Mariners Break MLB Record with HR in 15th Straight Game to Open Season
Apr 11, 2019
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - APRIL 08: Dylan Moore #25 of the Seattle Mariners is congratulated by Dee Gordon #9 after hitting a home run against the Kansas City Royals in the second inning at Kauffman Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
The Seattle Mariners continued their historic power surge Thursday by hitting a home run for the 15th straight game to start the 2019 season.
Dee Gordon's solo shot off Kansas City Royals starter Jorge Lopez in the sixth inning at Kauffman Stadium set a new Major League Baseball record:
The Mariners have now homered in each of their first 15 games, surpassing the 2002 Indians (14) for the longest season-opening streak in MLB history.
The Mariners have been one of MLB's most pleasant surprises this season. They spent the offseason reshaping their roster, trading Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz and bringing in Edwin Encarnacion, Jay Bruce, Domingo Santana and Mallex Smith.
Seattle's 12-2 record entering Thursday is the best in MLB. If the home runs keep coming at this pace, the Mariners could be in the postseason for the first time since 2001.
Could One of MLB's Biggest 'Tankers' Actually Be Shocking 2019 Contenders?
Apr 10, 2019
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI - APRIL 08: Jay Bruce #32 of the Seattle Mariners celebrates his home run with Daniel Vogelbach #20 in the eighth inning against the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium on April 08, 2019 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Ed Zurga/Getty Images)
The Seattle Mariners entered 2019 in tank mode. They traded key players over the winter and appeared headed for an unabashed rebuild.
As Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan put it in November, "They have indicated they're willing to wait a few years to build a competitive team again."
Suddenly, that timetable could be upended. At the risk of mangling the metaphor, the tank is soaring in the Pacific Northwest.
Entering play Wednesday, the Mariners were 11-2 with a 3.5-game lead over the defending division champion Houston Astros in the American League West.
Their plus-40 run differential was tops in baseball, thanks largely to an offense that had scored 104 runs. Next-best in the Junior Circuit? The Oakland Athletics with 68 runs scored (and a plus-four run differential).
Dan Vogelbach, who has sipped cups of coffee in each of the past three seasons with Seattle but never made much of a dent in The Show, is leading the charge with five home runs, a .500 average and 1.984 OPS. Shortstop Tim Beckham is hitting .400 with four homers and 11 RBI.
Veteran Edwin Encarnacion, whom the Mariners acquired from the Cleveland Indians this offseason and who seemed destined to be flipped again for salary relief, owns a 1.142 OPS and four dingers. Outfielder Jay Bruce, another vet the M's appeared likely to dangle in trade, has seven homers.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - APRIL 07: Edwin Encarnacion #10 of the Seattle Mariners celebrates in the dugout after hitting a two run home run in the fourth inning against the against the Chicago White Sox at Guaranteed Rate Field on April 07, 2019 in Chicago, Ill
Outfielder Domingo Santana (.345 average, 1.047 OPS) and second baseman Dee Gordon (.341 average, six stolen bases) have augmented the attack.
And there's this, via the team's official PR Twitter feed:
The #Mariners 32 home runs are the most by any team in Major League history in the first 12 games of a season (previous: 2000 St. Louis Cardinals, 31)...via @StatsBySTATS.
"We like our team. It's a different look to our team. I get that. It's not the household names, the names you are used to seeing in our lineup," Seattle manager Scott Servais told reporters. "But these guys can play."
Guys like Encarnacion, Bruce and Gordon are relatively well-known, and Gordon is in his second year with Seattle. But Servais' larger point stands: These Mariners are winning behind a collection of players no one tagged as exceptional or even league average.
Despite their hot start, FanGraphs' projection pegs the Mariners for an 80-82 finish. We're in small-sample land, and Seattle's pitching staff ranks 13th with a 3.78 ERA...not dreadful, but not close to great.
They traded away closer Edwin Diaz (along with second baseman Robinson Cano) in a swap with the New York Mets. James Paxton was shipped to the New York Yankees.
Meanwhile, erstwhile ace Felix Hernandez has allowed 10 hits and five runs in 6.1 innings as he continues to tumble from his throne.
In King Felix's stead, the Mariners are betting on a contingent including Marco Gonzales, Mike Leake and Yusei Kikuchi, none of whom has a neon light reading "ace" flashing above his head.
We can cast aspersions. We ought to nurture doubts. It's April, after all.
That said, you never know. Sometimes clubs surprise. Teams arrive ahead of schedule.
The Mariners possess the No. 10 farm system in the game, per Bleacher Report's latest ranking. That's partly because of an offseason sell-a-thon that was supposed to be all about the future.
But what if the future is now?
