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The Ichiro Paradox: No power, no personality, yet with no peer, the Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki may be the greatest player to come out of Japan and the worst thing to happen to Japanese baseball He [Ichiro] makes contradiction logical. Through Sunday he had but two home runs yet led the league in intentional walks. He speaks little English in a sound-bite era, yields no emotion in a culture that prizes personality; he's a contact hitter in a sport overdosed on power-yet he is baseball's most popular player. This year, for the second season in a row, Ichiro led every major league player in the fans' All-Star Game balloting. Yes, his 2.5 million votes were padded by Internet voters in Japan, but consider: Even on hard ballots filled out mostly in American ballparks, Ichiro topped everyone with 1.7 million votes. None of this leaves him the least bit mystified. "I'm unique," Ichiro says. "I'm a very rare kind of player." --S.L. Price Issue date: July 8, 2002 Photograph by Chuck Solomon
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