Ichiro Suzuki was a major league rookie with the Mariners when the team won a record-setting 116 games in the regular season and lost to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series. He didn’t get back to the playoffs until this season.
“After you have that many wins, you think you’re going to win,” Ichiro said through a translator last night prior to the Yankees’ workout at The Stadium in preparation for the AL Division Series, which begins tomorrow at Baltimore. “The next years, we did OK. We didn’t get there, but you felt it was the norm to go to the playoffs.”
Instead, Seattle slid into mediocrity and worse. It wasn’t until he was shipped to the Yankees that Ichiro got another chance at the playoffs — and it didn’t take him long to recognize the opposing cultures.
“Here with the Yankees, it’s different,” Ichiro said. “You know from here on out is where the goal-setting starts. You have to be mentally mature enough to be in that environment and I love that.”
Ichiro clearly is. His .322 average since coming to the Yankees matches his career number and he has given the team something it was missing after Brett Gardner went down with an elbow injury.
“He’s completely changed our team,” Alex Rodriguez said. “I know he took the challenge to play in New York only to win a world championship and he’s been an enormous shot in the arm for us.”
And the Yankees’ success has done the same for the 38-year-old, who agreed to come to The Bronx, change positions and hit lower in the batting order in part because he wanted to play through October.
“I played a lot of Septembers when we were already out of it,” Ichiro said. “You have to play to the best of your ability, but your motivation changes and you have to find ways to motivate yourself.”
That wasn’t easy at times,
“I always wanted to play to maybe make the fans come out and watch,” Ichiro said. “It took a lot of energy to do that. Coming to the Yankees obviously changed things. It made it easier because the motivation is there.”
Now, he has a chance to finally get over the 2001 season and perhaps win a World Series.
“That’s definitely one of the things I want to accomplish, but not the last thing,” Ichiro said. “I want to continue to play baseball. I want to be type of player where a team wants me and needs me. Maybe if I ever get fat maybe I’ll quit. I think I want to continue to play til that happens.”