On Wednesday, Ichiro Suzuki authored the 4,257th hit of a distinguished career spanning both hemispheres. His first 1,278 hits came when playing for the Orix Buffaloes in Japan. The only thing that made No. 4,257 interesting was that, if you added the Orix number to his MLB total, it gave Ichiro one more knock than Pete Rose.
Had Rose not opened his mouth, Ichiro’s achievement would have been little noted. I follow sports for a living, and I was only vaguely aware that he was nearing No. 4,257 until Rose spoke to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. Only then did headlines ensue.
"It sounds like in Japan they're trying to make me the Hit Queen," Rose said. "I'm not trying to take anything away from Ichiro; he's had a Hall of Fame career. But the next thing you know, they'll be counting his high-school hits."
(The “Hit Queen” part might sound odd — until we realize that Rose has dubbed himself the “Hit King.” In a possibly unrelated note, Cincinnati is known as the Queen City.)
After whining about legitimacy, Rose then undercut his own gripe. “I don’t think you’re going to find anybody with credibility say that Japanese baseball is equivalent to major-league baseball.”
And you won't. Because it isn't. The Hit King was never in any danger of being dethroned. All Rose had to do was say, "From one hitter to another, kudos to Ichiro on his accomplishment." But that's Pete: He can never say the right words and be done with anything. He has to hit us over the head with those 4,256 big-league hits. He's the great player who can't let greatness speak for itself.
This should be a high time for Rose. He’ll be inducted in a Hall of Fame next weekend — not the one whose call he has long awaited, but a baseball HOF all the same. He’s due to be enshrined in the Cincinnati Reds’ Hall of Fame, an event in which the team has taken such pride as to feature him on the cover of its 2016 media guide. (A lower quadrant of that cover is devoted to Ken Griffey Jr., whose Cooperstown induction will come in July. No current Red is displayed, which makes sense if you’ve seen the current Reds.)
As reported by C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Reds moved the goalposts — apologies for mixing sports metaphors — to accommodate Rose. Wrote Rosecrans: "The Reds Hall of Fame had employed the same rule that the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has had since 1991, barring any players on baseball's permanently ineligible list from induction. … The Reds Hall of Fame board of directors voted unanimously to change the bylaws and elect Rose to the team's Hall of Fame."
The Reds were hell-bent to honor a guy MLB still won’t consider for enshrinement. In December, new commissioner Rob Manfred declined Rose’s petition to be lifted from its banned list. There’s a reason Rose landed on that list, a reason he’s still there: In the 27 years since agreeing to the ban, he has never voiced a convincing apology. (It took him 14 years to admit he’d bet on baseball.) He keeps expecting the sport to come crawling to him because he is, you know, the Hit King.
His grudging response to Ichiro’s feat was a small thing that underscored a greater truth: What made Rose a great player — the drive to overcome modest gifts with utter willpower — has rendered him a graceless ex-player. He has to remind us who he is and what he did. Whenever he does, we’re reminded as to why he’s not yet where he wants most to be. He’s not there because he’s his own worst enemy.
And here’s the funny part: Ichiro stands to see his plaque in Cooperstown before Rose. At age 42, Ichiro is batting .349 for the Marlins and is 21 hits from an America-only No. 3,000. He’ll be a first-ballot selection five years after he retires. The Hit King figures to remain in grumpy exile.
