One thing has become abundantly clear from the coverage of various Asian superstars -- the Japanese and Chinese sports media are a powerful contingency that likes their coverage early, often and just flat out thorough.
This was the case as well for Ichiro's 3,000 career hit, which, if I recall watching Sportscenter at all over the past week, didn't get much coverage at all. Not so much in Japan, according to the a reader of the NYT's Bats.
"Watching NHK news on my big dish and their first story lasted 10 minutes and was about Ichiro's 3,000th hit last night. Started out with a guy working in a fruit and vegetable stand. Name was Keiji Kimura. He gave up Ichiro's first hit in 1992. They had a tape of it. I arrived in Nippon in 1993 and don't remember Ichiro looking so young and so skinny, if you can imagine him even more slender."
"They moved on to Aichi where he used a batting cage for years. Mentioned Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Oh's hit totals, teammates on the Giants and probably the two biggest legends in Japanese baseball. Then talked to Japan's all-time leading hitter, Tomoaki Kanemoto. He said Ichiro was a much better hitter than he was, classically Japanese."
"There were lots of clips of Ichiro in between and people on the streets interviews as well as young baseball players talking about him. Ichiro said when he started he had no idea he would become the man he is now. The last bit was a picture of Pete Rose and Ichiro side by side with their career hit totals. The announcers said he ONLY had to have six more 200 hit seasons to pass him......You have to imagine that Ray Finkle would be immensely proud of the coverage provided here. On the other hand, while I was trying to figure out why I didn't see coverage of Ichiro's 3,000 hit, I suddenly remembered the self-imposed ban that I have put on Sportscenter for the next week.
Why? In case it's not obvious, the FavreRam fiascos, which have been so freaking intense and in-your-face that they almost started to cross over, have driven me away. And while Ichiro's coverage is by all means aggressive and way too much for a standard television milestone, at least it's in celebration of one of the country's greatest baseball players. And not, you know, the inability of two Americans who can't figure out the aging process.
Via BLS
