Eleven years ago I sat near a high school-aged Daisuke Matsuzaka as he used field glasses to watch a Japan-MLB All-Star game at the end of both leagues’ seasons.
  
I wrote a story based on that image about Japanese wanting to know “How good are we?” It was a question encompassing more than sport, as the same doubts existed for Japan in terms of corporate or diplomatic might, while the way the nation usually measured itself was in comparison to the U.S.
 
The 2009 baseball season, which began with Matsuzaka and Ichiro Suzuki leading Japan to its second World Baseball Classic title and ended with Hideki Matsui winning the World Series MVP in helping the New York Yankees to the crown, hasn’t ended that self-assessment. Instead it has widened it to “How good can we be?”
 
Matsui, whose decision to leave the Yomiuri Giants at the end of the 2002 was broadcast live across the island nation, hit a grand slam in his first New York home game but has been hobbled by injuries in seven seasons that may have made his Series heroics a Yankees coda.
 
Ichiro, who set the record in 2009 for most consecutive MLB seasons with 200 hits and delivered the winning RBI in the WBC title game, is the greatest baseball export Japan has produced so far, but his zen approach to hitting and perceived statistics orientation have not always resonated with fans or teammates.
 
Matsui, meanwhile, nicknamed “Godzilla” in high school for his power display at the national baseball championship, is less polished and a little more rough and ready. But he’s a player that nary a cross word has been said or written about, rather a “slugging salaryman” portrayal whose team focus is absolute, who even hit his sixth game Series homer to the Komatsu banner in rightfield.
 
An MLB-insider told me after Game Six of the World Series: “Ichiro Suzuki will be elected into the Hall of Fame, Hideki Matsui will not. But Ichiro will never achieve what Matsui did last night.”

Ichiro may not, but another Japanese player may, as the once distant fields of dreams across the Pacific have grown closer thanks to the countrymen’s feats in 2009, with Japan’s questions about how it rates becoming easier to answer.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Segar

Japan’s Ichiro Suzuki underlined his position as his country’s greatest sporting export after shattering one of Major League Baseball’s oldest records.

The Seattle Mariners outfielder was described as a “Hercules” by fellow players after becoming the first man to record 200 hits for nine straight seasons.

The 35-year-old reached the milestone with a single in the second game of a double-header against the Texas Rangers on Sunday to beat the previous mark of eight consecutive seasons set by Willie Keeler in 1901.

Ichiro himself, who left Japan for the major leagues in 2001, spoke of a “sense of liberation” after his latest MLB record, set to be marked with a commemorative stamp in his home country.

In 2005, he broke an 84-year-old record for hits in a single season in 2004, finishing with 262, five more than Hall of Famer George Sisler had in 1920.

His latest achievement, which came after helping Japan win the World Baseball Classic in the off-season, came despite having missed 16 games of the 2009 campaign with a stomach ulcer and a calf injury. It should also fast-track him to a place in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Fast running out of records to break, he also recently became the second-fastest Major Leaguer to reach 2,000 hits, doing it in 1,402 games.

Ichiro, who goes by his given name in Japan and the United States, where first-name fame is usually reserved for the likes of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, has made a compelling case for the title of Japan’s greatest ever sportsman.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Stone

Ichiro Suzuki has reached 2,000 career hits in 1,402 MLB games — the second-fastest pace ever — while over his nine seasons in MLB the Seattle Mariners star has ended on base once in about every three trips to the plate, based on his career batting average.

Add in his 1,278 Japanese hits, in shorter seasons, and Ichiro at 36 is pointing his bat at very rare professional air, including 3,000 career MLB hits and — on a cumulative basis — Pete Rose’s record 4,256 hits. He already set the MLB season hit record with an amazing 262 in 2004 and will likely be the first player, in a matter of days, to ever record 200 hits in nine consecutive seasons.

Still, when I asked Robert Whiting, author of “The Meaning of Ichiro”, at mid-season if the Japanese hitting phenomenon was a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, he wasn’t certain. He cited the failure of Roger Maris, whose feat of 61 home runs in a season was not deemed worthy enough, adding that Ichiro would likely need to break the 3,000 hit threshold to be a first ballot inductee.

That means another four to five seasons, eminently do-able for arguably the greatest baseball export Japan has produced, but a deep line in the baseball sand that may make it hard for compatriots to join him at the Hall, at least with current rules on mandated domestic team service before free agency.

Last week was the 45th anniversary of Masanori Murakami’s debut with the San Francisco Giants, the first Japanese to play briefly in MLB. Murakami, a pitcher not in the Hall, waited three decades for Hideo Nomo to follow him across the Pacific, and his basic message to Japanese players now is go if you can, because the best measuring stick for greatness is MLB — and a better salary doesn’t hurt.

Ichiro, who has put no end on how long he wants to play or what he wants to achieve, will be paid until 2032 under his current $90 million contract, not surprisingly a record for a Japanese player.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Kevin Bartram

Defending champ Japan and Korea’s third pairing this WBC followed convincing wins by each side over Cuba and Mexico, respectively, serving as a fitting rubber game after the sides split their first two games. 

