Ichiro Breaks MLB season hit record

Ichiro moved to 259 hits before the night was over. [Link - MLB.com]

I think the people that posted on this board at the possibility of American pitchers not pitching to him, to preserve the record, were outragous. I know that happens in Japan, but not here. As an American baseball fan, a player is a player in my opnion.

What Ichiro has accomplished in U.S. baseball is unbelivable. He was a great hitter in both leauges. And that's what sets him apart from Barry Bonds.

The people who defend the fact that Bonds used (or still uses) steroids need to face facts. Bonds hit between 20-28 HRs for the better part of his early years. Then as his body, and head grew in size, and he got older, he started hitting 40, 50, 70 HRs? People don't find that werid? Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and the other great power hitters hit less HRs as they got older. And I'm supposed to belive that Bonds hits more as he gets older, on his own?

- I think the people that posted on this board at the possibility of American pitchers not pitching to him, to preserve the record, were outragous.

I think there were two purposes behind such posts:

1. To troll. They wanted to start flame wars about this. It didn't work - and amazingly, I didn't delete any such flaming messages.


2. To show the contrast. As you say, this isn't done in MLB, and I think that the mention of it in NPB helps to show that there is a difference is professionalism in this respect (although I don't think it's as bad as some people report it).

I seriously thought about deleting the comments thinking that they were trolls, but as the second interpretation was equally valid, I let the statements pass. I'm very impressed that nobody succummed to replying to the statements and feeding them as though they were trolls.