{"id":34291,"date":"2016-06-17T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/a-really-big-hit-in-japan-suzuki-picks-off-roses-total\/"},"modified":"2016-06-17T08:00:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T15:00:28","slug":"a-really-big-hit-in-japan-suzuki-picks-off-roses-total","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/a-really-big-hit-in-japan-suzuki-picks-off-roses-total\/","title":{"rendered":"A really big hit in Japan: Suzuki picks off Rose’s total"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOKYO<\/strong> \u2014 Ichiro Suzuki\u2019s latest milestone has been a really big hit in Japan.<\/p>\n

Newspapers published special editions for the morning rush hour, the national broadcaster led with the news, and fans and dignitaries paid tribute Thursday after Suzuki raised his career hits total in the Japanese and North American major leagues to 4,257, passing Pete Rose\u2019s record Major League Baseball total.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe praised Suzuki\u2019s mark as \u201can amazing record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA Japanese athlete has once again made a monumental contribution,\u201d Abe said, \u201cand I feel tremendous pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old Suzuki singled in the first inning against the San Diego Padres and doubled in the ninth to move past Rose, who had 4,256 hits over 24 seasons.<\/p>\n

Suzuki had 1,278 hits for Orix in Japan\u2019s Pacific League (1992-00) and the rest with the Seattle Mariners, the New York Yankees and his current team, the Miami Marlins.<\/p>\n

In his 16th season in Major League Baseball, Suzuki has 2,979 hits in the majors and is rapidly approaching the 3,000-hit club.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is like a national treasure,\u201d office worker Tadahito Inaga said. \u201cIt will be fun to watch him go for 3,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s national broadcaster NHK reported that Suzuki \u201cbroke the record for most hits ever by a Major League ballplayer\u201d while acknowledging the record is unofficial because it spans two professional leagues.<\/p>\n

Rose has previously played down the comparisons.<\/p>\n

Rose was quoted recently by the USA Today newspaper as saying: \u201cI\u2019m not trying to take anything away from Ichiro, he\u2019s had a Hall of Fame career, but the next thing you know, they\u2019ll be counting his high-school hits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The debate over Suzuki\u2019s mark is reminiscent of when Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh passed Hank Aaron\u2019s record of 755 home runs in 1977.<\/p>\n

Japanese fans regarded it as a world record but many in the U.S. said the records were not equivalent, as Japanese ballparks tended to be smaller.<\/p>\n

Oh, who would finish his career in Nippon Professional Baseball with 868 home runs, also had high praise for Suzuki.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo do this at 42, he is an inspiration to baseball fans around the world,\u201d Oh said. \u201cI look forward to following him as he continues to get more hits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Japanese professional baseball hit record is 3,085 held by Isao Harimoto in 2,752 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOKYO \u2014 Ichiro Suzuki\u2019s latest milestone has been a really big hit in Japan. Newspapers published special editions for the morning rush hour, the national broadcaster led with the news<\/a>, and fans and dignitaries paid tribute Thursday after Suzuki raised his career hits total in the Japanese and North American major leagues to 4,257, passing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":34292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34291"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}