4.22.2008

Ichiro's Path

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." This is actually a quote from Sir Winston Churchill. However you may think this is the quote of a statement that Major Leager Ichiro Suzuki made.

I had never been proud of my birthplace nor had I ever liked watching baseball game, ever, before this Hero of Japan; it was only when I came to know that Ichiro's birthplace is actually a few miles away from my parents home, I realized something was changing inside of me. One of my good friends once asked me if I wanted to see a batting center that Ichiro had been practicing. Giving him no sign of hesitation, I replied with full of joy and excitement, YES. Within a matter of thirty minutes or so, I stepped on the soil where Ichiro must have put footprint and walked around.

Since I prefered watching animation and cop drama and so forth, baseball had been my worst enemy; many TV programs were postponed their broadcasting or simply cancelled whenever the baseball season arrived. Furious was my child soul that projected anger towards this game of loathe; I always wished and hoped that baseball game to be vanished from the surface of this planet. Only baseball game that I liked was College Baseball. It made sense to me to support my University baseball team since I chose to enter the Univ. with full of my conscious awareness and willingness, but not the case for a local Professional baseball team or so. I did not choose to be born in the city where I grew up !

After a few decades passed since my birth, there emerged such a local, quite local and patriotic feeling on the Prefecture that I grew up. I had never consider myself to be an Aichi Prefecturure local; Nagoya, which is my birthplace and 3rd or 4th biggest cities among Japan, was more famous than Aichi prefecture that holds Nagoya city, so I consider myself to be a Nagoya citizen, not Aichi Prefecture local.

Having said them all, Ichiro blew my mind and changed everything. I owe much to him though I never met him in person. However it does not matter nor would it whether or not I meet him in person, taking into consideration that nobody, or to be exact, most of us have not, ever met Jesus Christ or Buddha or Mohammad the Prophet but they are still our inspiration and guiding paths even today and most importantly, without actually meeting them.

Ichiro knew exactly what he really wanted by the time he graduated from his elementary school, then junior high school and when choosing a high school, he made a great desicion to enter the path to the professional baseball by also giving up the path pursuing a career based upon academic competence preceded by going to a prestigious University or so that they say he could have been able to.

Route 41, National Highway, has somewhat been known as Nobel Laureate Road of Japan. Many of Japanese Nobel Laureate have somehow, something to do with the road. One was born nearby the road and grew up, one had a birthplace then moved away, e.t.c. Ichiro's birthplace is also located near the road, my parents home is just a little away from the road and I am sure, if Ichiro were running from the place to the road, it would be just a matter of within 15 seconds or so, from home base to 1st base or things like that.

I may not be as successful as those heroes; Nobel Laureate or world record breaking and creating Hero, Ichiro, however, I would like to live on the great feeling of sharing something in common with him for sure.