Ichiro Suzuki
Ichiro Suzuki
Ichiro Suzuki, often referred to mononymously as Ichiro, is a Japanese professional baseball right fielder for the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball. He has spent the bulk of his career with two teams: the Orix Blue Wave of Nippon Professional Baseballin Japan, where he began his professional career, and the Seattle Mariners of MLB in the United States. After playing for the Mariners, he played two and a half seasons in MLB with the New York Yankees. Ichiro has...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth22 October 1973
CountryJapan
It was either going to be an extremely boring day or then again maybe not. I went all out for the homer, really 120 percent.
With the World Baseball Classic, this year is a bit different. Our goal will be to win the tournament and after that I'll start thinking about the regular season.
I'll walk on my hands before I use crutches.
In the second half of the 2003 season -- actually, I'd include the 2002 season in this -- I started to struggle as I approached the 200-hit mark. As I got closer to the goal, I lost control of that part of batting and sort of lost focus.
In terms of Cuba, I have no idea what to expect. I don't know any of their names. The fact they've come this far shows they are a team with serious potential.
I didn't even think about the upcoming season. I didn't care if I would get injured in this game. That's how much I wanted to win this game. That's how driven we were for this championship.
There have been times this year when I would get negative and I would get mad.
Many people have this image of me. For a long time, I cared about that.
I feel like I should be more in touch with the nuances of this game.
There are a lot of people who get it wrong, ... The size of your body is not necessarily related to the power you can generate. I wish people would understand that.
There are many issues. But a lot of players pay attention to this event. I'm sure you can improve aspects in the three years before the next event takes place.
We didn't prepare as well as we might have, ... There are a lot of fans who paid to see us play today. As professionals, we should prepare ourselves as best as we can to go out there and play in the best shape we're capable of playing.
If we were in the Kingdome or something, maybe that would be special.
I think we have to rethink, because now we are on the big stage, and the Americans are a big-stage team. In the Asian round, we felt we had to worry about not only winning, but playing good for the (home) fans. Here, we have one purpose only.