Ichiro DENVER, CO – AUGUST 7: Ichiro Suzuki #51 of the Miami Marlins tips his hat to the crowd after hitting a seventh inning triple against the Colorado Rockies for the 3,000th hit of his major league career during a game at Coors Field on August 7, 2016 in Denver, Colorado. (Photo by Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
MLBBy Andrew Bucholtz on

There’s no one quite like Ichiro Suzuki. The 43-year-old Miami Marlins’ outfielder is the oldest position player in Major League Baseball (and only 51 days younger than oldest active player overall Bartolo Colon), but he’s still working at a level that few half his age can match, spending most of his offseason in the batting cage and his own personal weight room. He told Clark Spencer of The Miami Herald that won’t change anytime soon, either; he wants to play to 50, and he doesn’t want to think about post-baseball life:

Suzuki has no intention of stopping anytime soon, anytime before he turns 50.

“Nobody knows what the future holds,” Suzuki said. “But the way I feel, how I’m thinking, I feel like nothing can stop me from doing it.”

Why rest now?

“When you retire from baseball, you have until the day you die to rest,” he said.

And when the day finally comes to retire?

“I think I’ll just die,” he said.

Ichiro playing until he’s 50 may sound insane, but it’s notable that some have done it and others have come close. Segregation meant Satchel Paige only entered the majors at 42 after a long stint in the Negro Leagues, and he was an all-star at 46 and 47. He then found some success in the minors and on the barnstorming circuit before pitching one final major league game at 59. Charley O’Leary also briefly came out of retirement at 58 in 1934, and Minnie Minoso had two at-bats at 50 in 1980. Phil Niekro pitched at 48 in 1987, and his brother Joe pitched at 44 in 1988. More recently, Julio Franco played in MLB at 49 in 2007, and Jamie Moyer played at 49 in 2012.
Of course, very few have been able to survive in the majors at 40-plus, and the odds are against anyone doing so, especially in this era of massive farm systems and intense competition for every spot. To keep a major-league spot at that age, you not only have to be still effective, you also have to ward off teams trying to use your spot to develop younger players. Ichiro’s commitment to fitness and to constant work (Spencer writes that he hasn’t taken a vacation in over a decade, and that his translator says his typical offseason is “three or four days, tops”) might help him beat the odds, though, and he’s certainly stayed reasonably effective; he hit .291/.354/.376 last season. We’ll see how long he can stay in the majors, but his goal might not be as crazy as it sounds at first.
[The Miami Herald]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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