Becoming the Hit Machine: Ichiro Suzuki’s Historic 2004

In two thousand and four, I Trio Suzuki wrote the history book. He took a season where his team struggled to win games and made it remarkable, breaking a record that had stood since nineteen twenty the single season hit mark and would stretch it to two one hundred and sixty two hits in a single season, showcasing his unique skill in raw speed, being a complete player that would be a dream in today's baseball. And when he finally broke George Sisler's legendary record, the baseball world stood in all as he was breaking barriers allowing Japanese players to play in Major League Baseball. Join us today as we dive into this historic season and what made each Row a legend on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Rees your guide because I can quote every line from the movie Sandlot In today's trivia question to listen out for how long was the history did George Seisler have during his historic nineteen twenty season? So to start? Ichi Row was born in Ugui, Japan, and with the help of his family, he quickly picked up baseball. His father played a pivotal role overseeing his training sessions. For hours as he grew to love the game more and more in his reputation as a schoolboy prodigy despite his small size, which he only grew to be about five to nine one hundred and thirty pounds when he was in Japan, but even with his small size, he showed a unique skill for getting on base and getting base hits, and this allowed him to get drafted in the fourth round of the Nippon Professional Baseball League, which is the highest league in Japan. Whenever a player comes over to play in the Major League Baseball from Japan, they come from this league, and it's really the second best league in the entire world. And he was drafted by the Oryx Blue Wave in nineteen ninety two right out of high school, but he spent the first couple of seasons in minor league baseball because of his small size and his unconventional batting motion. Now, if you've not ever seen each of a swing, it's a swing where he does a big leg kick, which is a very common swing in Japan. It's something they actually teach a lot. Then he moves his body forward as the ball is coming, like almost in a starting running position. So it's a very hard thing to replicate because you have to not only be moving, but move and swing the bat with a ball coming at you maybe one hundred miles an hour. Very difficult skill to learn, but he perfected it over time. Now, this pinsulum swing wasn't an uncommon swing in the Nippon Baseball League. People had done it before to try to get an advantage, especially the left handed hitters as they were closer to first base. They could get a quick hit and be already running to first. It gave them an extra step. But it's frowned upon here. We want home runs, we want big hits, we want solid contact, but nowadays we just want to get on base that leads to runs. But after a couple of years in the minors, he joined the pro team, where he had a batting average of three hundred and eighty five and set a Japanese record with two hundred and ten hits in just one hundred and thirty games. And he would go on to win seven consecutive batting titles for the Pacific League and posted a career batting average of three one hundred and fifty three, collecting over twelve hundred hits in just a seven year span. He would win three consecutive MVPs from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety six and became known as the hit manufacturing Machine Japan. I'm sorry work on your nicknames. That's a terrible nickname. But after the two thousands season, the Nipon League had joined with Major League Baseball to develop a posting system. See prior to this, Japanese players didn't go play in Major League Baseball. So we probably missed out on many, many, many, many great baseball players. As we know now seeing shehai Otani just breaking down barriers in baseball of what he can do. We missed probably a lot of other players that could have really done something special. But this system was put into place to kind of start having a chance for these players to join Major League Baseball. The problem was this gave financial compensation to the Japanese teams for losing this great player, but it also meant that Major League Baseball was paying extra money just to pay these players extra money. It was a crazy system that was a sealed bidding system where you would bid for just the right to negotiate with the player. So a lot of teams, especially to start with in the system, did not want to participate because it was a lot of money and there was no track record of a player coming over as episode player and having success in the major leagues, so it was a huge gamble. But some teams were willing to pay that gamble, and the Mariners beat out the Mets, the Dodgers, the Angels, and the Red Sox for the chance to bid for the right to Eiro, and they bid over thirteen million dollars just to bid for the rights, and they would end up giving him a three year, fourteen million dollar contract. So add that up, they're paying twenty seven million dollars for each Uro if you total it in three years. But the reason was was the owners of the Seattle Mariners was hiroshie mat Yamachi, and he was the president of Nintendo, which is the biggest gaming system in Japan and a huge company there, so he already knew how good each Heiro was and knew it was worth paying that extra money. So they had a little bit behind the curtain and soone nudging them to want to have him in Seattle. So Eachio became the first position player in Major League Baseball history. There's also Marakami, who played for the Giants in nineteen sixty four. He was a pitcher and he was just okay. And then he had He De Nomo, who started pitching in nineteen eighty five and he was pretty good. So we've only had pitchers. This was the first positional player, and it wasn't a guy you looked at and thought, oh, look, he's gonna have so much power. He's gonna change the game. Because at this time it was all about power. We had just had multiple seasons from Mark McGuire and Samy Sosa breaking home run records, and not far behind them was Barry Bonds. So this was the power steroids era, and Ichiro Suzuki was not that at all, just the exact opposite. But that didn't mean he wasn't gonna have success. And he came in with the bank, hitting two hundred and forty two hits in his very first season, led Major League Baseball in multiple categories in hits, batting average with three point fifty, and stolen bases with fifty six, and he would be named Rookie of the Year in the American League and the MVP of the American League. It just showed how good and how great he was. When he came over, it was just surprising for everyone that didn't think Japan had a good baseball program. So he came out of the gates swinging, and he continued to have success after success. After the two thousand and one season, had more success, and