Spring comes for us all

On Julio, Ichiro, and the thaw.

There are days, even in regions of the world not afflicted by The Long Dark, where winter feels interminable. Days where the muted tones of the sky reflect along the white walls of my under-decorated apartment, sunlight too diluted to cast shadows for the porthole window in which our star even deigns to shine upon Seattle from November through February. It’s light that imposes darkness, so meager as to heighten your awareness of what it’s not, magnifying what is missing. Spring has always come, the elephant on my chest has always risen and trotted off, baseball has come and swept the cobwebs of my spirit loose, reminding me who I am, but what if it doesn’t this time? This fear clutches me on the eve of one of my favorite days of the year, the holiday that is Opening Day. The title of Wright Thompson’s immaculate piece for the since-shuttered ESPN Magazine drifts through my mind: “When Winter Never Ends”.

Though originally spoken to the Miami Herald in 2017, Ichiro’s most memorable statement in the last decade was brought to a broader audience by Thompson’s report, which I cannot recommend strongly enough for you to read (or re-read, then mourn the loss of most long-form media outlets that would fund such an article) before returning here. When asked what he’ll do when he’s done playing baseball, Ichiro’s response could be read with his well-documented sense of humor, including at his own expense, or it could reflect a sincerity that would be worryingly befitting of a man then in his mid-40s, seeing his body at last begin to yield to time’s erosion against the regimented process by which his Hall of Fame career was sculpted:

“I think I’ll just die.”

As Thompson notes, while many stories on Ichiro are funny in isolation, the man who willingly admits “I’m not normal” is an obsessive, at the mercy of his routines as much as they are a mechanism for his own control. And when those routines fade, when their familiar rhythms and cadences evaporate, it is a terrifying space to be in for anyone, much less someone as defined by them as Ichiro.

I am wary of the overlap that creeps into sports fandom known as the parasocial relationship, the idea of treating a dynamic of a famous figure’s one-sided ubiquity in your life as the grounds for the familiarity of a mutual relationship and understanding. While I am the first to celebrate the triumph of the players who make up a team, particularly given my writing role I feel a responsibility to compartmentalize, if nothing else, my analysis from my feelings.

And yet, now as in 2018 when I first read those words from Ichiro, I feel the sympathy and melancholy as though they were spoken by a friend or loved one. Ichiro, the source of so many moments of joy in my life, teetering on, if we are to take him at his word in the context of the rest of his actions, true sorrow and malaise, and a crushing lack of purpose. I want Ichiro to be okay, because what does it mean for my own hopes of seeking purpose and joy if someone who has brought me so much is on the brink of losing theirs?

Thankfully, winters do end, those that come every year, those that rage within our own hearts, and yes, even those that bring a bone-chilling drought that lasts over 20 years.

Seattle Mariners on YouTube

It is this moment, in the outtakes of the M’s “No-Fly Zone” digital short which spurred this entire journey of parasocial self-indulgencereflection. There is assuredly much that goes undiscovered in the mind and spirit of Ichiro, but one thing that has been well-noted in recent years is his robust relationship with Julio Rodríguez, beginning when Julio was a mere 19 years old and simply was the odd man out for a throwing partner at Spring Training. The then-future face of the Mariners found a willing participant in their former face, the latter having been welcomed with open arms as an atypically engaged Special Assistant in Seattle’s front office. More than four years later, the two remain thick as thieves, with the statesman from just outside Nagoya opening his more commonly enclosed public shell often in recent years, so long as it is to speak about his towering, precocious protege.

Within the outtakes linked above are a pair of clips, two snippets of over-analyzable cuts that remain glued to the inside of my eyelids and have me alert at my desktop hours beyond when I should be dreaming of sugarplums and “Swing and a drive,” from Dave Sims. First is Julio’s astonishment at seeing Ichiro’s staid professionalism while attempting to evoke his elevated mentor role in the clip, remarking on Ichiro’s seriousness. The latter, with Ichiro speaking through his interpreter to ensure his words are construed correctly, explains to the astonished young superstar that many people believe Ichiro to be exclusively just that: serious, always.

It is absurd to Julio, whose charisma would be the envy of most bards and warlocks, that anyone would see Ichiro as too buttoned-up. It would likely be incongruous for Julio to know the version of Ichiro that was divisive to fans and, allegedly, teammates, for his approach to the clubhouse and the sport that some viewed as disengaged or even attempted to label as selfish. Given that from 2005 to 2012, several giant squids-worth of ink was spilled on the angst and even alleged desires for physical repercussions from teammates against Ichiro, it could be easy to envision the veteran retreating into his shell for good.

And yet, the joy that nearly every baseball fan, not merely Mariners anymore, gets from seeing Julio galivant across the field and gambol through life is an infectious warmth that Ichiro is not immune to. Perhaps Ichiro sees a confluence within Julio of what he himself was, alongside many things he never relished being. Eminently quotable, Suzuki nonetheless shied from the limelight in the U.S., ostensibly in connection to a wariness of being misunderstood. Julio’s self-assuredness, by contrast, should be studied for the benefit of present and future generations, a thoughtful confidence in concert with a genuine joy for playing the game that reflects Ichiro’s own childhood hero and inescapable Julio comparison: Ken Griffey Jr.

The beginning of a new spring may come at different moments for scientists, spiritualists, and for each and every one of you struggling as I am to shake the frost of winter off your heart on this Opening Day. But come it will, as it has for Ichiro in spite of the concerns of Thompson and so many others. As it has for the Mariners, thanks to so many players, but none more so than the kid from Loma De Cabrera. Welcome back, spring, welcome back, baseball, welcome back.