Ichiro's appearance after first workout results in conflicting stories

Much Ado About Nothing.

The title of Shakespeare's enduring comedy aptly describes the frenzy in Mariner Nation on Friday based on an Internet report declaring Ichiro wants out of Seattle.

I couldn't find any such comments in Japanese attributed to Ichiro on the Net.

An English-language site summarized some loosely translated parts of an article from Sankei Sports, in the process making an unclear distinction between Ichiro's comments and Sankei Sports' conclusions. I read the original Sankei Sports article and here's my translation of Ichiro's response to what appears to be a question about his desire to play for a winner.

"The ideal situation is to play an integral role on a team that wins the championship and earns a ring commemorating it. With that said, considering the current circumstances, it's difficult to stand here and offer that to you as my goal. Only a handful of players are actually in a position to do that. What I can do at this time is concentrate on playing to my utmost potential. You wouldn't expect a player in my situation to honestly say anything more than that."

That sounds like Ichiro being nothing more than the realist he is. The same is true when he's asked about his impending free agency. "I imagine that's having some kind of influence on my agent's activities."

Sankei Sports follows those comments with its own conclusions and the English-language site embellishes those conclusions even further.

The article emanated from an impromptu news conference Ichiro gave at his workout Wednesday morning. It was his first full workout of 2007, and media members were there to cover it for its symbolic significance as the start of another season. This is common practice in Japan, and, in fact, the dailies there recently have been filled with "first workout of the year" stories on many players.

In Ichiro's case, one of the photos accompanying the Sankei Sports article shows him surrounded by a pack of media members. Four television microphones are pushed toward him and reporters are diligently scribbling in their notebooks. The scene certainly gives the impression Ichiro has something monumental to announce. However, a random survey of the online editions of several other leading sports and news dailies in Japan failed to find a similarly toned article that was crafted from the same interview session.

The other papers chose to focus on other comments Ichiro made on a variety of topics.

Although Ichiro worked out the following day as well, none of the papers, not even Sankei Sports, bothered to follow up on the topic of Ichiro's impending free agency. Instead, the focus of the second day was on how So Taguchi of the St. Louis Cardinals happened to show up at the same time as Ichiro, allowing the former teammates at Orix to work out together.

According to those reports, Taguchi pitched batting practice to Ichiro and shattered one of his bats in half. For a guy who rarely swings in a way that breaks his bat, that was a newsworthy item.