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Jeter and Ichiro: Mutual respect bonds two baseball greats

Chad Jennings
cjennings@lohud.com

Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki say their admiration for one another has grown since they became Yankees teammates in 2012.

NEW YORK – For the purposes of this story, it would be nice if Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki met through some remarkable twist of fate, or if they'd been introduced by one of baseball's luminaries, or if their first conversation had been full of such rich detail and personal anecdotes that neither will ever forget it.

Instead, Jeter is not absolutely certain when or where the two met, and Ichiro remembers partially because it happened at the same 2001 All-Star Game where he met a different Yankees superstar.

"I did exchange uniforms with Bernie Williams," Ichiro said. "With Derek, I think we just said hello."

Jeter laughed.

"He's a big Bernie fan," he said.

Thirteen years later, having been Yankees teammates for almost two years, there is still no one thing that stands out about the relationship between two of the great top-of-the-order table setters of this generation.

They do not arrive at Yankee Stadium together. They don't go to dinner every road trip. They do not dive into regular conversations about life and baseball.

But there is an unmistakable connection. It's in the way they laugh with one another on the field, and in their passing comments in the clubhouse. Near the end of their Hall of Fame careers, Jeter, 39, and Ichiro, 40, simply enjoy playing together.

"I don't speak English, and what I've come to realize is, I feel like there's a trust relationship that we have, and it's not words that create that," Ichiro said. "He's that kind of person, somebody that I trust, and I truly believe that. Even though it might not be with words or communicated, it's deeper than that."

Respect is evident

Jeter does not know statistics. He's famously caught off guard by his own approaching milestones, and he hates discussing things such as hitting streaks. But Jeter knows — off the top of his head, with very little prompting — that Ichiro had 10 straight seasons of at least 200 hits, and that he once had 262 hits in a season.

Jeter knows because the math is simple.

"That's one every game," Jeter said. "Plus a hundred."

Jeter and Ichiro are first and second among active players in career singles. Jeter is the active leader in hits, and Ichiro is third, behind Alex Rodriguez. Of all active players with at least 3,000 plate appearances, Ichiro has the fourth-highest career batting average and Jeter the seventh-highest.

Until 2012, Jeter had never hit leadoff in an All-Star Game, at least partially because every year from 2006 to 2010 he hit second behind Ichiro.

Both Jeter and Ichiro say they didn't know one another particularly well before the Yankees traded for Ichiro in July 2012. They'd spoken at All-Star Games and talked a little bit on the field, but there was no real relationship in place.

Manager Joe Girardi, though, put them in the same hitting group for batting practice, and he remembers Jeter immediately giving Ichiro a hard time around the batting cage. Within weeks — if not days — Ichiro began referring to Jeter by his middle name, Sanderson, in front of teammates and reporters.

"I saw it from Day One," Girardi said. "Jeet was someone that could get on Ich a little bit during BP and have fun with him, which probably hadn't happened to Ich in a while, being in Seattle. And then Ich started coming right back at him, which I think was really good. I think it probably made Ich feel really accepted right away coming from another team. He was really among his peers in a sense."

Hundreds of teammates have come and gone, but how many peers — true, on-the-same-level contemporaries — have Jeter and Ichiro played with over the years? How many teammates have shown up with no hint of intimidation or awe?

"You don't want to step on toes," eight-year major-league veteran Brendan Ryan said. "You don't want to get in their way and make things more difficult on them or bother them, any of that stuff. But they're just endearing. ... They can treat the lowest guy on the totem pole the same as each other. That's the stuff that we as teammates take away from things. Getting into the offseason, we're asked about guys. (Friends) want to hear baseball stories. We talk about how cool they are in the clubhouse."

Watching from afar

The year Jeter won his first championship in New York, Ichiro was a 22-year-old who hit .356 in Japan. Over the next four years, Jeter won three more titles, and Ichiro never hit worse than .343.

It was in 2001 that Ichiro signed with the Mariners, came to the United States and immediately won both American League Rookie of the Year and AL MVP with his unusual ability to either slap and run or drive the ball to the gap.

"I think everyone was curious," Jeter said. "You heard a lot about him. You were curious, and then you're impressed right away. His speed is probably the first thing that stood out, but he could do everything. ... You can't teach what he did, what he does."

Through the next decade, Jeter became the face of baseball in New York, and Ichiro became a global icon in Seattle. They were separated by culture and continent until mid-season 2012 when Brett Gardner needed elbow surgery, the Yankees needed a new left fielder, and the Mariners needed to rebuild.

"I was happy," Jeter said of the trade that brought Ichiro to the Bronx. "Ichi can flat-out hit, that's the bottom line. What he's done in this game, he's done some things that haven't been done before. I like watching guys to see how they go about their work every day. You see him from afar, you play him twice a year, that's a really short and small sample size. You get a chance to play with him every day, you just appreciate him that much more."

Admiration increases

Asked what he's learned about Ichiro, Jeter makes a small joke — though he seems mostly serious — about how much better Ichiro's English has gotten. Then Jeter waxes poetic about Ichiro's famed work ethic, which he'd heard about but never seen up close.

Asked the same question about Jeter, Ichiro makes his interpreter laugh even before the answer can be translated.

"I thought he never wanted to get married," Ichiro said. "But (during his retirement press conference) in the spring, he said he wanted to get married someday, so that's something that I've learned about him."

Chances are, Ryan could make that same joke and get a laugh out of The Captain, but would Ryan dare try it? Would he show up and call Jeter by his middle name during his first week with the team?

"No chance," Ryan said.

Rich detail? Personal anecdotes that neither will ever forget? For the purposes of this story, it would be nice if Jeter and Ichiro's relationship were filled with those things, but that's not the nature of their friendship.

What seems to have made it meaningful — what has made it stand out even to an outsider — are the little moments here and there, the comfortable interaction from that first, mostly forgotten hello more than a decade ago.

"I don't necessarily think you have to spend a lot of time with guys away from the field in order to get close with them," Jeter said. "I've always respected Ichi. I respect him even more now, having had the chance to play with him, if that's possible. ... He likes to have fun. He likes to joke around. So I think we're similar in that sense."

"Sometimes," Ichiro said, "you think, 'Oh, that guy is good. He must be a good person.' Then you become teammates, and you realize they aren't that great. But with Jeter, it was even more. You become teammates, and you realize how much more he is than I thought.

"That's kind of the experience that I've had."

Reach Chad Jennings at cjennings@lohud.com.