BOISE, Idaho — This Day In Sports: October 1, 2004, 20 years ago today:
Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki breaks the major league record for most hits in a season in an 8-3 win over the Texas Rangers at a raucous Safeco Field. As George Sisler’s daughter looked on from the front row, Ichiro rapped a single up the middle in the third inning off Rangers right-hander Ryan Drese for his 258th hit of the season, breaking Sisler’s 84-year-old mark. “I felt a big relief, I felt something lift off my shoulders,” Ichiro said after the game. “To have the fans and the team involved, made it very exciting for me, a special moment, the highlight of my career.” He would finish the 2004 season with 262 hits. In the two decades since, no one has come close to matching that.
Sisler set the mark in 1920 while playing for the St. Louis Browns. The closest anyone had come to Sisler were Lefty O’Doul in 1929 and Bill Terry in 1930 (with 254). But everyone knew Ichiro’s feat was possible when he came to the Mariners from Japan as an MLB rookie in 2001 and amassed 242 hits. Ichiro also broke the MLB record for most hits over a four-year span that day with 924, topping the standard of 918 set by Terry from 1929-32. Ichiro was the first player in big league history to top 200 hits in each of his first four seasons.
Ichiro is an indelible part of baseball history. Masanori Murakami was the first player from Japan to make the jump to the bigs when he pitched for the San Francisco Giants in 1964. But Ichiro was the first Japanese position player to make the majors—after winning seven straight batting titles as a member of the Orix Blue Wave. He could hit on any continent. And Ichiro’s speed was a big factor in his annual hits barrage. He beat out a lot of infield hits.
That speed also showed in the outfield, as did his arm. I remember watching a Mariners game against Oakland eight games into Ichiro’s debut season in 2001. Speedy A’s baserunner Terrence Long attempted to go from first base to third on a single, and Ichiro roped a throw to third on the fly knee-high to nail him. He quickly went from a virtual unknown among U.S. fans to No. 1 in fan balloting for the All-Star Game. By the time of his record run in 2004, Ichiro was as big a star as there was in baseball. His batting average that year was a career-high .372.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