"We've got a good thing going offensively right now," Servais said, per Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times. "We are playing good ball. Guys are enjoying it and having fun, which is great."
It's always great when you're racking up W's. The Mariners' scalding start could be a mirage; it wouldn't be the first in the annals of MLB.
Or maybe we're looking at a shocking contender with the offensive upside to hang for the long haul. The Yankees are injury-bitten. The Boston Red Sox are 3-9. The Astros are a ho-hum 7-5. The AL Central is a mishmash of flawed franchises and outright rebuilders.
Could the Mariners, who haven't made the playoffs since 2001, slip into the picture?
It's the longest active postseason drought in baseball. They were supposed to be moving backward before they moved forward. No one prognosticated a crack at October.
It's way early, but tank mode may morph into go-for-it gear.
Highlights from Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners' Win vs. A's in 2019 MLB Opening Day
Mar 20, 2019
Seattle Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki leaves after his team's group photo prior to Game 1 of a Major League opening series baseball game against the Oakland Athletics at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Wednesday, March 20, 2019. (AP Photo/Toru Takahashi)
The Seattle Mariners opened the 2019 MLB regular season in winning fashion with a 9-7 victory over the Oakland Athletics at the Tokyo Dome in Japan on Wednesday.
Seattle's Opening Day win was made even more special by the fact that Japanese baseball legend Ichiro Suzuki got the start in right field, going 0-for-1 with a walk. M's manager Scott Servais removed the 45-year-old future Hall of Famer from the game in the fourth inning to allow the crowd to give him a huge ovation as he left the field:
Fans show all the respect to Ichiro at the Tokyo Dome as he comes out the game 🙌
Oakland jumped out to a 2-0 lead through two innings, which included the first home run of the 2019 MLB season by A's outfielder Stephen Piscotty in the bottom of the first:
Seattle stormed back to take the lead in the third inning. After Dee Gordon recorded an RBI single, outfielder Domingo Santana hit a grand slam off A's starter Mike Fiers to give the Mariners a 5-2 advantage:
Salami on rye with mustard—in the middle of the night?
Fiers exited the game after the third inning having allowed four hits, two walks and five earned runs in what turned out to be a losing decision.
In the bottom of the third inning, A's designated hitter Khris Davis showed off his prolific power and got Oakland back in the game with a two-run shot to make it 5-4 in favor of Seattle:
After a rough start to the game, M's starter Marco Gonzales settled down, giving up seven hits, one walk and four runs (three earned) in six innings to earn the win.
The Mariners tacked on runs in the fourth and fifth innings before shortstop Tim Beckham hit a two-run homer in the fifth to extend the lead to 9-4. Beckham went 3-for-3 in the game and showed off his swag with a bat flip at the end of his home run:
A's third baseman Matt Chapman made things interesting in the seventh inning when he hit a three-run shot off reliever Nick Rumbelow to pull Oakland within two runs of Seattle:
Is it possible to have a breakout season after you just had a breakout season? 🤯
That was as close as the Athletics would get, as M's relievers Corey Gearrin, Zac Rosscup and Hunter Strickland managed to shut the door.
Strickland earned his first save of the season and struck out two in the ninth, and the pro-Mariners crowd in Tokyo went home happy.
Seattle and Oakland will face each other again in the second game of a two-game set at the Tokyo Dome on Thursday. Japanese pitcher Yusei Kikuchi will make his first career MLB regular-season start for the Mariners.
How 45-Year-Old Ichiro Suzuki's Star Power Changed MLB Forever
Mar 19, 2019
TOKYO, JAPAN - MARCH 17: Outfielder Ichiro Suzuki #51 of the Seattle Mariners waves to fans prior to the game between the Yomiuri Giants and Seattle Mariners at Tokyo Dome on March 17, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Masterpress/Getty Images)
Ichiro Suzuki had a goal in mind when he was readying for his transition from Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball in the winter of 2000.
"Sometimes I am nervous, sometimes anxious," he said then, according to Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated, "but I want to challenge a new world."
Looking back nearly 20 years later, he certainly did that. And as a result, the world he challenged was changed forever.
This is more or less what's being celebrated this week in Tokyo, where Ichiro and the Seattle Mariners will officially kick off the 2019 MLB season—his 28th in professional baseball—with a two-game set opposite the Oakland Athletics. The 45-year-old outfielder isn't the star that he used to be, yet you'd never know it from the hero's welcome he's received on his native soil.
"This is a great gift for me," Ichiro, who's typically a man of very few words, said Saturday, per MLB.com's Greg Johns. "I will treasure every moment here on the field. One week after this event, I will be reflecting back on these days, so I will make sure I remember every moment here in Japan."
In all likelihood, Ichiro's days with the Mariners in Tokyo will be his last in a major league uniform.
