In Japan, a noren is a short curtain that hangs to the entrance of a little teahouse or restaurant. It is not solid, but made of strips, and so when you go through it, your hand goes first, then your arm, and the rest of you, but quickly the strips fall back into place, and it is as if a wisp, a ghost, a sprite has passed through.
I always visualized Ichiro Suzuki that way, slipping from Japanese baseball to our major leagues so effortlessly, barely stirring the air.
As he nears his 40th birthday, Suzuki has long since played more in the United States than in Japan –– nine seasons there, 13 here –– on his way to, surely, accumulating more hits than anyone who has ever stood in a batter's box. He's a handful short of 4,000 now, with better than 2,700 made in our American League. Beyond lie only Ty Cobb and Pete Rose, who holds the record with 4,256 — a total Suzuki could very well eclipse only two summers from now.
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