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October 3, 2025 14 mins
In 2004, Ichiro Suzuki etched his name in baseball history by shattering George Sisler’s 84-year-old single-season hits record and redefining what was possible in Major League Baseball. This episode dives deep into Ichiro’s legendary 262-hit campaign—highlighting his unique “pendulum” swing, relentless consistency, jaw-dropping 225 singles, 80 multi-hit games, and remarkable 36 stolen bases. Hear how a Japanese superstar transformed the art of hitting, won the hearts of fans worldwide, and inspired a new generation with discipline, innovation, and humility.





#MLB #IchiroSuzuki #BaseballHistory #Mariners #BaseballRecords #HitKing #SportsPodcast #2004Season #GeorgeSisler #SeattleMariners #JapaneseBaseball #NPB #SportsHistory

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In two thousand and four, I Trio Suzuki wrote the
history book. He took a season where his team struggled
to win games and made it remarkable, breaking a record
that had stood since nineteen twenty the single season hit
mark and would stretch it to two one hundred and
sixty two hits in a single season, showcasing his unique

(00:25):
skill in raw speed, being a complete player that would
be a dream in today's baseball. And when he finally
broke George Sisler's legendary record, the baseball world stood in
all as he was breaking barriers allowing Japanese players to
play in Major League Baseball. Join us today as we
dive into this historic season and what made each Row

(00:48):
a legend on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History.
I'm Ethan Rees your guide because I can quote every
line from the movie Sandlot In today's trivia question to
listen out for how long was the history did George

(01:08):
Seisler have during his historic nineteen twenty season? So to start?
Ichi Row was born in Ugui, Japan, and with the
help of his family, he quickly picked up baseball. His
father played a pivotal role overseeing his training sessions. For

(01:28):
hours as he grew to love the game more and
more in his reputation as a schoolboy prodigy despite his
small size, which he only grew to be about five
to nine one hundred and thirty pounds when he was
in Japan, but even with his small size, he showed
a unique skill for getting on base and getting base hits,
and this allowed him to get drafted in the fourth
round of the Nippon Professional Baseball League, which is the

(01:52):
highest league in Japan. Whenever a player comes over to
play in the Major League Baseball from Japan, they come
from this league, and it's really the second best league
in the entire world. And he was drafted by the
Oryx Blue Wave in nineteen ninety two right out of
high school, but he spent the first couple of seasons

(02:13):
in minor league baseball because of his small size and
his unconventional batting motion. Now, if you've not ever seen
each of a swing, it's a swing where he does
a big leg kick, which is a very common swing
in Japan. It's something they actually teach a lot. Then
he moves his body forward as the ball is coming,
like almost in a starting running position. So it's a

(02:35):
very hard thing to replicate because you have to not
only be moving, but move and swing the bat with
a ball coming at you maybe one hundred miles an hour.
Very difficult skill to learn, but he perfected it over time. Now,
this pinsulum swing wasn't an uncommon swing in the Nippon
Baseball League. People had done it before to try to
get an advantage, especially the left handed hitters as they

(02:58):
were closer to first base. They could get a quick
hit and be already running to first. It gave them
an extra step. But it's frowned upon here. We want
home runs, we want big hits, we want solid contact,
but nowadays we just want to get on base that
leads to runs. But after a couple of years in
the minors, he joined the pro team, where he had

(03:20):
a batting average of three hundred and eighty five and
set a Japanese record with two hundred and ten hits
in just one hundred and thirty games. And he would
go on to win seven consecutive batting titles for the
Pacific League and posted a career batting average of three
one hundred and fifty three, collecting over twelve hundred hits

(03:43):
in just a seven year span. He would win three
consecutive MVPs from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety six
and became known as the hit manufacturing Machine Japan. I'm
sorry work on your nicknames. That's a terrible nickname. But
after the two thousands season, the Nipon League had joined
with Major League Baseball to develop a posting system. See

(04:05):
prior to this, Japanese players didn't go play in Major
League Baseball. So we probably missed out on many, many, many,
many great baseball players. As we know now seeing shehai
Otani just breaking down barriers in baseball of what he
can do. We missed probably a lot of other players
that could have really done something special. But this system
was put into place to kind of start having a

