MLB: 52-year old Ichiro Suzuki twirls a 127-pitch complete game shutout against an all-star team of Japanese high school girls in an exhibition game, striking out 17. Also collected two hits as a batter, in a 7-0 win
When I saw this news start to pop up on my feeds, I thought that this was an instance of old news coming back to the surface, and was ready to get on the internet offensive and accuse some pleebs of old news, get with the times dork. But it turns out that this game of mostly old and retired Japanese pro players versus the best girls high school players in the country exhibition actually did happen again, and apparently this is a thing that occurs every two years, and has been the case for a while.
If it’s been going on prior to 2019, I don’t have the slightest clue nor do I care enough to check, but it’s news as of then, solely because of the fact that Ichiro has been participating in these matches since then. And for the fourth time out of five appearances, Ichiro has thrown a complete game shutout, and nothing is probably more validating to his aging masculinity than taking the pitcher’s mound and suffocating a bunch of teenage girls for a the better part of a decade.
In one hand, it can be said that Ichiro is showing these girls the utmost honor and respect by not pulling any punches and going out and tryharding as much as he and most Japanese workaholics often are capable of doing. But in the other hand, he may be retired and inactive in Major League Baseball, but Ichiro is still one of the greatest of all time, and probably the greatest of all time to come out of Japan (for the time being), and aging will do way less to his ability to play baseball than it would be like some fat undisciplined flash in the pan like say Prince Fielder, post-career, and even though he’s 52 as of 2026, he’s undoubtedly still better at the game than the best girl high school players in the nation.
Although I highly doubt the overly polite and respectful Japanese would possibly think Ichiro and all the other former MLB/NPB pros stomping high school girls is a dick move, my American brain tends to think that there’s a modicum of dickishness to a bunch of former professionals going out and dropping hammers onto a bunch of girls vastly their juniors.
Unsurprising, Ichiro dominated the living piss out of the high school girls, again, and the funniest-not-entirely-funniest thing about Ichiro’s participation in this game is that this is now is fifth game where he’s appeared in, all of them as the only pitcher, and he’s now pitched a total of 45 innings, 5 complete games, 4 shutouts, and has an ERA of just 0.06. He has at least 43 strikeouts, because I can’t find the strikeout totals from 2019 and 2023, but even if he had zero in those two games, his K/9 rate would be close to 10 as it is, which is considered elite.
In one regard, this is probably the honor of a lifetime for all the high school girls, getting to play ball with some of the greatest to ever play for the country, but at the same time, it’s meant to be an exhibition, not taken so seriously, and where they’re getting 9-17 runs hung on them. Like, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in the youth of tomorrow, clobbering them for 10+ runs in a meaningless game isn’t really going to help.
But in the end, I suppose if eating the lunch of a bunch of high school girls is what Ichiro needs to do in order to remain active in the game, then so be it. I still maintain that when the day comes when he’s no longer able to be involved in baseball, he’s going to go on a murderous rampage, so anything that keeps him in the stratosphere of the sport, means safety for humanity. I mean, look at his face from this year’s game when he came to the realization that one girl had collected three hits off of him; when the day comes where Ichiro can’t play anymore, and his murderous intent comes out, the name Rin Fukuda will probably be high on his list of targets, for embarrassing his honor by collecting three hits, and a steal.
Looking forward to the 2028 edition of this game, where a then-54 year old Ichiro will probably still be ready to pitch another complete game shutout, and I can only hope by then, there’ll be some cocky female slugger who’s salivating at the thought of facing Ichiro and is ready to clobber a dinger into the Tokyo Dome rafters, just so we can all see what Ichiro’s reaction is going to be.
