Ichiro Suzuki Announced His Retirement From Baseball During An Emotional Moment In Japan

The 2019 MLB season officially opened on Thursday in Tokyo, and with it came the end of one of baseball’s most remarkable careers. Ichiro Suzuki, back with the Seattle Mariners one more time at 45 years old, officially retired following Seattle’s 5-4 win over the Oakland Athletics.

Ichiro hanging them up this season wasn’t unexpected, but the timing was. Reports circulated during the game — held as part of the league’s Opening Series at the Tokyo Dome in Japan — that Suzuki would retire after the game. One of the greatest hitters in Major League history, a man who has far more hits that Pete Rose if you count professional play in Japan, was finally hanging it up.

Ichiro, who went 0-for-4 with a strikeout in his final Major League game, was substituted out of the game in the eighth inning. Mariners manager Scott Servais had the team take the field for the bottom of the inning before pulling all his players except Ichiro from the field. He then soaked up a massive ovation as he left the field for the final time, hugging teammates one by one as he officially called it quits.

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The scenes from Tokyo Dome were intense, and fitting for a player who meant so much to Mariners fans and Japanese baseball for nearly two decades.

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Ken Griffy Jr. was there to greet him in the dugout when he finished on the field, and basically everyone lost it.

That he returned to Seattle to play for the first time since 2012 made the decision feel right. Ichiro spent most of his MLB career with the Mariners, including setting a Major League record with 262 hits in a single season in 2004. He was an international baseball icon, running to first before he finished his swing and beating out infield hits to power a Seattle offense annually. There are many, many ways to measure Ichiro’s greatness, but this is a pretty good place to start.

The hits — and his foot speed — had slowed in the final years of his career, but it was clear even in spring training these past few weeks, that the skills that made Ichiro a legend on both sides of the world was still there.

There are countless stories about Ichiro throughout his career, and all of them are amazing. But his final story as a Major League player, the one that played out on Thursday, will be a pretty good one, too.