Following his ostensible retirement in 2018, the Mariners are giving him one more shot via a minor league contract. However, it will presumably only last as long as their allowance for a 28-man roster for the two-game set against Oakland. None of Ichiro's recent numbers—e.g., a .205 average and .460 OPS last season and an .080 average and .259 OPS this spring—warrant a long leash.
If this is indeed Ichiro's final curtain, well, so be it. There's nothing more he must add to a legacy that will inevitably make him the first Japanese player ever elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
SEATTLE, UNITED STATES: Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki addresses members of the media on 30 November 2000 upon his arrival in Seattle, Washington. Suzuki signed a three-year contract with the Mariners. AFP PHOTO/DAN LEVINE (Photo credit should read DAN L
Ichiro's journey began in earnest when he played his first professional season with the NPB's Orix Blue Wave as a mere 18-year-old in 1992. By the end of the 2000 season, he owned a .353 average, a .943 OPS, 118 home runs and 199 stolen bases, plus seven Pacific League batting titles and three MVPs.
There was thus little doubt in Japan that Ichiro would follow the examples of Hideo Nomo (the 1995 National League Rookie of the Year) and Kazuhiro Sasaki (the 2000 American League Rookie of the Year) to success in MLB. According to Farber, the "national conversation" in the baseball-crazed nation concerned merely "the degree of Ichiro's stardom in the U.S., not whether he'll be a star at all."
In the States, there were excuses for more tempered expectations. Though Nomo and Sasaki succeeded as pitchers, Ichiro would be the first Japanese position player to try to make his way in MLB. It was also fair to wonder how much a 5'11", 175-pound slap hitter could really help the Mariners overcome the back-to-back departures of superstar sluggers Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.
The Mariners, however, were confident enough in Ichiro to pay Orix $13.125 million just for his negotiating rights, plus another $14 million to Ichiro in a three-year contract. Chief executive Howard Lincoln referred to him as "one of the very best baseball players in the world," while general manager Pat Gillick pushed comparisons to Kenny Lofton and Johnny Damon.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitching coach Jim Colburn, formerly the Mariners' Pacific Rim scouting director, shared an especially bullish prediction for Ichiro with Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times: "No one is expecting him to hit .350, which was his career average in Japan, but I think he might."
As it would turn out, Colburn nailed it.
Within his first eight games with the Mariners, Ichiro had put himself on the proverbial map with a game-winning homer and an other-worldly throw to third base that Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus commemorated as "something out of Star Wars."
His stateside fame only grew as fans became more familiar with his ability to hit any pitch anywhere for any kind of hit, and with a decidedly unique style. He appeared to swing his bat and take off for first base all in one motion, and even his ground balls seemed calculated with NASA-like precision for coordinates just out of the nearest fielder's reach.
"I wish you could put a camera at third base to see how he hits the ball and see the way it deceives you," Detroit Tigers third baseman Brandon Inge would later tell Brad Lefton of the New York Times. "You can call some guys' infield hits cheap, but not his. He has amazing technique."
Come July, Ichiro was such a sensation that he became the first major league rookie to ever lead the pack in All-Star votes. It helped that 2001 was the first year that MLB allowed ballots to be cast from Japan, where Mariners games were broadcast twice a day to huge viewership numbers.
Ultimately, Ichiro made good on Colburn's prediction by leading the American League with a .350 average. He also led all of MLB with 242 hits and 56 steals.
All of it had a supercharging effect on the Mariners, who matched the 1906 Chicago Cubs' single-season record of 116 wins. Though their season ended in the American League Championship Series, Ichiro was awarded a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger and both the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP.
There's never been a more out-of-place MVP winner than Ichiro in 2001. This was, after all, the very heart of the so-called steroid era, wherein every other player was a musclebound slugger who hit dingers in bunches. Heck, Barry Bonds won the NL MVP that year by slamming 65 more homers than Ichiro.
Yet the popular perception of Ichiro's greatness wasn't out of whack with the reality of it. His mix of endless base hits, unstoppable baserunning and superb defense added up to 7.7 wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference.
So it went for Ichiro for 10 years. He was an All-Star and a Gold Glove winner every year through 2010, and he racked up more WAR (54.7, to be exact) for the decade than all but two other hitters.
He never exceeded 15 homers during those 10 years, but he topped a .300 average and 200 hits—including an MLB-record 262 in 2004—annually. Pete Rose is the only other player to ever achieve 10 such seasons, and his didn't come consecutively.
Speaking of Rose, it's arguable that Ichiro's greatest hitting achievement is not surpassing 3,000 total knocks in the majors, but rather accumulating 4,367 total hits between his NPB and MLB careers. That's over 100 more than Rose's "record" of 4,256.
