Ichiro relishes moments at All-Star Game

NEW YORK — Ichiro had a stirring All-Star moment before Tuesday's game at Yankee Stadium — and it didn't even involve his now-traditional motivational speech to his American League teammates.

Oh, Ichiro delivered the obscenity-laced screed, invoking the AL to cream the National League, as he has now done in all eight of his All-Star Game appearances.

"They made me do it," Ichiro said with a wide smile, speaking through interpreter Ken Barron.

But that wasn't the pregame moment that thrilled Ichiro the most. It was the ceremony honoring 49 Hall of Famers, and especially what happened afterward.

"Everyone came by the dugout and stopped by to say hello to me," Ichiro said. "That was a very special moment for me, because they knew who I was. To me, that was very moving."

Once the game began, Ichiro added a few more memorable moments, though not quite as lasting as last year's MVP performance in San Francisco, which included the first inside-the-park homer in All-Star Game history.

The first Ichiro flash point came in the fourth inning, when he gunned down Albert Pujols trying for a double on a smash off the right-field wall. Ichiro fielded the carom perfectly and threw a strike to Derek Jeter for the tag.

"Rather than evaluate that play — it's different than the regular season," he said. "I can evaluate stuff in the regular season. But more than that, to do something like that in my last time at Yankee Stadium felt really good.

"The fans were really happy, I could tell also ... The whole thing felt really good."

Ichiro, who flied out his first time up and singled to right his second, had one last chance to carve out a special Yankee Stadium farewell. But facing Arizona's Dan Haren with two runners on base in the fifth inning, and the AL trailing 1-0, he struck out swinging — mightily — at a 1-2 pitch.

"It was my last at-bat at Yankee Stadium, so I swung as hard as I could to go for the home run," he said. "So it felt really good to throw it all out there and go for it.

"Since my last at-bat was a strikeout, it was a little frustrating. But at the end of the deal, I felt good leaving it all out there."

His outlook for the rest of the season?

"I want to play baseball," he said. "Because at the beginning of the season, it didn't seem like we were playing baseball. Lately it seems like we're beginning to play baseball. So the thing I want to do is play baseball."

Now, back to that pregame speech, which has become such a staple of the American League that players — particularly David Ortiz of the Red Sox — won't let him get away without doing it.

Was this one as good as the others?

"It's my English ability, so they're all the same," he said.