COLUMN: Obsessing about baseball's brilliant weirdo

I know better than to fall for a professional athlete.

They may seem flashy and fun at the beginning but there is no intimacy. There is no truth.

I know the platitudes and clichés they trot out in sound bites are not who they really are. I know that they may be a great teammate and a great athlete but that doesn’t mean anything more. I know not to get too involved.

Just think about all the times I’ve been burned before.

The cyclist who rallied the country together and inspired millions by overcoming cancer turned out to be conniving, vindictive, egomaniacal fraud Lance Armstrong.

The football coach whose “grand experiment” to build a program with integrity turned out to be child rape enabler Joe Paterno.

And the all-natural player who was going to reclaim baseball’s home run records from cheaters like Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds turned out to be Alex Rodriguez, as big of a drug cheat as any of them.

So, of course, I have a confession to make. I fell head over heels for an athlete 15 years ago and I think I’m obsessed.

He’s talented, he’s smart, he’s funny, he’s humble, he’s popular, and, best of all, he’s not like anyone else. His career, his playing style, his training methods and his accomplishments are nonpareil. Since his arrival in Major League Baseball he’s just been plain different.

He’s baseball’s brilliant weirdo, Ichiro Suzuki, and he became the 30th member of the 3,000-hit club earlier this week.

His on-field accomplishments are staggering, especially considering he arrived carrying the weight of becoming the first Japanese position player to truly excel in this country.

Ichiro had at least 200 hits in his first 10 seasons with the Seattle Mariners — the only player ever to do that — and won both the Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player award in an impossibly good first season at age 27. Playing for the 116-win Mariners in 2001, Ichiro hit .350, had 34 doubles and stole 56 bases. Three years later he broke George Sisler’s 84-year-old Major League record with 262 hits in 161 games in 2004.

The numbers and accolades go on forever — a lifetime .314 batting average, more than 500 career stolen bases, 10 straight all-star selections, 10 straight gold gloves — but what I’ve always loved are the rest of the stories, er, legends that give Ichiro a mythical aura.

Like the story about Ichiro and those 10 All-Star Games, only one of which his American League team lost. As the legend goes, the soft-spoken, rail-thin Ichiro emerged from his locker before the start of each game with a maniacal, expletive-filled verbal assassination of the National League, in English, that sent his teammates into hysterics.

There are similar stories about his interactions with his Spanish-speaking teammates. He surprises them with his mastery of that language, mostly the not-fit-for-print parts of it.

It’s not just surprising curse words, either. Ichiro has a humidor he carries his bats around in (and once apologized to a bat-maker after breaking one of his in frustration). He does toe touches in the outfield between pitches to stay loose, part of a renowned workout regime that eschews weightlifting for a custom flexibility machine that looks like a torture device. He puts on incredible displays of power in batting practice, launching dozens of home runs, something he’s reticent to do in game action lest it cause him to make more outs. He owns a flip phone, according to a 2015 Miami Herald profile.

He is, also, one of baseball’s great quote machines, bizarrely discussing Kansas City weather (hotter than two rats in a wool sock), performance-enhancing drugs (it’s not as if wings grow out of your back), the city of Cleveland (he’d rather punch himself in the face than be say he’s excited to visit) and his dog’s career advice (‘woof, woof, woof,’ translated as ‘stay, stay, stay’).

Ichiro, my baseball obsession, acts like he has a heart, too. On Monday he donated the gear he was wearing when he notched his 3,000th big league hit — his jersey, his cleats, his arm guard and his batting gloves — to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ichiro’s also quietly been a financial backer of the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame in Kansas City in support of his late friend Buck O’Neil.

Unfortunately, I know that some day soon I’m going to need to move on. Ichiro’s 42 years old and is just a part-time player this year for the Miami Marlins, although he is hitting .318 in over 200 at bats.

I wanted, though, before this odd man’s career wound to an end, to say thank you. Thank you for being great, for being fun and, most of all, for being weird.

It’s been a joy to love again.

Andy Viano is a sports reporter and columnist at The Daily Inter Lake and is, in fact, a weirdo himself. He can be reached at aviano@dailyinterlake.com or 758-4446.