(04:27):
chance for these players to join Major League Baseball. The
problem was this gave financial compensation to the Japanese teams
for losing this great player, but it also meant that
Major League Baseball was paying extra money just to pay
these players extra money. It was a crazy system that
was a sealed bidding system where you would bid for
just the right to negotiate with the player. So a

(04:50):
lot of teams, especially to start with in the system,
did not want to participate because it was a lot
of money and there was no track record of a
player coming over as episode player and having success in
the major leagues, so it was a huge gamble. But
some teams were willing to pay that gamble, and the
Mariners beat out the Mets, the Dodgers, the Angels, and

(05:11):
the Red Sox for the chance to bid for the
right to Eiro, and they bid over thirteen million dollars
just to bid for the rights, and they would end
up giving him a three year, fourteen million dollar contract.
So add that up, they're paying twenty seven million dollars
for each Uro if you total it in three years.

(05:33):
But the reason was was the owners of the Seattle
Mariners was hiroshie mat Yamachi, and he was the president
of Nintendo, which is the biggest gaming system in Japan
and a huge company there, so he already knew how
good each Heiro was and knew it was worth paying
that extra money. So they had a little bit behind
the curtain and soone nudging them to want to have

(05:55):
him in Seattle. So Eachio became the first position player
in Major League Baseball history. There's also Marakami, who played
for the Giants in nineteen sixty four. He was a
pitcher and he was just okay. And then he had
He De Nomo, who started pitching in nineteen eighty five
and he was pretty good. So we've only had pitchers.
This was the first positional player, and it wasn't a

(06:16):
guy you looked at and thought, oh, look, he's gonna
have so much power. He's gonna change the game. Because
at this time it was all about power. We had
just had multiple seasons from Mark McGuire and Samy Sosa
breaking home run records, and not far behind them was
Barry Bonds. So this was the power steroids era, and
Ichiro Suzuki was not that at all, just the exact opposite.

(06:40):
But that didn't mean he wasn't gonna have success. And
he came in with the bank, hitting two hundred and
forty two hits in his very first season, led Major
League Baseball in multiple categories in hits, batting average with
three point fifty, and stolen bases with fifty six, and
he would be named Rookie of the Year in the
American League and the MVP of the American League. It

(07:03):
just showed how good and how great he was. When
he came over, it was just surprising for everyone that
didn't think Japan had a good baseball program. So he
came out of the gates swinging, and he continued to
have success after success. After the two thousand and one season,
had more success, and then he was a perennial All Star,
one of the best players in the league coming into

(07:25):
the two thousand and four campaign. So the team came
in and they weren't expected to do a lot, but
they finished second in the division the year before, winning
ninety three games, and they hadn't made a whole lot
of changes, so they thought maybe there was a good
chance they would have to be able to build on
the success and have another good campaign. Fortunately, that is
not what happened. The team just they just kept losing

(07:49):
and each row also struggled at the very beginning of
the season, hitting just twenty six hits in April with
a batting average of two fifty five. This is a
guy that regularly had a batting average over three twenty five,
one of the most consistent hitters, but he was struggling.
So he took it upon himself, used all the things
he could, focused watched more film, focused on defensive shifts

(08:11):
that were coming his way, seeing how he could alleviate this.
Then come May he exploded. This broke his slump. He
hit fifty hits in May. July he hit fifty one.
In August he hit fifty six hits with a batting
average of four sixty three, the best monthly performance in

(08:33):
Major League Baseball history. And in September he would again
hit more than fifty hits, becoming the first player in
the modern era to have four to fifty hit months
in one season, showing that it wasn't just a few
games here and there. From May first till September ninth,

(08:53):
he hit over four hundred, which put him in rarefied air.
That season, he had more than eighty multi hit games,
and most of his hits were singles. He really perfected
that pendulum swing and getting on base. He would go
on to hit two hundred and sixty two hits this season,

(09:15):
breaking a record that stood since nineteen twenty In two
hundred and twenty five of those were singles, and he
ended the season with a batting average of three seventy two.
But he wasn't just doing it at the plate. That season,
added another Gold Glove to his collection and finished second
in the American League in stolen bases with thirty six.

