Someone on Major League Baseball’s social media crew tweeted and then quickly deleted a joke Friday night comparing an image of Ichiro and Shohei Ohtani greeting each other to a meme showing two cartoon Spider-Men pointing at each other in mutual recognition and surprise:

Why ... that can’t be Ichiro? The Mariners’ special assistant to the chairman is not an active player or coach or trainer, so by MLB rule, he’s not allowed in the dugout during games. The gentleman photographed above during the first inning of yesterday’s loss to the Yankees, therefore, must not be Ichiro, despite…

Here are two facts. 1) MLB may struggle getting marquee players in the Home Run Derby this year, with many of the best sluggers and biggest names reportedly not interested.

Asked last spring what his retirement might someday look like, Ichiro said “I think I’ll just die.” Which made his sudden retirement, earlier this month, darkly fascinating, if not downright alarming—would Ichiro fall down dead immediately after making the announcement? Would he lay down tiredly, deliver one final…

Ichiro retired (or whatever) last week. Appropriately, Peter Gammons has an Ichiro tribute (behind the paywall) at The Athletic today. It’s about how dedicated Ichiro is to the craft of baseball, and opens with an anecdote from Barry Bonds.

Ichiro, the true hit king, has played his final major-league game—probably.

The Mariners lost at home yesterday to the Indians. This would be a happier story if they’d won, although I feel no particular way about the Mariners. But this is Ichiro doing a cool and heroic thing on a baseball diamond in the majors in 2018—had it been part of a win, it would’ve been that much sweeter. Here we have…

Ichiro, Marcell Ozuna, and Giancarlo Stanton all hit home runs in the seventh inning against the Phillies today. Ichiro’s was the longest.

Marlins outfielder/baseball’s True Hit King Ichiro Suzuki is 43 years old, yet he’s not going to stop playing professional baseball anytime in the forseeable future. Last year, he appeared in 143 games and hit .291, and even though the Marlins don’t plan to use him as an every-day starter, Ichiro will once again get…

Ichiro Suzuki, the true Hit King, joined Paul Molitor as the only member of the 3,000 Hit Club to do so with a triple when he did so in the top of the seventh inning today in Denver.

As we’ve stated before, Ichiro Suzuki is the true Hit King, and Pete Rose, who looks like two dog asses fucking, can get bent. We were forced to make this proclamation after Rose got sassy about the 1,278 hits Ichiro racked up in Japan, which make him a definitively superior batsman to Rose when combined with the…

Here’s a Barry Bonds interview from a few weeks ago that aligns eerily well with the baseball sensibilities of a few Deadspin staffers. There have been tales of Ichiro’s monster batting practice dingers for a few years, and Bonds here confirms that Ichiro can still slap ‘em all around the yard.

Today, Ichiro Suzuki hit an eighth-inning double off of Fernando Rodney to the right field corner. He sent Giancarlo Stanton to third, and he trotted into second base easily, looking mildly annoyed more than anything before he briefly removed his batting helmet to salute the crowd. If you count his 1,278 hits in…

Ichiro Suzuki should be making us sad. He’s 42 years old, a wisp of the player he used to be, and currently in year two of the Joe Montana-in-Kansas City phase of his career. An old-ass former star playing out his final days for a no-account team like the Marlins, in a stadium as garish as it is consistently empty, is…

Ichiro Suzuki is an ageless wonder who quite possibly has limitless baseball powers he only chooses to dole out sparingly for the art of it. One of those powers is pitching, which he did against the Phillies today. His official line? One inning pitched, one earned run, and two hits. Here’s some evidence.