KND Report: Ichiro tossed for first time in career

September 27, 12:23 AMAsian-American Sports ExaminerMichael Street

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Ichiro tends to reserve his emotional outbursts for the
dugout—until tonight (AP Photo/Darren Calabrese)

It's been a year for firsts for Ichiro, and today's wasn't the best one to achieve.

Earlier this season, he became the first Japanese player to get 2,000 hits in MLB (and did so in the second-fewest games of any player of any heritage).

A week later, Ichiro became the first player to amass 200 hits in nine straight seasons.

Tonight, he was ejected for the first time in his career, and the first Mariner player to get the thumb in 2009.

That's shocking on two levels.

First, that Ichiro, himself the calmest player on any team, would lose control of himself.

You hardly noticed when he collected that 2,000th and 200th hit. It's rare to see him even crack a smile on the field, so intent is he on the game.

Second, NPB players are far more respectful of umpires than their American counterparts, and ejections for arguing with the ump in Japan are rare. Tuffy Rhodes, an American-born slugger who has hit over 400 homers in NPB, holds the record for ejections in Japan with 10; he broke Masaichi Kaneda's record of 8 in 2009.

By comparison, A-Rod has been booted 12 times, Gary Sheffield has gotten tossed 10, and Milton Bradley (big surprise) has been tossed from 17 games.

So for Ichiro to get booted is surprising, but for it to be his first is impressive.

That it's the first ejection by any Mariners player is even more amazing. Don Wakamatsu is a level-headed manager, but he's also canny; managers can use ejections to fire up their team.

Apparently, that's not how Wak works. "I think that players tend to follow my tendencies," he said in an interview about player ejections. He said he "never subscribed to the idea that I have to get kicked out of a game to motivate my players."

Ichiro's ejection is for relatively mild reasons, and understandable both from his perspective and the umpire's.

Kattobase Nijonjin Daiirigaa!

Called out on an outside pitch, he looked back at the plate and drew a line on the outside of the plate.

Though apparently relatively mild, it breaks one of the unbroken rules of player-umpire relations: don't show up the ump. Pretty much any player who draws a line in the dirt to show the ump where he thought the pitch was is asking for an ejection, and Ichiro got his.

From his perspective, he usually gets such calls, and the pitch was the third outside pitch that umpire Brian Runge called a strike. The first one looked like it clipped the outside corner, the second might have touched the top right hand corner of the zone, but the third pitch seemed to be outside.

With a runner on third and one out, Ichiro knew that he needed a hit, and said something briefly to Runge, then turned to draw a line on the part of the plate where he felt the pitch went. Before he could turn around, he had been ejected.

Understandable though it might be from a player with a fairly limited English vocabulary, this gesture is a no-no from players.

Wakamatsu, who knows this all too well, walked out an escorted Ichiro back to the dugout and off the field without a word to Runge. Ichiro, however, continued to glare over his shoulder at Runge.

If it was a mistake, it's unlikely Ichiro will repeat it—if not, he hardly got his money's worth.