Legend: 50 Year Old Ichiro Showed No Mercy And Tossed a 116 Pitch Complete Game Shutout Against A Team Of High School Girls
Now you may be asking yourself, why was 50 year old Ichiro Suzuki on the bump against an all-girls high school baseball selection team at the Tokyo Dome? My response would be, why not? My man was bored and decided to show the world that he's still got it. You can clearly tell no one hated retiring more than this man. He doesn't know what to do with himself without baseball so he just keeps playing anyway he can.
Of course there's going to be a pathetic contingent of people who are disgusted that a man of his talents didn't show one ounce of forgiveness against this team. Same group of people who cry when a team scores a touchdown while up 50 in the 4th quarter of a game. I'm sure they wanted Ichiro to lob the ball down the middle of the plate so everyone could get a hit and a nice high five. Puke everywhere.
You know what's better than everyone getting a hit off a 50 mph ball thrown by Ichiro? A few girls getting to say they faced a fully trying Ichiro and got the best of him. Whatever pitcher who was on the bump for the girls having life time bragging rights that they struck out Ichiro. How fucking cool is that?
So spare me anyone complaining that Ichiro gave it everything he had here. It's an honor to face that man in that setting and an insult if he does anything other than try to destroy everyone in his way. Truly a memory those girls will never forget.
It's awesome to see Ichiro out there in the best shape any 50 year old man has ever been in, topping out at 86 mph and doing his thing. Throwing as hard as Adam Wainwright and Brent Suter did this past season. Boss.
Here's the best part. Ichiro did this a few years ago and only topped out at 84. So despite getting older, he's getting stronger? What a maniac.
His slider still has some bite to it.
There's a few major league teams who could use him out of the pen this coming season.
P.S. I still wonder to this day if his goal was to hit home runs how many he could have put on the board during his prime in the bigs. They always said he had secret power and could blast homers if that was his priority. Always had me thinking what if. Obviously he wouldn't have had 3,000+ knocks and 10 straight seasons of 200 hits. If he came over in today's era of home run happy launch angle ball I wonder if his approach would have changed.