Snow and stolen bases: Rick Rizzs talks Mariners’ Japan opener, Ichiro return

In a Seattle where snow, slush and ice cover the streets, Mariners baseball and the long summer evenings under the open roof of T-Mobile Park may seem a distant dream.

However, “baseball is right around the corner,” according to longtime Mariners announcer Rick Rizzs.

“When you hear those words, the snow starts to melt a little bit, doesn’t it?” he said to KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

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“I don’t need to melt the snow, I like the snow,” Dori replied, but said he was excited for baseball season.

And in fact, the baseball is rolling a little earlier than usual this year. The first Arizona Spring Training game takes place in nine days against the Oakland A’s. Then in just over a month, the Mariners will start the new season.

“Everything has been moved up about a week or so, so we are ready to go,” Rizzs said.

The season opener gets a bit of a twist this year; from Arizona, the M’s will fly to Tokyo, where they’ll open the 2019 season against the A’s on March 20.

They’ll return for the home opener on March 28 against the reigning World Series champs, the Boston Red Sox.

“It’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be fun, a lot of new names, new faces in this ball club,” Rizzs said. “We’ll have a fun year.”

Ichiro still going strong

Despite moving to a front office special assistant position during the 2018 season, Mariners legend Ichiro Suzuki will be back on the baseball diamond this year.

The outfielder is now 45, but is still eager to play. Fans who have been following Ichiro’s career for nearly 20 years will no doubt be pleased to see him back on the field.

“Here is a guy who came over [at 27] in 2001; we didn’t know what to expect,” Rizz said. That same year, Ichiro showed everyone what he was made of, winning both the American League’s Rookie of the Year and MVP awards.

Now Ichiro has nearly 3,100 hits to his name in the major leagues and a career batting average of 0.311.

Though last year proved a bit of a challenge — Rizzs noted that his batting average last season was about 0.220 — Ichiro told Rizzs he was not “using the R-word,” retirement, because he wanted to play more in 2019. Rizzs said that Ichiro worked hard and “took batting practice” every day, even after switching to the front office position.

“He told me a long time ago that he wanted to play until he was 50,” Rizzs said. “That would be unbelievable. But I wouldn’t put it past him.”