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to English.Deru kugi wa utareru.The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.Ichiro Suzuki has been the nail in a culture that values formality Ryan McMahon Jersey , caution, and deference to authority. Doing it his way, he’s developed into Japan’s greatest baseball player and arguably its best athlete.“At such a young age he already had his own mind,” said Keizo Konishi, a reporter with the Japanese news agency Kyodo. “The older generation tells young people what they should do. Particularly in the structured baseball world.”Ichiro has played 2,651 major league games since joining the Seattle Mariners in 2001. Konishi has seen almost every one; from Seattle to New York, then to Miami, and back to Seattle. Add on hundreds before that with the Orix BlueWave.The odyssey returns him to Japan where Ichiro is expected to play in a two-game series when the Mariners and the Oakland A’s open the season March 20-21 at the Tokyo Dome.Afterward, who knows? Some Japanese want the 45-year-old to finally retire, and the Mariners have said they want to go with youth.One thing is certain in Tokyo: Ichiromania rules.He’s a source of national pride; the first position player to make it big in the majors, countering the perception that the country produced only pitchers, and players like Ichiro were too small. He’s revered for breaking through, for his fashion sense, and his Zen-like training. He’ll be the first Japanese player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, almost surely on the first ballot.He can also be aloof and arrogant, known to disdain interviews, and often evasive with a habit of turning his back on reporters and disparaging questions he doesn’t like. Japanese journalists have often been targets, and organizers say just over 1,000 are accredited for the two games.“On so many occasions he’s given me very interesting answers,” Konishi said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But he can give me a hard time. He tries for perfect preparation. So he also requires me to be perfect, which is not easy.”The baseball editor at Kyodo, Takashi Yamakawa described two Ichiros.“He’s acting, I think. He’s playing Ichiro B.J. Upton Jersey ,” Yamakawa said. “There are two different aspects. There’s the very normal, polite Japanese man. And there’s maybe the real Ichiro breaking the rules, fighting for himself. He’s always thinking in a different way.”If Ichiro is the seldom-bending nail, his father, Nobuyuki, was the hammer who put his son through rigorous, well-documented daily baseball training from age 7.“It bordered on hazing and I suffered a lot. But I also couldn’t say no to him,” American Robert Whiting quoted Ichiro saying in his book “The Samurai Way of Baseball.” The book was first sold under the title “The Meaning of Ichiro.”Whiting points out that Ichiro means “most cheerful boy” in Japanese. He writes he “was not always so cheerful about practicing, especially during the harsh winter days of central Japan, when his fingers grew so numb from the frigid air that he could not button his shirt.”Whiting has spent much of his life in Japan writing about baseball and Japanese culture. He speculated that because of World War II and the American occupation, Japan developed an inferiority complex in relation to the United States. Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics and the booming economy of the 1970s and 80s remedied much of that, and Ichiro and pitcher Hideo Nomo further boosted morale.“The athletic field has a different kind of symbolism,” Whiting said in an interview with AP. “No American could name a famous Japanese; not a top singer or the prime minister or even the emperor after Hirohito. The Japanese were simply known as people who could make things. But everybody could name Nomo and Ichiro. It had a huge impact on the country’s psyche.”From its beginning in Japan about 150 years ago, baseball — known as “yakyu (field ball) — has been viewed as a moral discipline and linked to the martial arts and relentless training. Whiting recounts how the first game between Japanese and Americans took place in Yokohama in 1898. Japan won 29-4, and many of those players were members of Samurai families.“Basically, Japanese baseball involves an insane amount of practice,” Whiting said. “The whole idea of self-sacrifice and the development of spirit. Japanese baseball starts voluntary training right after the new year and camp starts Feb. 1. American spring training looks like a three-week vacation at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida.”Whiting called Ichiro “transformational” with five times the buzz that Nomo created just a few years before.