(Ed note: This is the first in what will be an occasional feature for which we’ll take  an article or an event and examine it in its  historical context. This first piece takes a look at a New York Times article from 2001 concerning Ichiro, on the eve of his first series vs. the Yankees).

It’s unlikely that any Asian player will ever make a splash in the major leagues  in the way  Ichiro did in 2001.  It’s easy to forget, he won  the AL MVP  (and ROY)  award that year, narrowly beating out the likes of Jason Giambi, Bret Boone, and Juan Gonzalez in that order. (Ok, Roberto Alomar was in there too….finishing 4th.  I couldn’t resist needling you.)

In 2001 Ichiro had an OBP of    .381, but only walked 30 times in nearly 700 ABs. Don’t see that too often. Again, it’s easy to forget, but this was a Mariners team that won 116 games that year, this,one year after it traded Alex Rodriguez to the Texas Rangers (one more factor that surely contributes to the legacy of Haterod we still speak of today).The year before that  Seattle had  traded Ken Griffey Jr. and the year before that they’d gotten rid of Randy Johnson.

The Mariners started Dan Wilson at catcher that year and Al Martin was the left fielder. Freddy Garcia was the No. 1 starter and Jamie Moyer and Aaron Sele (then, the highest paid player on the team)  were the other two “big guns.” In 2001 Paul Abbott  would win 17  of the  43 games he won during his entire 14-year major league career.

Boone hit a superhuman, robotic…albeit fake…37 HRs, driving in 141 and slugging .578. There were other great contributions on the Mariners that year — Kazuhiro Sasaki saved 45, Mike Cameron went 25-25, and John Olerud maintained a plus .400 OBP all year.

But Ichiro was — and this word is now a baseball cliche thanks in large part to his  2001  season —  the catalyst. The glue that brought held together those 116 wins. And the guy didn’t speak a lick of English. Ichiro led by example from the beginning. He declined to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated because he didn’t feel he’d earned the right. How does that sort of news affect a clubhouse as opposed to a second-baseman who shows up to spring training — granted, a better hitter — looking like the Michelin Man?

The hype of the Japanese star has changed during the past decade. When Hideo Nomo shocked baseball striking out 236 batters during his 1995 rookie season he became a highlight, but not a star in the way Ichiro did. The expectations of Dice-K in 2007 were Ichiro 2001 and nothing less. Naturally, he fell far short of that mark and the press never let him forget it, especially during a particularly savage September. These expectations will be tempered in 2008 as  Kosuke Fukudome jogs into right for the Cubs, but  Pinella himself can’t  help not comparing  the two — despite the fact their styles of play aren’t even  remotely similar.  

We take Ichiro for granted now —  exemplified by the fact that last week was the first time we even mentioned him in the first five months of this site. But in 2001 it was clear something different had arrived.

Hiroyuki Oikawa spent most of last week at his desk in Tokyo, where he manages computer parts in the construction division of the Toyo Engineering Corporation. But on Sunday, he was in Section 128 of Safeco Field here, 21 rows behind home plate, and it did not take long for him to see what he came here to see.

The above and following quotes are from an April 24, 2001 article in the New York Times called Japan’s Baseball Idol Wins Fans in Seattle. This is your typical man-about-the-stadium piece (on the eve of Ichiro’s arrival in New York City) and the reporter is interviewing Asians at Safeco who have come to watch Ichiro.

At this point we weren’t quite aware of how good Ichiro would be. We didn’t know about that  museum in the old bedroom at his parents house, or the  $2MM offer for naked photos made by a Japanese newspaper. The throngs of media that would follow his every move was still in its infancy. People barely knew  he’d had a long career in another country. This is all reflected in the nature of the piece, and the reporter is seemingly as wide-eyed as we were. Of course we know better now.

”Ichiro is more than just the best baseball player in our country,” explained Mie Mori, who works as a translator for a semiconductor company and who also flew in from Tokyo to watch Suzuki. ”He is also sort of like” — she paused, searching for the proper analogy — ”the Brad Pitt of Japan.”

By April 24th Ichiro had already put together one 15-game hitting streak. He was the first position player from Japan, but he arrived with another, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, who was initially expected to be about as good. Newsflash: he wasn’t.

Japan and South Korea have already sent fine pitchers into the burgeoning pool of international stars in the majors, where 25.3 percent of all players this season — the highest in major league history — were born outside of the 50 states.

That figure now stands at 29-percent, up up from 27.4 percent in 2006 and down from the record 29.2 percent set in 2005.

”He’s the engine of our train right now,” Mike Cameron, the team’s center fielder, said in the locker room Sunday after the Mariners completed a four-game sweep of the Anaheim Angels.

Indeed Ichiro was the leader early on, only communicating by his actions on and off the field. He led by example in ways that Boone, despite his eye-popping numbers,  could not have. Despite the sometimes odd and as yet unseen chaos that followed Ichiro on his first tour of the United States, it somehow translated into wins for the 2001 Mariners.

Kim Bui, a Vietnamese-American mortgage broker from suburban Seattle who came to Safeco on Sunday with her Japanese-American boyfriend, said much the same thing. ”I’m not even really all that much of a baseball fan,” Bui said. ”But Ichiro, I had to see.”