This is not to suggest, however, that Ichiro's achievements are beyond skepticism.
Though his major league career is only now coming to an end, Ichiro was finished as a star back in 2011, when he hit .272 and mustered only 0.6 WAR. And while his career average is an excellent .311, it's paired with only a .355 on-base percentage and a .402 slugging percentage. Per his 107 OPS+, he's only been a marginally above-average hitter in MLB.
Further, Ichiro hasn't proved to be a trendsetter. Early in his career, it might have been possible to anticipate a wave of Ichiro clones who would return MLB to the contact-oriented, hit-'em-where-they-ain't era that preceded Babe Ruth's popularization of the long ball. Instead, strikeouts have steadily risen and home runs are as prevalent now as they've ever been.
However, to dwell on all this is to ignore the real legend of Ichiro Suzuki.
Give any baseball fan worth his or her salt a bat and ask them to imitate Ichiro's batting stance and swing, and chances are they won't need further instructions. He may also be the first player in baseball history to leave behind easily identifiable—though apparently not easily acquirable—stretching routines.
"Ichiro's on-deck gyrations have become a Seattle model of cool," wrote S.L. Price of Sports Illustrated in 2002, "with Little Leaguers everywhere trying to keep their faces blank while contorting like pretzels."
Though Ichiro may not have changed how MLB baseball is played, he had a huge hand in changing who plays it. His stardom opened the door for fellow Japanese hitting stars such as Hideki Matsui, Kazuo Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, Kenji Johjima, Akinori Iwamura, Kosuke Fukudome, Nori Aoki and Munenori Kawasaki to seek their own fame and fortune in America.
The flow of Japanese players coming to America has turned into more of a trickle of late, yet Ichiro's influence is still apparent. Among the relative newcomers who have referenced him as an inspiration are Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka and, yes, two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani.
There's a whole other discussion to be had about whether these Ichiro-triggered defections have been good for Japanese baseball. The cultural shift that he sparked, however, is a definite positive.
As Robert Whiting—a notable expert on Japanese baseball and culture—wrote for the New York Times in 2004, the major league success stories of Ichiro and of those who followed him were a point of pride in Japan. They gave a certain legitimacy not only to Japanese baseball as an institution, but also to the country as a whole.
According to Whiting, one editorial in the Asahi Shimbun read:
"Japanese were once seen in the United States as a 'faceless' people obsessed with exporting cars and consumer electronics. The excellent play of the Japanese baseball players and their positive personalities have changed the American image of Japanese."
He didn't do it on his own, but this couldn't have happened without Ichiro Suzuki.
Ichiro Suzuki Will Be in Mariners' Season Opener in Tokyo vs. Athletics
Mar 18, 2019
TOKYO, JAPAN - MARCH 18: Outfielder Ichiro Suzuki #51 of the Seattle Mariners at bat in the top of 4th inning during the preseason friendly game between Yomiuri Giants and Seattle Mariners at Tokyo Dome on March 18, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Masterpress/Getty Images)
"Ichiro is going to start for us in the first games against the A's," manager Scott Servais told the Japan Times (via ESPN.com) on Monday. "He's playing fine in the outfield. Obviously he showed plenty of arm strength tonight on that one throw to third base. He'll start the game and we'll see how it plays out from there.
The Mariners will begin the year with two regular-season games Wednesday and Thursday in the Tokyo Dome. A week later, they will have their home opener against the Boston Red Sox.
Both the Mariners and the Athletics are allowed to have 28 active players on the roster for the first two games, which helps Ichiro get a spot despite being a non-roster invitee.
PerBob NightengaleofUSA Today, the veteran will receive a $750,000 for making the major league roster.
The 45-year-old has struggled at the plate throughout the spring, hitting just .080 (2-for-25) with zero extra-base hits.
Still, Servais is more than willing to give him a chance in Japan.
"I'm excited for him," the third-year manager said. "It hasn't been a great spring training for him offensively, but if there's anybody who can turn it on for a few days, it's certainly Ichiro."
Suzuki is arguably the biggest star in Japanese baseball history, playing nine professional seasons in his home country before beginning his Hall of Fame-level career in the MLB with the Mariners. He has 3,089 hits in 18 years, earning the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards in 2001 as well as10 All-Star selections.
However, the former Yankee and Marlin has struggled to make an impact as of late, finishing 2018 with a .205 batting average in 15 appearances for Seattle. While he has apparently done enough to play the first two games in Japan, he could become a casualty when the rosters are cut to the normal 25 players on March 28.