“He shocked everybody by how good he was. He is an everyday Japanese position player — not a pitcher — who had what it took to be a big star. It was something people didn’t imagine before.”Ichiro was must-see TV when he joined the Mariners. Large-screen video displays in central Tokyo played — and replayed — every game as the Mariners won 116 times in the regular season. Ichiro won the American League batting title and was the league’s Rookie of the Year and MVP.An electrical engineer and a weekend baseball umpire and coach, Iwao Fukushi recalls getting up to watch the Mariners on TV in Gunma prefecture, just northwest of Tokyo, and then heading to work between innings.“I would go to the office and then watch on the coffee break — just five minutes,” he said with a snicker, suggesting it might have been longer. “We saw him every day, and he seemed to always have one or two hits.”Fukushi said he believes Ichiro will continue playing after the opening games http://www.indiansfanproshop.com/authen ... ton-jersey , or become a coach. Others think he should stop now.Some on social media in Japan say he’s being used mostly to sell merchandise, suggesting his value now is largely commercial.“For me, he should quit here,” said Takashi Yamakawa, the baseball editor. “Perfect. It’s a beautiful story.”“Whatever he does, take your sunglasses,” Whiting added. “Because when he comes to bat, everybody in the stadium will be shooting a flash camera or an iPhone with a flash.” It’s a very different world on the afternoon after the trade before."For the first time since he signed with the team in June 2009, Paul Goldschmidt is not a part of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. It’s likely that yesterday’s trade, which sent Goldy to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for three young players, may well end up defining the Mike Hazen era, in the same way that the Justin Upton trade was the key moment of Kevin Towers’ tenure, or the Zack Greinke signing was the big move by Dave Stewart. We won’t truly be able to judge the trade for years, until we see how the players pan out - case in point, who predicted that Nick Ahmed would be the most productive piece Arizona would get in the Upton trade? But we can talk about the immediate impact the deal will have, in terms of the line-up and roster for 2019. There are likely three areas which will be affected: we gain a catcher and a starting pitcher, and need to find a replacement for Goldschmidt at first-base. Jack will be along with some updated payroll and WAR numbers later in the week, as we head towards the winter meetings. So this overview will remain a bit more abstract and general, discussing the options that Hazen and Torey Lovullo have, in terms of putting together the pieces now available to them for next season.First-baseThe main uncertainty is, who will be replacing Paul Goldschmidt at first-base on an everyday basis. There’s no denying the magnitude of the issue. Since the beginning of 2012, Goldschmidt started 1,018 times at first for the D-backs. No-one else has fifty starts Jason Kipnis Jersey , with the next most being Mark Trumbo’s 44 games. Only he, Lyle Overbay, Daniel Descalso and Jordan Pacheco have even made five starts for Arizona in that time. There is almost no doubt: the position will be less productive for the Diamondbacks in 2019. But someone has to play there; these are the three most likely candidates, in alphabetical order:Kevin Cron - The 25-year-old Cron was a 14th-round pick by Arizona in 2014, but has put up decent numbers in the minors: an .826 OPS with 112 home-runs over 560 games. Last year, with Triple-A Reno, he had a line of .309/.368/.554 for a .921 OPS, with 22 HR in 104 games. However, the obvious counterpoint: it was in Reno. The current STEAMER projection has Cron being bascially replacement level for 2019. Jake Lamb - The possibility of moving Lamb across the diamond from third to first is something which has been suggested. This would help minimize the impact of his sometimes shaky defense, apparent especially on his throwing. Eduardo Escobar could then play third, with a middle-infield of Nick Ahmed and Ketel Marte. Whether Lamb plays full-time, or is part of a platoon (Cron and Walker are both RHB) would need to be decided.Christian Walker - The only one of the trio with MLB experience at the position, albeit very limited. For Walker has seen playing time for Arizona each of the last two seasons, but almost entirely off the bench. Only six of his 48 appearances were as starts, with four of those at first-base. He put up very similar numbers for Cron in Reno, with a line of .299/.354/.568 for a .922 OPS, and 18 HR in 84 games.If you’re curious, Cron had better platoon splits than Walker against right-handed pitchers last season. Based on those, he’d be the better platoon partner for Lamb, but Walker would likely be a superior full-time option, having hit lefties and righties almost equally well in 2018.