ICYMI, Elliott - Suzuki's debut in Toronto: two hits, run scored, Big W

Former Seattle Mariners, Miami Marlin and New York Yankees OF Ichiro Susuki led the Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote, followed by inductees LHP CC Sabathia and RP Billy Wagner.

There was a time when discussing Ichiro Suzuki’s Hall of Fame statistics that detractors would say “well ... 1,278 hits in Japan should not count.” Well, when it came time for Baseball Writers Association of America voters with 10-year’s experience the 211 doubles, 23 triples, 118 homers and 926 singles were moot. Suzuki collected his 3,000th hit with the Miami Marlins off Colorado Rockies LHP Chris Rusin on Aug. 7, 2016.

Suzuki retired with 3,089 career hits, thanks to 10 seasons of 200 or more hits. His 54th and 55th hits in North America came May 11, in 2001 in his first game in Toronto. He had 187 hits against the Jays, behind only Seattle’s AL West rivals: Oakland Athletics (320), Texas Rangers (317) and the Los Angeles Angels (277)

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(Originally posted May 12, 2001)

By Bob Elliott

Canadian Baseball Network

The Seattle Mariners may have the best Far East import since Cecil Fielder returned from his home run trip.

Right fielder Ichiro Suzuki is hitting .340 leading off for the Mariners.

And somehow he has magically shortened the throwing distance from right field to third base when a runner tries to go first to third on a single.

With Suzuki’s arm, it looks like a catcher throwing the ball to second base, rather than two or three times the distance.

The media travelling party covering the Mariners includes 23 writers and 11 photographers from Japan. That’s down from the first day of spring training in Arizona when 87 media members from Japan were in attendance, compared to 12 from North America.

The bat wizard did not disappoint in his first visit to SkyDome. He had two hits in five trips and only 20,279 fans were there to see it.

Joey Hamilton fanned Suzuki swinging in a five-pitch at-bat to open the game.

Next, in the third inning -- with the Jays leading 1-0 on Tony Bautista’s solo home run off Seattle starter Paul Abbott -- he bounced out to second to end the inning.

Then, Suzuki led off the sixth with a ground ball single. It was the start of a three-run rally as Mark McLemore singled to centre sending Suzuki to third and then John Olerud grounded out to tie the game. Mike Cameron followed with a two-run homer.

Then, in the seventh Carlos Guillen singled against Hamilton, Suzuki singled him to third and McLemore scored on a Hamilton wild pitch, making it 4-2 as Carlos Delgado had hit a solo homer against Abbott.

Edgar Martinez chased Hamilton with a double leading off the eighth, Olerud singled home pinch runner Charles Gipson facing Jays reliever Dan Plesac and Guillen doubled in Olerud.

In his final at-bat against reliever Bob File he led off the ninth bouncing to second in a 7-2 Seattle win, dropping the Jays record to 19-16.

Here in one of most cosmopolitan cities on earth, as the Chamber of Commerce likes to say, the Blue Jays have their own experience with Far East imports. And it was not selling Fielder’s contract to Japan.

In 1981, Pat Gillick, now the general manager of the Mariners, was with the Jays when they made an initial foray into the Orient.

Director of player personnel Elliott Wahle, scouting supervisor Bob Zuk and northwest scout Wayne Morgan signed Korean right-hander Dong Won Choi to a four-year deal in 1981.

The Jays say he could have earned $610,000 US, if he collected on all of his bonus clauses, which included winning the Cy Young award. His salary for 1982 would have been $32,000.

According to Morgan, Choi was going to be the next Dave Stieb after going 13-1 with a 2.62 earned run average pitching for the Lotte Giants of the Korean League.

What’s that? You’ve seen Suzuki and you’ve heard of Suzuki, but Choi does not ring any bells?

Well, Choi still has a presence in the baseball office at 1 Blue Jays Way.

Once a week the Jays hand out their organizational roster. It lists players under contract on their 40-man roster. It lists players on with their seven minor-league teams, those on the disabled list, those who have retired and those who are on a restricted list.

You can find Chris Weinke, the Jays’ former minor-league infielder who gave up baseball and went on to quarterback the Florida State Seminoles, on the sheet as a proud member of the restricted list.

But the top dog in terms of service on the sheet remains Choi, who has been on the weekly roster’s restricted list since the spring of 1982 -- that’s 988 weeks of inactive service if you are scoring along at home.

Choi is now 43 and does not figure to be pitching for anyone else anytime soon.

The Jays are making a statement.

The Korean has been around longer -- on paper anyway --than infielder Tony Fernandez who holds the club record in games played with 1,402.

Choi never put on a Jays uniform and never came to North America. He didn’t show up for spring training in 1982 and he didn’t in subsequent years.

“There are two certainties in life, death and taxes,” a Korean ambassador said at the time, “in our country there is a third ... military service.”

Military service would be a serious commitment and a valid reason for not showing up.

However, because of Choi’s mound stature, the government waived his three-year military commitment. The catch was he had to pitch in Korea until 1987.

The Jays asked commissioner Bowie Kuhn to intercede on their behalf through the Korean commissioner. The Jays argued their contract had been signed before Choi’s Korean contract and therefore was valid.

Kuhn was not successful.

Choi was on the mound when Korea won the world youth championship in Managua, Nicaragua in 1978 and dominated the next year in Edmonton, pitching a one-hit win over Cuba.

Meanwhile, Choi continues to sit on the Jays’ weekly restricted list.

The Jays scouted the Far East for a number of years with Morgan covering Taiwan and Japan in his role as international scout. However, the Jays didn’t sign any players out of the Orient.

Their Far East scouting stopped under Interbrew ownership but under Rogers Communications, scout Billy Moore scouted Suzuki last fall. And the Jays made a bid to negotiate for Suzuki.

Now, the Mariners, with reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki and Suzuki, have a foothold.

Dong Won Choi. We hardly knew you.