'I Wish Every Time It Happened ... I Could Save the Woman'
Feb 20, 2019
SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 25: Dee Gordon #9 of the Seattle Mariners reacts after hitting a ground out in the third inning against the Oakland Athletics during their game at Safeco Field on September 25, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images)
Two days before his mother's boyfriend would shoot and kill her, Dee Gordon heard her cries from the kitchen as her boyfriend tried to choke her. Less than a month past his seventh birthday, Dee rushed from his bedroom armed with an eight-pound dumbbell.
He crashed the weight into her boyfriend's head. In an instant, blood began seeping from his bald skull. As it did, the man swung his arms, and little Dee was sent flying.
"He pushed my skinny ass across the room," Gordon says, memory vivid, eyes wide open, staring straight ahead.
At seven, the world is mostly a collection of impressions. Not everything makes sense or adds up. There is simply the moment in front of you, and then the next one, and the one after that. You soak in the good and shut your eyes tight until the bad fades.
Sometimes, however, the bad does not fade.
He and his mother had avoided death once before, in the delivery room. Dee was born two-and-a-half months premature to a girl who had yet to graduate from high school. When complications arose during childbirth at the medical facility in Avon Park, Florida, she was helicoptered to a Tampa hospital. Before doctors performed emergency surgery, the situation was dire enough that they asked Dee's grandmother whether she wanted them to save her daughter or the newborn.
He would learn this much later from his grandmother, Gwendolyn Caitt, whom he still calls Nana. Grandmothers can help fill in blanks, and Gwendolyn has filled in many for him, including her answer to the doctors' question at birth: If you cannot save both, she told them, then please save my daughter.
Gordon nods with understanding while telling this story. From his adult perspective, he says his answer would have been the same. Both mother and son survived the birth—though it didn't go perfectly. While baseball fans see a fleet baserunner who plays the game with joy and verve, what they don't see is the small scar on the back of Gordon's head from complications from a caesarean section that saved both his and his mama's lives.
He entered this world at just two-and-a-half pounds, his mother's only child, and the two were together every day for the first six years of his life. At her high school graduation, Dee was there in his Nana's arms.
"Oh my God," says Caitt, 64, his maternal grandmother. "Oh my God. That was her baby. She loved her baby. He was the main thing in her life. Him."
"Best six years of my life," Gordon says.
Dee Gordon and his grandmother, Gwendolyn Caitt
Two days before his mother's boyfriend would shoot and kill her, the boyfriend was bleeding in the kitchen. Dee had landed across the room, and his mother was screaming.
"Get the hell out of my house!" DeVona Strange ordered Lynford Schultz, according to Dee. "Get the hell out of my house!"
Lynford looked across the room at Dee.
"Do you want me to leave, little man?" he asked. "Do you?"
Lynford had just moved in within the past year. It was the first time someone lived with DeVona and Dee.
"It might have been our worst mistake," Dee says.
Among the items Lynford brought with him was a Super Nintendo. And now, as Dee considered the question hanging in the air, he thought of this beloved game.
No, he said. No, I don't want you to leave.
"That's why, for a long, long time, I felt it was my fault," Gordon says.
In so many ways, Gordon is a survivor. We are sitting on the back porch of the 10,000-square-foot home he purchased here this offseason. He is newly engaged. His baseball career is flourishing, even after an 80-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2016 and an on-base percentage that slipped from .341 in 2017 to .288 in 2018 while he tried to play much of the year on a fractured toe.
"She had this beautiful smile, man," Gordon says softly. "I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was so sweet.
"Now that I'm an adult, I know all she did for me."
Directly or indirectly, domestic violence affects a lot of us. One in four women and one in seven men experience a form of severe physical domestic violence, according to the CDC's national intimate partner and sexual violence survey. "It is incredibly pervasive," says Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. "If I was your colleague, and I told you that one in four glasses of water had lead in it, we'd all jump up and start screaming, 'Don't drink the water!'
"It is America's dirty little secret."
Ever so slowly, society is noticing. In the sports world, some leagues are moving to enact policies that include punishment as well as preventative education.
Roberto Osuna after his trade from the Blue Jays to the Astros
As for punishments, last summer, the Toronto Blue Jayssuspended closer Roberto Osuna without pay for violating MLB's domestic abuse policy. (Osuna was then traded to the Houston Astros.) Last fall, the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs cut running back Kareem Hunt after a video surfaced that showed him shoving and kicking a woman. (Hunt has since been signed by the Browns.) This spring, Chicago Cubs shortstop Addison Russell will continue a 40-game domestic-violence-related suspension that started last year.
Experts like Ray-Jones and others see that people frequently underestimate the complexities of this issue. More often than not, when domestic violence is reported, what is discussed publicly is the physical abuse. But the financial and emotional aspects of these relationships make it extremely difficult for a victim to leave an abusive partner, experts say, especially when children are involved.
