagger, bravado and brawn. Only two years before, Nike marketed baseball with an unfortunate slogan: “Chicks dig the long ball.” Everything was about home runs. The game’s steroid era was at its peak, still a year away from a scandal that would expose sluggers’ muscles as chemically gained. Ichiro, who essentially retired from playing at the age of 44 on Thursday, cast a diminutive figure in that time of giants. He was slender, almost frail, insisting he should be called by his first name only, something rarely done in American sports. The best baseball fans knew about his nine-year career in Japan, one in which he had 1,278 hits and had established himself as his country’s most electric player. But watching him early that first season with the Seattle Mariners, lunging at pitches with a spinning, awkward swing that looked like a mini-tornado, you had to wonder if he would ever hit a good, hard fastball. Continue reading…

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/may/05/ichiro-suzuki-the-secretive-superstar-who-defied-baseballs-steroid-era