(09:36):
He was the epitome of the small ball or the
moneyball technique that became very popular around this time, and
he was the perfect gym for the next genstats era.
So the season's going great for each row after his
slow start, and when October first comes, each Row stepped
up the plate to break George's Sissler's single season record

(10:00):
is packed, creating a night of drama. He's two hits
behind to break the record, and George His record is
memorable in and of itself. He hit two hundred and
fifty seven hits in a season with just one hundred
and fifty four games. That's eight less than each year
would play, and that included a month of June where

(10:21):
he had sixty hits and had a forty one game
hit streak during that year and was also voted al MVP.
And but now in two thousand and four, he Trow
had him in his sights. Coming into the game, he
had two hundred and fifty six hits, one shy of
Sissler's record. So coming into the game, facing off against
the Texas Rangers at Saint Cofield. The fans were ready

(10:43):
to see what would happen. In the first inning, he
is the leadoff hitter, facing Ryan Drese. He takes a strike,
fouls off two pitches, then he singles to left, tying
Sissler's record. The crowded erupts. They were just excited to
see him tie it. But then in the third inning
helms back up to the plate and with a three
to two count, he singles right up the middle in

(11:05):
a patented Etiro style makes it to first, breaking the record,
becoming the all time hitter in regular season history. Fireworks
explode from the stadium. The crowd gives a standing ovation,
the team rutches to greet Ichi Row. He gives a
reluctant smile as he doesn't love the spotlight, but feels
the enormous weight lifted, and he describes it as the
best moment in his baseball career. And immediately after, he

(11:28):
shook the hand of George Sisler's daughter, Francis, who later
expressed that her father would have been happy to know
such a great player and man would break his record,
and AIRO's father, who was in Japan watching the game,
would have brought to tears, celebrating everything that was happening
for his son in Seattle. Now the season wasn't over.

(11:49):
He would go on to add four more hits, bring
him to a total of two hundred and sixty two
hits that year. That was forty six more than the
runner up, and he was tributes from legends in the
baseball world and even from his home country of Japan.
Major League Baseball honored each row with a replica bat
modeled aphasistlers commemorating these and you could say this may

(12:12):
have been the peak of each US career. He would
not break his record, but would continue to maintain having
ten consecutive seasons with over two hundred hits, the only
player to ever do so, and no one has ever
come close to breaking his record and probably never will
to do so. You have to hit at least one
hit in every single game, meaning you do not get
injured and you are always playing. It's something that does

(12:34):
not happen in today's sports. He would also go on
to accumulate over three thousand and eighty nine hits in
the major leagues, adding to this Japanese total. It makes
him the most prolific hitter of all time with a
total of four thousand, three hundred and sixty seven hits,
which tops Pete Rose and he would also be the
first Asian born player inducted into the National Baseball Hall

(12:57):
of Fame, breaking down multiple barriers for multiple players from
Japan to come over here. And the Seattle Mariners had
went on to retire his number fifty one, and interestingly enough,
they actually retired two number fifty ones, as Randy Johnson
also wore fifty one for the Mariners in the nineties,
one of the greatest pitchers of all time, so they

(13:17):
have two fifty one's, but they didn't retire them on
the same day because Randy wanted each ro to have
his moment on his own. Now, each Row is a
special assistant with the Mariners and a chairman with the
team behind the scenes, mentoring the next generation and always
being a guide in a role model for everyone in
the world, as baseball is now a world game thanks

(13:40):
to each Row. I want to thank you for listening
to Daily Sports History, and i want to let you
know that I'm going to be doing some things a
little differently when try some different things to the show.
Maybe do different sound effects or different segments or I'm
not sure exactly, but I hope stick around. And if

(14:01):
you have ideas for the show or some comments you
want to leave me, send it to Daily Sports History
at gmail dot com. I will reply to you for sure.
Give me all the feedback you can, because the feedback
you give me I take the heart. And we will
work on this making this the best show possible. And
we'll see you on the next one. And did you

(14:23):
catch the answer to today's trivia question how long was
the hit streak that George Seisler had during his incredible
nineteen twenty season, And the answer was forty one games,
one of the highest hit streaks ever in MLB history.
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