Where were you on the day that Mount St. Helens erupted for the first time in 24 years?
I was learning how to spell my name in Spanish.
Right after my exclusive foreign language spelling bee, I heard that St. Helens belched some ash that was sitting uneasy in its magma chamber. Then I started going through volcanism terminology in my head. I spelt magma, lava and eruption to myself en Espanol.
When I got home, feeling up-to-date with my current events, I turned on the tube to see what kind of rumbling was going on elsewhere in the state of Washington, particularly at Safeco Field with the Seattle Mariners.
Gasp! Me, watch television? Me, watch the lousy Mariners?
Yes and no.
I was watching Ichiro Suzuki, not the entire Tacoma Rainiers club dressed up in Mariners uniforms. I had listened to some sensible advice: “Don’t hate the player, hate the game (or team in this instance).”
Ichiro has been my favorite player since his major-league debut in 2001, when he crossed the pond from Japan and joined the Mariners. I have probably collected every Ichiro bobble head available in a cereal box.
Anywho, Helen blew her lid in unspectacular fashion on Oct. 1 and then again last Tuesday. Ichiro laced his record-breaking 258th hit of the year on the same day as the first volcanic occurrence. He played in 161 games this year and finished with 262 hits.
George Sisler was the former record-holder with 257 hits in 154 games played. His mark had stood for almost 85 years. Roger Maris’ 1961 record of 61 home runs was replaced 37 years later by Mark McGwire (70) and then again by Barry Bonds (73) in 2001. Those guys were idolized – and criticized and accused but mostly idolized – for moving such a disposable benchmark.
Nothing keeps a baseball hit by a mortal Hercules from leaving the yard quite like a force of nature, such as wind, humidity or gravity.
But slap hitters like Ichiro use gravity to their advantage. It keeps the ball on the ground and out of the reach of the nine position players, inflating his batting average. The slap-hitter only has 37 homers in four major league baseball seasons. How do you say, “Thank you Sir Isaac Newton,” in Japanese? I only know how to say it in Spanish.
Some sports fanatics believe that Ichiro’s record is insufficient in some way, or that there should be an asterisk next to it in the record book because Ichiro played in more games than Sisler did. I disagree. This is one of the oldest records in that book and the bats and the balls are still the same. The grass is still green and the infield is still dirt. Stadiums still serve hot dogs and peanuts, granted we do have the option of garlic fries and filet mignon nowadays.
The art of hitting has not evolved like cooking has. For instance, I have the ability to grill a better
hamburger on my George Foreman now than some diner cook in the 1940s.
Ichiro didn’t hit .400 but he still put the stick of wood on the
leather-wrapped ball of string and broke a record. He had only 48 walks in a whopping 704 at-bats, the second most in baseball history. He won another batting title with a .372 average. That’s 10 points better than Bonds, so throw him a frickin’ bone.
The most hits I’ve ever gotten in a season was five and they didn’t come on a baseball diamond. My career-best came on the playground in second grade during recess when I kept taking Suzy Wright’s swing. Boy, did I have a tender shoulder for the next week.
Even if St. Helens starts stirring again and the sky fills with ash, I’ll still be babbling about Ichiro and everything he has done for baseball. You’re lucky I didn’t pay more attention in my geology class, or you’d be reading about tectonic plates, subduction zones and calderas.

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