"Domestic violence is rooted in power and control," Ray-Jones says.
As much as it sickens him each time another story spills into the nation's headlines, Gordon refuses to speak out about it because, he says: "That would just open the floodgates. We're all not perfect. And if I open up and talk about someone else's problems, then I'm no better than him.
"And I have every right to talk about it. But it's not my place. It's not my lane.
"I wish every time it happened, I could hit a button and save the woman."
When he steps into the batter's box to face Osuna or Aroldis Chapman, who in 2016 was the first player disciplined under MLB's domestic violence policy, Gordon says what they may have done does not cross his mind.
"I'm playing baseball, man," he says. "I'm playing baseball."
He pauses.
"Can I say something that's going to sound really messed up? The world sucks so bad that a guy will be in trouble for a few days and then people forget about it and pull for him again.
"I already know that's going to happen and, let's be honest, that guy's probably going to do it again. Once a guy does it, it's who you are—if we're being honest. And everybody's still going to buy his jersey and make excuses for him."
Since instituting its policy for domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse in August 2015, MLB has investigated cases against 11 players. Nine have been suspended or placed on administrative leave.
Perhaps more importantly, the effort includes an educational program in which every major and minor league player is trained annually. Among the resources MLB offers is an anonymous hotline for players or victims to phone—neither the league nor the players' union is privy to the calls—so those in the game, from players and their families to club employees and theirs, can seek treatment if they feel they need help and wish it to remain confidential.
MLB also has its own investigative arm that moves when complaints are filed.
"Domestic violence investigations aren't easy," Dan Halem, deputy commissioner of baseball administration, says. "A lot of times you don't get cooperation. The victims are often reluctant or afraid to speak. Third parties oftentimes don't want to get involved in these cases because they don't see any benefit to them. The prosecutors, some are more cooperative than others. Their job is to prosecute a case, not necessarily help us. There are lawyers involved for players and third parties. There's a lot you have to navigate."
Devaris (Dee) Gordon
Two days after he crashed the dumbbell into his mother's boyfriend's head to stop the choking, Gordon was riding the school bus home when he and his friends looked out and saw a commotion at the front gate of his apartment complex.
This was not an unusual sight, given where they lived. "We were in the streets; let's put it that way," Gordon says.
Crime and drugs were a part of their everyday existence in that part of St. Petersburg, Florida. DeVona Strange worked for the American Automobile Association. Lynford Schultz? "I know he wasn't doing nothing good," Gordon says. "He was doing what he could, I guess."
According to Florida prison arrest records, to that point, Schultz had been in and out of custody multiple times for burglary, grand theft and cocaine possession.
Gordon spent his time playing sports—mostly basketball, his first love ("No 'hood kid wanted to play baseball")—and going to school.
His father, Tom Gordon, pitched for eight clubs during his 21-year major league career. He and DeVona grew up together in Avon Park and, after high school, Tom went off to chase his baseball career, and DeVona became a single mother.
On May 16, 1995, a coworker of DeVona's at the AAA office met Dee as he emerged from the school bus and told him that his mother had asked that she take him with her.
Gordon initially protested, explaining that his mom had specifically schooled him not to go with just anybody. He had his own key and was accustomed to letting himself into the apartment after school while his mother was working.
"I would do my homework and mess around until my mom came home," he says. "But on this day, the lady was like, 'No, no, no, you've gotta come with me.'"
There was a McDonald's around the corner and, stalling for time, the woman bought Dee an ice cream cone and small fries.
The next thing he knew, some cousins picked him up and took him to their house. He still wasn't sure what was happening, but he noticed a lot of red eyes. Then the phone rang, and he heard a cousin exclaim: "Not DeeDee! Not DeeDee!"
Someone took him aside and told him: "Your mama died this morning."
"I looked at her," Gordon recalls. "I didn't cry. I just looked at her. I don't remember anything else."
It was the next day when his Nana picked him up to take him back to Avon Park with her that Gordon remembers a yellow taxi pulling up with Lynford in the back seat. Except...
"It wasn't a taxi. It was a police car, and Lynford was in the back in handcuffs," Gwendolyn says. "I was talking to the policeman. Lynford had actually turned his life around when he met my daughter. He might have done [drugs and crime] before DeVona, but he had gotten a job. The policeman told me, 'He used to be in trouble all the time, but after he met your daughter, we ain't had any trouble anymore.'"
From the back seat of the squad car, Lynford told Gwendolyn: "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It was an accident."
That was the first clue Gordon received about how his mother had died.
