Happy Anniversary to the throw that made Ichiro Suzuki a Mariners legend

For most people, April 11 is about as unremarkable a date on the calendar as there can possibly be. But for Seattle Mariners fans, it marks the day that Ichiro Suzuki made that iconic throw in Oakland.

That indeed happened 24 years ago today, if you can believe it. And even though we've all seen the highlight more times than we can count, what's one more time among friends? Here it is:

Perhaps it seems frivolous to celebrate just one throw, particularly given that Ichiro's career featured more than a few just like it. He was credited with 89 outfield assists just between 2001 and 2010, the second-most in MLB during that span after Bobby Abreu.

Ah, but our hat is off to you if you recognized the strawman in that paragraph. And the truth is that it really is important to sustain a celebratory narrative of Ichiro's iconic throw. If the stories ever fade, the meaning of it will be lost.

It's been 24 years since Ichiro's arm turned him into an overnight sensation and kick-started his Hall of Fame legacy

Ichiro was playing in only his eighth game with the Mariners on April 11, 2001. And in many ways, the jury was still out on whether he was going to be a useful player, much less a star.

He had been successful in Japan, but never before had a Japanese position player made it in MLB. Simply to this extent, he would have been facing huge pressure regardless of context. And in this case, he joined the Mariners following the departures of superstars Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez.

Hype nonetheless started to build for Ichiro once the Mariners began their 2001 season. He collected multiple hits in four of the club's first five games, including a game-winning homer against A-Rod and the Texas Rangers.

We can look back and say there was probably no stopping the hype train at that point, yet it's still fun to wonder if we have a few rowdy fans to thank for injecting jet fuel into the tank. It was reported that in the first game of a three-game set between the Mariners and Athletics in Oakland, a few A's fans thought it was a good idea to pelt Ichiro in the head with quarters.

It was in the next game that Ichiro uncorked his throw, nailing Terrence Long trying to go from first to third on a single by Ramón Hernández. The late Dave Niehaus called it "something out of Star Wars," while Ichiro himself more or less shrugged.

“The ball was hit right to me,” he said through an interpreter, as noted by Benjamin Hoffman of the New York Times in 2012. “Why did he run when I was going to throw him out?”

If Ichiro was the first person who knew Long was toast, Long might have been the second. He spoke to ESPN's Alden Gonzalez and Jesse Rogers of rounding second and seeing third baseman David Bell's eyes tracking a ball coming from the outfield, and what went through his mind then:

"So I was like, two things are going to happen. Either way it goes, you're going to be on ESPN forever. So the smart thing to do is just slide, just to make it look close. The worst thing I could have done was just go in, stand it up, and it would've been even more embarrassing. So I was like, 'I'm just going to slide.' But as soon as I got ready to slide, you see this ball come right past me. I was like, 'Oh my God, there's no way he just made that throw.'""

Long to Gonzalez and Rogers

Hingsight certainly helps in this case, but Long was right about ending up on ESPN forever. Ichiro's throw was a central highlight on "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight" that night and what felt like every night afterward. Today, we would say that it went viral.

One does wonder what would have happened if Ichiro hadn't kept feeding the hype machine. There must be an alternative universe out there where he stopped hitting and was exposed as fundamentally flawed in the outfield. Aristides Aquino v1.0, as it were.

But we all know what happened. Ichiro went on to win the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP as the Mariners matched the all-time record with 116 wins. He then continued to play like a superstar for the remainder of the decade.

In the here and now, Ichiro is on a sort of victory lap in 2025. Though it is a tragedy that he fell just one vote short of being the second unanimous Hall of Famer, he's going into Cooperstown all the same. And as he showed on Opening Day for the Mariners, that arm of his still has plenty of juice.

This journey didn't start with one throw, as to think as much would be tantamout to erasure of all that Ichiro did in Japan before he came to the States. But if it is fair to say that the throw is when a star was born, then let's say it and keep saying it for as long as we're able.