South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Dee Gordon honored former Marlins teammate Ichiro with an amazing ad
Funny, heartfelt tribute appears in Seattle Times
“Damn, bruh skinny like me, so if he could do it, I most definitely can, too!”
That’s how a young Dee Gordon, before he would go on to play professional baseball like his father, Tom Gordon, was inspired to commit to the game.
The former Miami Marlin who grew up in Avon Park, Florida, near Sebring, described that moment as well as many others involving his twotime teammate and friend Ichiro in a candid, funny and heartfelt newspaper ad in the Seattle Times on Thursday.
Ichiro, a future Hall of Famer who played nine seasons in Japan’s professional baseball league and then another 19 seasons in Major League Baseball, retired from playing on March 21 after starting with the Mariners in a game against the Oakland Athletics in Tokyo.
Both Ichiro and Gordon played together on the Marlins from 2015 through 2017, both making history as Gordon won the 2015 National League batting title before being suspended the next season for 80 games for testing Miami Marlins' Dee Gordon, right, and Ichiro Suzuki (51) of Japan, go through their pregame rituals before the start of a game against the St. Louis Cardinals on June 24, 2015, in Miami.
positive for performanceenhancing substances.
In 2016, as a Marlin, Ichiro eclipsed Pete Rose’s all-time hits record — which included Ichiro’s hits in Japan, something that Rose complained about — while later that season notching his 3,000th Major League Baseball hit.
Gordon and Ichiro were also Marlins during the team’s darkest moment, when Cuban pitching sensation Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating crash in September 2016. In his newspaper ad Gordon doesn’t reference the Fernandez tragedy, nor his 80-game suspension specifically,
but he does thanks Ichiro for remaining a loyal friend through good times and bad.
Both became Mariners in 2018 with Ichiro signing with Seattle, the team where he had spent the majority of his MLB career, and Gordon being traded there.