OAKLAND, Calif. The player Ichiro was second-fastest to in amassing 2,000 career hits once said he wished he'd taken better care of himself during his playing days.
Ichiro didn't wind up catching Al Simmons of the Philadelphia Athletics, who took a dozen fewer games to notch his record milestone back in 1934. But the impeccable health and fitness displayed by the Mariners' leadoff man, who notched major-league hit No. 2,000 with a first-inning double Sunday in a 5-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics, could help him topple barriers Simmons failed to reach.
Simmons, a right-handed terror known as “Bucketfoot Al” for his tendency to step away from the strike zone as he prepared to swing, wound up 73 hits shy of the 3,000 mark during a playing career that lasted 20 years. His health deteriorated in retirement and he died of a heart attack at age 54 while living in the Athletic Club in his native Milwaukee.
Ichiro already collected his 3,000th professional hit, counting his 1,278 from Japan, last season. But his longstanding commitment to maintaining his body in peak condition could be the determining factor in whether he notches the 3,000th big-league hit that eluded Simmons.
“I'm not a fortune teller, so I don't have the ability to look into the future,” Ichiro said, through an interpreter. “But that's why it's fun, because the future is unknown. And also, if I set a goal for myself like that, it kind of makes a barrier and in that way might lower my potential.”
Judging by his current pace, only five hits away from a ninth straight season of at least 200, Ichiro would likely collect No. 3,000 by the 2014 season at age 40.
“For me, it's just his ability to stay healthy,” Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said after his team split a four-game series with the A's. “He's going to continue to tack on record after record if he can stay healthy.”
The crowd of 16,188 fans at the Coliseum gave Ichiro a loud ovation after he laced the second pitch of the game from Gio Gonzalez into the right-field corner for a double.
In the dugout later, after Jose Lopez drove him home with a single, his teammates mobbed him with congratulations. Ken Griffey Jr. took the historic ball, which will be shipped to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and according to Ichiro, wrote “some ridiculous things” on it.
Griffey told reporters his scribbling was a play on words with the first name of A's pitcher Gonzalez and a Geo Metro car.
“So, I signed it, ‘Got a hit off a Geo Metro 09/06/09'” Griffey quipped.
Ichiro noted, with a laugh: “When Junior got his 2,000th hit, it was an infield single. But my 2,000th hit was a double.”
The story of the day was Ichiro, in many ways enjoying a season among his most successful and difficult. He is achieving career highs in power numbers and vying with Joe Mauer for a batting title, but those statistics have come during a season when his usually solid health has been put to the test.
Ichiro began the season on the disabled list because of a bleeding ulcer, then missed eight games last month with a calf problem nagging him for some time. But his list of achievements keeps growing and should be adding to his already-hefty pile of memorabilia in the Hall of Fame within days with hit No. 200 of the 2009 season.
“The last couple of years, every year they ask for a few things from me,” he said. “So I'm kind of getting to the point where I'm going to tell (Hall of Fame president) Jeff Idelson, ‘Hey, slow down a little bit.'”
Wakamatsu has said he'll rest Ichiro if the calf becomes problematic, but so far, he's notched hits in all six games since he's been back.
He'll get an off day today in Anaheim, Calif., and Wakamatsu hopes Ichiro takes advantage of it and refrains from carrying out his own workout regimen at Angels Stadium, as he's been known to do in ballparks around the majors.
But after 2,000 hits and counting, some habits can be hard to break.