Three early — and not fully deserved — runs in the first inning off pitcher Yu Darvish put the Samurai in the hole. That sent many Japanese to local lunchtime offerings, as the televised game played midday at offices around the country, likely to score huge ratings.

Those leaving missed the tall half-Japanese, half-Iranian, right-hander racking up strikeouts, while the offense squandered multiple scoring opportunities.

An Ichiro ground out scratched back a run, but he killed another rally in the 7th with a man on by popping up, shrinking his measly batting average to .174 and raising doubts about his leading-off.

But Japan’s most prolific hitter was far from alone in frustration, and though singles were enough to beat Cuba, they were too few and far between to win this game, which ended with Korea sticking their national flag on the stadium’s pitcher’s mound, a scene likely to be replayed often this evening.

Japan now must beat Cuba again to advance to the semi-finals and possibly — improbably — a fourth meeting this tournament with their Asian rival. Certainly, recapturing the WBC crown would be sweet, but after a combined six losses in the last two tournaments and Beijing Olympics, defeating Korea alone might be enough.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

Sports rivalries are bred by proximity, culture and history, and few match ups in Asia have more baggage or bragging rights at stake than baseball games between Japan and South Korea, the respective World Baseball Classic and Olympic titleholders.

Both crowns were sources of national pride, but Japan’s came in 2006 after losing twice to Korea before a semifinal victory over the Seoul side, which wasn’t enthused that a team it had beaten more than once could become  tournament champions.

The 2008 Beijing Games saw Tokyo and Seoul send their top non-MLB squads, but Japan returned medal-less and humbled, including a loss to Korea, whose gold made it the 2009 WBC regional favourite.

In the first rematch Saturday, Samurai Japan won 14-2, a laugher for everyone but the Koreans and pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who displayed the erratic control bedeviling his Red Sox career so far. The “called game” victory ensured the hosts would advance to the second round, while setting up a game against the stunned Koreans Monday, who blistered the Chinese in their next outing.

But pitching, a by-product of near year-round Asian training and why regional teams have fared so well in the early season tournament, was the story in Game Two, with Japan’s Hisashi Iwakuma allowing only two hits but leaving down 1-0.

Ichiro Suzuki woke up the slumbering Samurai with a late single, but Japan immediately followed with a “kanri yakyu” (businessman baseball) sacrifice bunt, even with one out. Japanese media in the Tokyo Dome nodded in acknowledgement, while the foreign press saw this as certain futility, essentially killing the comeback opportunity.

Sometimes, inscrutable moves pay off. Other times, they don’t and Korea wins the game, as well as the region’s top seed in the WBC’s next round.

It remains to be seen if the Tigers will meet again in WBC later rounds, but a fitting coda would be one more game – if not settling a very old rivalry, at least providing another chapter as to the home of Asia’s — and arguably — the world’s best.

Photo credit: Hisashi Iwakuma by REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Ichiro Suzuki, arguably Japan’s greatest baseball export to Major League Baseball in terms of achievements, is facing what may be the worst spring of his combined Japanese and Major League Baseball career, with his image as the most prolific hitter of this era and a team-oriented star facing beanballs from both sides of the Pacific.

After a woeful season in which his Seattle Mariners lost over 100 games while dumping a full plate of managers, executives and players, Ichiro – who had a sub-par but not mediocre year – has heard a chorus of off-season chirping that the eight-year veteran was selfish, statistics-obsessed and playing by a different set of rules than teammates.

When you make $17.1 million on a team predicted by some to at least win its division that instead finishes dead last, there may be some explaining to do. But Ichiro decided to postpone the rebuilding process, again playing with Japan in the upcoming World Baseball Classic and holding off on the Mariners spring training until completing the WBC run.

Robert Whiting, author of “The Meaning of Ichiro“, told me that the rightfielder is being held accountable unfairly for the failings of the $100 million team.

“Who else on Seattle could carry his water? As for not being a team leader, well, I think it’s a cultural thing. The culture doesn’t work that way.”

After helping lead Japan to the 2006 WBC title, Ichiro’s participation this time was expected, but three years ago many assumed that he, and not the New York Yankees’ Hideki Matsui, would pass on the opportunity, not imagining that his hero, former Japan manager Sadaharu Oh, would ask him to play for the national side.

A lure of the 2009 squad may indeed have been forgetting the horrors of last year’s Mariners, but so far the single-season hits record holder can’t buy amnesia (even his usual slap hits and big-bounce infield singles), going 0 for his last 11, with a measly .130 average in six warm-up games.

This would be ignored if Japan was playing well, but it’s not, raising the collective angst of a baseball-obsessed nation that saw its Olympic gold — and all medal hopes – flail last summer in Beijing.

Some local media are already offering near obituaries, and while this may be just a slow start for Japan and Ichiro similar to 2006, when he sparked teammates to greater heights, one of the most talented pure hitters ever is hearing at 35 some of the loudest public chin music of his amazing career.

Whiting says Ichiro will be in headlights, if this campaign does not produce another crown.

“If Team Japan fails to win, Ichiro would certainly be at least one of the scapegoats, if he doesn’t start hitting any better.”

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Blake