This column originally ran in The Standard-Times on May 29, 2016.

By Nick Tavares
Pʀᴇsᴇɴᴛ Tᴇɴsᴇ

It’s hard to say when a player’s going to step away from the game.

Unless, in David Ortiz-like fashion, he announces his imminent departure and begins to lay waste to the league, fans are always wondering when the end might come. The players themselves might wonder that too.

This all makes it all the more important that we step back and marvel at Ichiro, as he continues to flick base hits off the tip of his bat in Miami.

This may not be the last we’ve heard of Ichiro. But after a torrid first few weeks of the season for the 42-year-old outfielder, he’s sitting about 30 hits shy of 3,000 in Major League Baseball (in less than 16 years). Add in his 1,278 hits from Japan and he came into the weekend just 18 hits shy of Pete Rose’s 4,256 career hits.

You can discount Ichiro’s totals in Japan if you like. Someone else (like me) could also point out that Rose only got those final 159 hits because he kept penciling himself in as a player-manager those last two years despite hitting .248 with an OPS of .668. To each their own.

The nice piece to this is that Ichiro is not just slogging along and barely keeping a spot with the Marlins. He’s found himself in the starting lineup more often than not and picked up a pair of four-hit games last week. He’s been a decent depth player the past couple of years thanks to his still-solid defense, but this year he’s off to his best start since his Seattle days.

A look at his spray charts on FanGraphs.com for the year show that he’s still, as usual, using the entire field, flicking balls the other way to left field, driving them up to center and turning on the inside pitch to right. The only thing he’s not doing is hitting home runs, but that was never a big part of his game anyway.

He was so refreshing, in part, because he was an antidote to the gigantic power hitters of a decade ago. Debuting while Barry Bonds demolished Mark McGwire’s still-warm record for home runs in a season, he came out of the gate peppering the field and playing a ridiculous right field in the process.

Watching him in the field was as much a treat as anything in his heyday. Climbing walls to rob home runs, gunning down unsuspecting runners at third base on a rope, tracking down anything in the gaps with a hop and a gallop. And in between pitches, he’d stand in his spot stretching, bobbing and waiting for the next chance.

There’s only so much that can be gleaned from highlights or stories, but it seems to be how people felt about watching Roberto Clemente in Pittsburgh’s right field in the 1960s. “Graceful” was a popular adjective in describing Clemente’s defensive game, and that’s how it felt watching Ichiro every time Seattle was in town or on TV.

Even today, while most of his reps come in left field rather than right (Miami has a guy named Giancarlo Stanton doing quite well there these days) he still has a formidable arm and better-than-average ability to track down those line drives and flies that escape lesser defenders.

As players close in on milestones like 3,000 hits, it’s usually the case that they’re not the same as they were in their heyday. It’s the nature of being 42 years old rather than 32, and a reminder that time gets everyone in the end.

But at his end, Ichiro is putting up a sturdy facsimile of the player that was so different and so captivating as his peak. And with the Marlins above .500 and hoping to make noise in the Wild Card race, he’s doing his part to help the cause.

If this is a final act, he’s going out with style, as a version of the Ichiro that was so incredible to watch in the first place.

Nick Tavares' column appears Sundays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at nick@nicktavares.com