Pete Rose holds the Major League Baseball record with 4,256 — even as he serves a lifetime ban for betting on the game — and asserted to USA Today this week that Ichiro Suzuki’s hits in Japan should not count in the Hit King tally.
“Hey, if we’re counting professional hits, then add on my 427 career hits in the minors,” Rose told Bob Nightengale. “I was a professional then, too.”
On the occasion this week of Ichiro’s 4,000th hit, between Nippon Professional Baseball and Major League Baseball, Rose also said: “When you compare yourself to me, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker and Nap Lajoie, we all did it in the States.”
Rose is wrong — if not entirely with his facts, then certainly in his attitude. Much has changed during the near-quarter century in which Rose has been banned from MLB. One major development has been the respect earned by other baseball-playing countries, especially Japan.
Yes, Rose has (and will keep, for the foreseeable future) the MLB hits record. But Rose wasn’t completely accurate when he spoke of Ichiro having 4,000 “professional” hits. Ichiro has 4,000 major league hits — lower-case m, lower-case l. Nippon Professional Baseball — Japan’s highest domestic league, where Ichiro spent nine seasons with the Orix Blue Wave — is considered a major league, too. Thus Ichiro is a legitimate challenger to Rose for the title of Global Hit King, a distinction that wouldn’t have existed during Rose’s time in the game but is relevant today.
Does NPB have as much talent as MLB? No. But the gap is closer than many American fans might imagine — more NBA/ABA or NFL/USFL than that of a far superior sports entity and its subsidiary. When Rose says we all did it in the States, he’s espousing a jingoistic — and outdated — belief about our national pastime: Unless it happened here, it doesn’t really count.
Wrong.
Rose suggested to USA Today that baseball fans recognize Aaron’s 755 home runs more than Sadaharu Oh’s 868 with the Yomiuri Giants. That is true, at least in this hemisphere. But Oh retired in 1980, when the Japanese professional league wasn’t as strong as it is today.
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