Ichiro and
Gorgeous George: A Fan’s Look at Baseball, Life and Ichiro Suzuki’s Magnificent
Run at George Sisler’s Single Season Hit Record…
by Mark
Arnold
Foreword
The 2004 baseball season was, for the
Seattle Mariners, a disaster. The team won 63 games that year, which as any fan
knows means they lost 99, and finished in last place in the American League
West Division. But the magnitude of the disaster can only be appreciated when
you realize that in 2001 the Mariners had astounded the baseball world by
winning 116 games, the most since the 1906 Chicago Cubs. That was the year the
Mariners should have gone to the World Series and won their first Championship.
Instead the catastrophe of 9/11 happened and nothing in that season was the
same after that. The Mariners followed their great 2001 season with consecutive
93 win seasons in 2002 and 2003; pretty good normally but in those years not
even good enough to make the playoffs. Confronting the above you can now
appreciate the disaster of 2004. With 63 wins the Mariners didn’t just decline,
they fell off a cliff!
By mid August of the 2004 season most Mariner
fans were being distracted from the team’s won / lost record however. The
reason? They were busy watching Ichiro Suzuki, the team’s right fielder and the
first Japanese regular position player in the Major Leagues, wielding his bat
like a wand while chasing down one of the longest standing major records in
baseball: George Sisler’s all time record for hits in a single season. While
the rest of the team was stinking up Safeco Field with their play, Ichiro was
gracing this otherwise lost Mariner season with magic.
Sisler’s record, which he set in 1920
when he accumulated 257 hits, had stood strong for 84 years; longer than Ruth
and Aaron had held the Home Run record combined and longer than DiMaggio has
held his 56 consecutive game hit streak record. In the 1920s and early ‘30s
several players had come close to breaking it, but
in the modern era no one had ever come close; not Rose; not Gwynn; not Carew;
not Williams and not DiMaggio. The closest in the modern era had been Ichiro
himself when he had 242 hits during his rookie 2001 season. It appeared to many
that Sisler’s record would never be broken. And yet, as mid August turned into
late August and late August turned into early September and as Ichiro piled up
the hits, it was becoming clear that he had a real shot at it. Mariner fans and
baseball fans everywhere joined the “Ichiro watch” with a passion, eager to see
if he could do it.
Written from a fan’s perspective, “Ichiro
and Gorgeous George” is the story of Ichiro Suzuki’s marvelous assault
on Sisler’s record. Told against the backdrop of Ichiros’s first few seasons as
a Seattle Mariner, including the devastating effect of 9/11 on the phenomenal
Mariner 2001season, the story gradually builds the case for a stunning
possibility regarding Ichiro and his relationship to Sisler and the record that will forever link them in
baseball lore. Along the way much of both Mariner and general baseball history
is toured, including the trades of Mariner stars Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey
Jr., the loss of Mariner manager Lou Piniella to Tampa Bay in 2002, Bill Buckner’s
life ruining error in the ’86 series, Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson
breaking the color barrier with the Dodgers in 1947, details of George Sisler’s
life and career and much more.
More than a story about the game of
baseball and a great player’s accomplishment, “Ichiro and Gorgeous George” is
about the game of life, the spiritual connections that bind us all and the
lessons to be learned between the lines. As such it is a story, not only for
students and fans of baseball, but for the students and fans of life itself.
Mark Arnold
September
26, 2012
"Ichiro and Gorgeous George" is available exclusively through Amazon.com. Get your copy today by clicking the link below...
About Mark Arnold
Mark
Arnold is a lifelong baseball fan who grew up in the Seattle area and has lived
there his entire life. As a kid he followed the Seattle Rainiers in the late
‘50s and early ‘60s and mourned the loss of the Pilots following their one
season in Seattle in 1969. Since 1977 he has lived and died with the ebbs and
flows of the Seattle Mariners, taking his lumps with the frequent losses and
reveling in the less frequent victories. He is the author of many articles on a
variety of subjects as well as a number of short stories and one novel. “Ichiro and Gorgeous George” is his 3rd
published work following 2007’s science fiction yarn “Only On A Tiny Planet” and 2008’s comment on the financial crisis “Bailout is the Name of the Game”. He
currently lives with his wife Tammy in Seattle’s Ballard district.
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