ANAHEIM, CA - SEPTEMBER 13: Dee Gordon #9 of the Seattle Mariners reacts after grounding out with bases loaded in the game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Angel Stadium on September 13, 2018 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Onc
On the drive back to Avon Park from his old life to his new, Dee quietly sat in the back seat of his Nana's Lincoln Town Car with his dog, Polo, in his lap. His mother had just given the dog to him a few weeks earlier, on April 22, his seventh birthday.
It was a beautiful golden Labrador retriever. And in that moment, Dee had no way of knowing that four months later a neighbor would poison Polo, and he would lose his dog, too.
Polo simply went missing. There was a big lot between the houses with several trees, and one day Dee and some friends were playing basketball and someone kicked the ball in frustration.
"I went into the bushes to get it, and there was my dog," Gordon says. "I was like, what the hell? My mom bought me that dog."
There are more blank spaces between that drive with Polo and DeVona's wake. His next memory is that his mother's casket was on a stand and, as Gordon stood in front of it, her body was at eye level.
"I guess I messed up and broke everybody's heart," he says. "I went up to the casket on tippy toes and kissed her on the cheek, not knowing it would be the last time I would see her.
"I remember my lips feeling cold against her. Because I remember before that laying on her chest, and I could hear her heartbeat. She wasn't warm like she used to be."
He remembers thinking back to that moment with Lynford: Do you want me to leave, little man? The guilt came rolling back in waves.
The principal from his old school in St. Petersburg drove down for the funeral, along with some of Dee's friends.
"I cried so much I fell asleep on the principal's lap in church," he says. "I woke up at the gravesite at the burial."
Under the doorbell at the front door of his new home, a small placard reads "Strange Gordon." His legal name remains Strange-Gordon. Through the years, he has held tight to both his mother's name and memory.
Dee Gordon, in effect, is simply his stage name. To those close to him, he is known as "Varis," a shortened version of Devaris. It wasn't until rookie ball in 2008 that he became Dee Gordon, after some public address announcer in Missoula, Montana, mangled his given name, introducing him as "Devarnious Stran-jay Gor-DON"—or some such French pronunciation. It made his ears hurt enough that afterward he asked, "Can you just call me Dee?"
St. Petersburg is a lifetime ago. The apartment complex in which he and his mother lived has been torn down. He didn't start playing baseball seriously until he was a teenager and had left the area, after his father and uncles—Tom has three brothers—re-entered his life in Avon Park.
He is still listed only as 5'11" and 170 pounds, but the two-time All-Star whom former Tigers manager Jim Leyland once memorably described as being "no bigger than half a minute," has done an admirable job of making room for himself in his father's game.
And now, on the eve of another spring training, Gordon assesses the miles covered and the distance still to go. His brother, Nick, an infielder in Minnesota's system, lives eight minutes away. So, too, does a sister. And his father's place is just a 10-minute drive.
Framed jerseys and photos sit on the floor, still waiting to be hung. In a silver frame on a dresser in his bedroom is a picture of him and his mama at her graduation, both of them resplendent in white. He looks around, still hardly believing his surroundings. Where Gordon comes from, there was no travel ball or backyard batting cage. His mother, he says, never even saw him catch a baseball.
"Do you see my house?" says Gordon, who signed a five-year, $50 million deal with Miami in 2016 before the Marlins traded him to Seattle in December 2017. "When I was born, I was two-and-a-half pounds. My mom died when I was [seven]. Look at me. I'm not the biggest guy in the world. I live here. I play in the big leagues.
"Hell, no. This is not normal. Most parents groomed their kids to be like this. I was not groomed."
He often thinks back to that horrible day…but not every day.
"When I get pissed off at people, then it's like, Damn, I wish she was here so I could talk to her, Gordon says.
Since the six happiest years of his life, he's leaned on family and friends to fill the void. His "village," he calls them. He's taken under-the-radar missionary trips in each of the past four winters—the latest to Africa in December. He talks to kids who have "been victims or have lost a parent due to domestic violence" through the Flash of Hope program he established a few years ago. Quietly, he brings the kids to games for a private chat with him, providing tickets, food vouchers and a children's book written to help understand and ease the pain.
He tells them, "Just because you are a statistic, it doesn't mean you have to be a statistic."
He imparts the same lesson he so fiercely learned himself. He's seen Lynford just once since his mother's death—in a gym when his high school basketball team was playing in Tampa, sometime after Lynford's release after he served five years in prison for manslaughter.
It didn't end well. As soon as he happened to spot Lynford in the stands, Gordon asked one of his uncles to "get him out of here." He hasn't heard from him since and has no idea where he is.
But each January 8, on her birthday, he visits his mother's grave. He makes the drive there several other times a year as well, and Gwendolyn's voice is as bright as DeVona's smile in the pictures when she talks about her grandson.
