There won't ever be another baseball player like Ichiro Suzuki.
There's the batting style that had Ichiro flying toward first base almost before he had even made contact with the baseball, the hand-eye coordination that allowed Ichiro to drop a hit to any segment of the field he chose seemingly on command, the legendary preparation and throwing arm and underrated sense of humor.
And, of course, there are the hits.
Between Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball and then into Major League Baseball, Ichiro amassed 4,367 hits. No one, between those two top leagues on the planet, has ever had more.
Ichiro had 1,278 hits in NPB. And despite not playing in MLB until he was 27 years old, Ichiro added another 3,089 hits stateside.
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There were arguments, when Ichiro's combined major leagues hit total was passing Pete Rose, as to whether this made him the Hit King or not.
Sure, maybe it's a slightly cherry-picked record.
But is there really much doubt that if Ichiro had shown up in Seattle when he was 21 instead of 27 that he would've hit then, too? The dude was an automatic 200 hits in a season.
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He set the single-season record with 262 hits. He broke a George Sisler record that had stood for eight decades. It was one of those marks that people figured would never be broken, and then Ichiro broke it.
It's been said that he could've hit 30-plus home runs per season if he wanted to, but that wasn't his game.
This was the purest hitter the world game of baseball has ever seen.
There will never be another Ichiro.
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