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Say hey, baseball: Ichiro just keeps on hitting milestones
Sunday’s baseball includes Ichiro bolstering his legendary career, the Royals literally fighting to stay on top of the American League, invoices for broken bats and a Twitter takeover. Subscribe for your daily Say Hey!
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It’s not often that you get a chance to talk about the presumed fourth outfielder on a team that’s started out the season 7-11. Then again, Ichiro Suzuki isn’t like most fourth outfielders in baseball. The 41-year-old future-hall-of-famer reached yet another milestone on Saturday by scoring the 1,968th run of his career. That is now the new record for Japanese-born players, which means that he’s officially overthrown the legendary Sadaharu Oh as the Japanese run king.
In addition to becoming the all-time Japanese leader in runs, Ichiro’s still got a few more milestones left to hit. While he’ll probably be fortunate to hit some of them, there’s one milestone that’s definitely within reach: 500 stolen bases. He’s currently 13 away from that number, and should he get more time on the field with the Miami Marlins (he’s played in all 18 games this season and started the past five), surely he’ll be in a position to swipe some bases. He stole 15 bases last year playing 143 games for the Yankees, so it’s certainly not out of the question.
Meanwhile, did you know that Ichiro is 144 hits away from 3,000 in his MLB career, alone? If that’s not amazing enough for you, then also consider the fact that he’s also 122 away from tying Pete Rose’s mark of 4,256 career hits. Of course, that wouldn’t be a MLB record since we’re counting his Japanese career here, but the fact that we’re even talking about this being a possibility is astonishing. He definitely won’t get it this year, but if he continues to get some decent playing time and has a solid year at the plate, then this could be something we’ll all be going crazy about in 2016. But for now, let’s just appreciate the fact that this legend continues to bless the game of baseball with his presence, and hopefully he’ll reach those aforementioned milestones before he calls it a career.
- Speaking of the Marlins, their wonderkid pitcher Jose Fernandez will be facing hitters next Thursday and looks to be on track to return to the mound by June.
- On Saturday night, the Colorado Rockies gave the keys to their Twitter account to the best possible candidates on the planet: Our Rockies blog, the Purple Row!
- MLB has officially meted out punishment to the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox following their fracas Thursday night. Meanwhile, Sports on Earth has noticed the Royals are currently on pace to break some American League ejection records.
- Reds catcher Devin Mesoraco hasn’t made a start behind the plate in nearly two weeks. He probably won’t be playing there anytime soon, either.
- Josh Hamilton’s return to Texas won’t be as a star, but as a role player.
- Adrian Beltre had three bats broken by Garrett Richards, so Beltre sent Richards an invoice for the bats. Adrian Beltre is awesome.
- While we’re on the topic of awesome, if you look that word up in the dictionary, you’ll probably find a picture of Felix Hernandez accompanying it.
- Juan Uribe is a longtime veteran, but even he isn’t immune to the mistake of wearing the wrong jersey to the game.
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