"I miss my daughter, but she left me something worthwhile," Caitt says. "She left me a part of her, and I'm so grateful for that."
The cemetery isn't maintained as well as Gordon would prefer. He has his agent working on it "so it can be a little more clean. The people there don't cut the grass. It sucks.
"I wish I was then who I am now. She'd be better taken care of."
But who he is now, in so many ways, is who he was then. He is DeVona Strange's son, and the raggedy old, small, metal plaque that once marked her grave never did sit right with him. At 14 and barely 100 pounds, he promised his Nana he was going to make it to the NBA and that she should not allow anyone to upgrade that grave marker because he had plans.
The NBA may be no place for those who are no bigger than half a minute, but when Devaris Strange-Gordon was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008, he kept his word.
"The first big purchase I made," he says, "was that tombstone."
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.
Ichiro Suzuki Reportedly Signs Minor League Contract with Mariners
Jan 23, 2019
Seattle Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki looks on before a baseball game against the San Diego Padres Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2018, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, the deal will pay Suzuki $750,000 in 2019 if he makes the major league roster.
The 45-year-old appeared in 15 games for the Mariners last season in his 18th MLB campaign.
In May, Ichiro became a part of the Mariners front office as a special assistant; however, he never officially announced his retirement as a player.
By signing a minor league deal, he'll attempt to add to an incredible resume. Ichiro is a 10-time All-Star, 10-time Gold Glove winner and one-time American League MVP.
He is also a two-time batting champion, and he was named AL Rookie of the Year in 2001.
During his MLB career, Ichiro has accrued a .311 batting average with 3,089 hits, 1,420 runs scored, 117 home runs, 780 RBI and 509 stolen bases.
When taking into account his 1,278 career hits in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball League, no player has more career hits in major professional baseball than Ichiro.
After spending the first 11-plus seasons of his MLB career with the Mariners, Ichiro was traded to the New York Yankees in 2012. He played parts of three seasons in New York and then played three seasons with the Miami Marlins before he rejoined the Mariners last year.
While Ichiro's production has dropped off significantly in the last few seasons, he played in 136 games as recently as 2017, and he hit .291 in 143 contests in 2016.
The Japanese legend is still a skilled hitter and fielder with decent speed, but it may be his experience and leadership that land him a spot on the Mariners roster.
Seattle has traded many of its top players and is entering a rebuild this offseason, so giving Ichiro a roster spot may be a wise move to allow him to mentor younger players, including recently signed starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi.
If Ichiro makes the roster, he will open the 2019 regular season in his home country of Japan, as the Mariners will face the Oakland Athletics in a two-game series March 20 and 21.
Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto Expects Ichiro Will Be on 2019 Opening Day Roster
Jan 4, 2019
SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 30: Ichiro Suzuki #51 of the Seattle Mariners jokes around after a game against the Texas Rangers at Safeco Field on September 30, 2018 in Seattle, Washington. The Mariners won the game 3-1. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)
Ichiro Suzuki, who has been playing professional baseball since his Pacific League debut in Japan as an 18-year-old in 1992, could have a spot on the Seattle Mariners' Opening Day roster in March.
Per Greg Johns of MLB.com, M's general manager Jerry Dipoto said Thursday that "Ichi will be on our team when we go to Tokyo. He'll be an active player."
The 45-year-old Suzuki is a baseball legend who took the league by storm when he joined the Mariners in 2001. He won the American League's MVP and Rookie of the Year that season and proceeded to make the All-Star team every year through 2010.
Suzuki was traded to the New York Yankees in 2012 and played for the Miami Marlins from 2015-2017 before making 15 appearances for the M's in a 2018 return.
That spot comes with a few caveats, however.
First, Suzuki is a free agent, so the M's must agree with him on a deal.
Second, the spot is open largely because the Mariners open the season in Japan on March 20 and 21 against the Oakland Athletics. Per Johns, the rosters will expand to 28 men as opposed to the usual 25.
Suzuki can say farewell to fans in Japan in what could be his final professional appearance. He did tell Clark Spencer of theMiami Herald in 2017 that he wanted to play until he was 50 years old. It seems unlikely, however, Suzuki will channel his inner Satchel Paige and make an appearance in his 50s. (Paige did it at 58!)
Johns noted that "chances seem slim" Suzuki would be an active member of the 25-man roster once the M's went back to the United States and began the rest of their regular season March 28 against the Boston Red Sox.
If Ichiro's professional career ends in Japan in March, he'll go down as one of the greatest hitters the game has seen. At the moment, he has 4,367 career hits, which is the most in professional baseball history. Ichiro amassed 3,089 of them in MLB while earning a .311 batting average.
