NL ROUNDUP Ichiro Suzuki capable of customizing his hits

The Seattle player has control over pitches.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
MIAMI -- In his 13-year career as a major-league catcher, Dave Valle squatted behind, and batted behind, some of the best pure hitters in baseball history, from Rafael Palmeiro and Wade Boggs to Eddie Murray and Ken Griffey Jr.
But none of that prepared Valle for the past four years when, as color analyst for the Seattle Mariners, he has had to explain the exploits of Ichiro Suzuki.
"He's absolutely amazing to watch," Valle said. "You just shake your head, going 'how can he do that?' It's not that easy. I tell the viewers all the time, 'Folks, it's not that easy to get a hit in the big leagues.' "
Try telling that to Ichiro. He has nearly 900 hits in fewer than four big-league seasons. And with 233 this season, he started the weekend 25 hits shy of breaking George Sisler's 84-year-old record -- a mark no one but Ichiro has come within 16 hits of matching since Herbert Hoover was president.
Comparisons
But then vowels are about the only thing Ichiro Suzuki has more of than hitting marks. How about this stat for example: Ichiro's batting average (.369) is almost as high as the Mariners' winning percentage (.377) this season. Or this one: In his 56-game hitting streak, Joe DiMaggio batted .408. In Ichiro's past 56 games through Thursday, he was batting .445.
With 72 games of two or more hits this season, he has more multihit games than Jorge Posada, Garret Anderson or Mike Piazza have RBI. And he has had at least 50 hits in a month four times in 23 months in the majors -- including three times this season. In Japan, he had a record 210 hits in 130 games in 1994.
"He leaves you scratching your head," teammate Willie Bloomquist told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "He's a tremendous talent who's perfected his role like no one else has. He gets hits the way no one else can get them. He invents ways to get hits."
And that can change from at-bat to at-bat, even pitch to pitch. Ichiro said the modifications are so minute as to be unnoticeable -- such as which finger will cradle the bat or how he positions his hands -- "but I feel them" he told reporters earlier this month.
Picks his spots
Hall of Famer Paul Molitor said another thing that sets Ichiro apart is while most hitters see the fielders, Ichiro sees the holes.
"He literally looks at where guys are playing him and then tries to hit the ball -- and successfully does it -- where they're not playing him," Valle agreed. "I've seen it time and time again."
Yet despite all the apparent ease with which he goes about rewriting the record books, Ichiro is a student of baseball history. Immediately after his first season in the majors, he made a pilgrimage to the Hall of Fame, where he was allowed to hold Shoeless Joe Jackson's bat. In fact, Ichiro was in Cooperstown when he was notified he had been elected the American League's MVP, but the next spring, he talked more about Jackson's bat than his trophy.
And though he sometimes hides his emotions behind his translator or the sunglasses he wears in the field, he admits the pressure of chasing so much history can be crushing. Last year, after becoming just the third player to collect 200 hits in his first three seasons, the tension was so intense that he cried on the field. But no one noticed because of the glasses. And earlier that season, after hitting an un-Ichiro .243 in April, he approached Seattle Manager Bob Melvin about a demotion to the minors.
"I thought he was kidding at first," Melvin told The Seattle Times last week. "I didn't know what to say. He's so accountable for what he does. I remember thinking when he left 'Did he really say that?' "
Lately, he has begun limiting questions about the single-season hit record to a brief period after the first game of a new series. But what's almost as amazing as the record Ichiro is challenging are the similarities between the man who holds it and the one chasing it.
Sisler, whose bust Ichiro saw in the Hall of Fame, died in 1973, the year Ichiro was born. And like Ichiro, Sisler was an American League MVP who used his speed to his advantage, bunting for a base hit in one at-bat then pushing a single over the drawn-in infield his next time up. Also like Ichiro, Sisler had limited power, averaging less than seven homers a season in a 15-year career.
Ichiro is averaging nine homers through his four big-league seasons, but that can be a bit misleading. He twice hit more than 20 homers in a season in Japan, and if you watch him in batting practice, you'll see a batting stroke he seldom shows in games.
"He has incredible power," said Valle, who frequently throws batting practice for the Mariners on the road.
"I've watched him do this at will. All day long. Wade Boggs was the same way. Their skill level, as far as their hand-eye coordination, putting the bat on the ball and squaring it up, is uncanny.
"I don't think there's any question that he could hit .300 and hit 25 home runs. There's no doubt in mind. If that's what he decided, if he wanted to change his game to fit that style. But I think on this team, he feels his greatest asset ... would be to get on base."