then he was a perennial All Star, one of the best players in the league coming into the two thousand and four campaign. So the team came in and they weren't expected to do a lot, but they finished second in the division the year before, winning ninety three games, and they hadn't made a whole lot of changes, so they thought maybe there was a good chance they would have to be able to build on the success and have another good campaign. Fortunately, that is not what happened. The team just they just kept losing and each row also struggled at the very beginning of the season, hitting just twenty six hits in April with a batting average of two fifty five. This is a guy that regularly had a batting average over three twenty five, one of the most consistent hitters, but he was struggling. So he took it upon himself, used all the things he could, focused watched more film, focused on defensive shifts that were coming his way, seeing how he could alleviate this. Then come May he exploded. This broke his slump. He hit fifty hits in May. July he hit fifty one. In August he hit fifty six hits with a batting average of four sixty three, the best monthly performance in Major League Baseball history. And in September he would again hit more than fifty hits, becoming the first player in the modern era to have four to fifty hit months in one season, showing that it wasn't just a few games here and there. From May first till September ninth, he hit over four hundred, which put him in rarefied air. That season, he had more than eighty multi hit games, and most of his hits were singles. He really perfected that pendulum swing and getting on base. He would go on to hit two hundred and sixty two hits this season, breaking a record that stood since nineteen twenty In two hundred and twenty five of those were singles, and he ended the season with a batting average of three seventy two. But he wasn't just doing it at the plate. That season, added another Gold Glove to his collection and finished second in the American League in stolen bases with thirty six. He was the epitome of the small ball or the moneyball technique that became very popular around this time, and he was the perfect gym for the next genstats era. So the season's going great for each row after his slow start, and when October first comes, each Row stepped up the plate to break George's Sissler's single season record is packed, creating a night of drama. He's two hits behind to break the record, and George His record is memorable in and of itself. He hit two hundred and fifty seven hits in a season with just one hundred and fifty four games. That's eight less than each year would play, and that included a month of June where he had sixty hits and had a forty one game hit streak during that year and was also voted al MVP. And but now in two thousand and four, he Trow had him in his sights. Coming into the game, he had two hundred and fifty six hits, one shy of Sissler's record. So coming into the game, facing off against the Texas Rangers at Saint Cofield. The fans were ready to see what would happen. In the first inning, he is the leadoff hitter, facing Ryan Drese. He takes a strike, fouls off two pitches, then he singles to left, tying Sissler's record. The crowded erupts. They were just excited to see him tie it. But then in the third inning helms back up to the plate and with a three to two count, he singles right up the middle in a patented Etiro style makes it to first, breaking the record, becoming the all time hitter in regular season history. Fireworks explode from the stadium. The crowd gives a standing ovation, the team rutches to greet Ichi Row. He gives a reluctant smile as he doesn't love the spotlight, but feels the enormous weight lifted, and he describes it as the best moment in his baseball career. And immediately after, he shook the hand of George Sisler's daughter, Francis, who later expressed that her father would have been happy to know such a great player and man would break his record, and AIRO's father, who was in Japan watching the game, would have brought to tears, celebrating everything that was happening for his son in Seattle. Now the season wasn't over. He would go on to add four more hits, bring him to a total of two hundred and sixty two hits that year. That was forty six more than the runner up, and he was tributes from legends in the baseball world and even from his home country of Japan. Major League Baseball honored each row with a replica bat modeled aphasistlers commemorating these and you could say this may have been the peak of each US career. He would not break his record, but would continue to maintain having ten consecutive seasons with over two hundred hits, the only player to ever do so, and no one has ever come close to breaking his record and probably never will to do so. You have to hit at least one hit in every single game, meaning you do not get injured and you are always playing. It's something that does not happen in today's sports. He would also go on to accumulate over three thousand and eighty nine hits in the major leagues, adding to this Japanese total. It makes him the most prolific hitter of all time with a total of four thousand, three hundred and sixty seven hits, which tops Pete Rose and he would also be the first Asian born player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, breaking down multiple barriers for multiple players from Japan to come over here. And the Seattle Mariners had went on to retire his number fifty one, and interestingly enough, they actually retired two number fifty ones, as Randy Johnson also wore fifty one for the Mariners in the nineties, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, so they have two fifty one's, but they didn't retire them on the same day because Randy wanted each ro to have his moment on his own. Now, each Row is a special assistant with the Mariners and a chairman with the team behind the scenes, mentoring the next generation and always being a guide in a role model for everyone in the world, as baseball is now a world game thanks to each Row. I want to thank you for listening to Daily Sports History, and i want to let you know that I'm going to be doing some things a little differently when try some different things to the show. Maybe do different sound effects or different segments or I'm not sure exactly, but I hope stick around. And if you have ideas for the show or some comments you want to leave me, send it to Daily Sports History at gmail dot com. I will reply to you for sure. Give me all the feedback you can, because the feedback you give me I take the heart. And we will work on this making this the best show possible. And we'll see you on the next one. And did you catch the answer to today's trivia question how long was the hit streak that George Seisler had during his incredible nineteen twenty season, And the answer was forty one games, one of the highest hit streaks ever in MLB history.