Ichiro Suzuki's Words for Everyday Life

This is an automatic translation of the Korean original.

Ichiro Suzuki.
The man who set the all-time hit record in Major League Baseball,
a hitting machine and the "god of routine."

Whenever I feel the center of my life wobble, I go back and retrace Ichiro's years. Setting aside his astonishing records, watching the way he approached baseball tends to reinstall a good perspective for getting through the everyday.

I have always had a longing for good "routines."

The human will is weak and resolutions cannot be trusted, so I hold a small conviction of my own: only a good routine moves life forward. The sentences Ichiro left behind are, to me, the finished form of that conviction. At the start of a new year, I would like to share his perspective with you.

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A wall only comes to those who are capable of it. It only comes to those who have the possibility of climbing over it. So when there is a wall in front of me, I think of it as an opportunity.

If a genius is someone who became able to do something without effort, then I am not a genius. If a genius is someone who became able to do something as a result of effort, then I think I am one. If people think I hit well without making any effort, they are mistaken.

I am not a genius. Because I can explain why, and how, I am able to get a hit.

Evolving little by little, and feeling it, is a deeply important thing for a human being.

Nothing tried in camp is a waste. If you never think about useless things and never try useless things, you cannot grow.

What is great about major leaguers is that once you are recognized as "ah, a great player," even a player with 2,500 hits will come to learn from you. That is what makes it great.

A slump is exactly the time to have the courage to step as far away from the bat as you can. If you don't have the courage to put the bat down, it sometimes gets even more frightening. In those times, how you reset your mind is what truly matters.

You don't do something special in order to do something special. In order to do something special, you give your full strength to the ordinary things you do every day.

A spectacular play rarely connects to a win. The team that reliably makes the plays it absolutely has to make is the team I consider strong.

Carrying the pain, I piled up small things day after day and reached the record. It is hard, but at the same time the thrill of taking on a challenge, with your heart racing, is the real taste of the world of competition.

How you respond when a pitch you never expected comes in. That is what matters. In a game, the pitch you want to hit does not come. If you only wait for the pitches you like, it ends right there.

People pass judgment on what I have done. They are free to, but I try not to let myself be swayed by it.

Preparation means eliminating everything that could become material for an excuse. To do that, you think of everything you can and carry it out.

When people talk about evolution, if you look, my form has hardly changed. But the parts you cannot see are changing. I think that is what real evolution is.

When the results don't come, how can you remain yourself? An attitude of never giving up has often created the opening for something to be born.

Breaking someone else's record is possible with 70 or 80 percent of your strength, but to renew your own record you need more than 100 percent.

I don't want to live a life conscious of a third party's evaluation. I want a life that I myself can accept.

The worse your condition, the more important it is to play with everything you have.

A dream cannot be achieved all at once. If you pile up small things little by little every day, one day you become able to produce a strength you never thought possible.

Without thorough preparation, you have no right to speak of a goal.

Trying and realizing "it can't be done" is completely different from saying "it can't be done" from the start.

If you play with a dirty glove, that practice does not stay in your memory. If you practice with a well-cared-for glove, the feeling is certain to remain in your body. The memory stays in your whole body and keeps accumulating.

There are things you can only do in a real game. Split-second judgment cannot be cultivated in practice.

I don't care much about the batting title. Rankings are decided by how others do. What matters to me is myself. So I treasure the hits I pile up one by one.

Even when doing the same drill, the result changes completely depending on what you feel while doing it.

I must never forget what it is that I myself want to do right now.

What matters is making use of what I have right now. Once you can think that way naturally, the possibilities keep widening.

To accomplish something over a long period, your thinking and your actions need to be consistent.

I never say "a .400 average." Because then I would be admitting to a 60 percent failure rate... so I always say it this way.

You have to keep it simple. Tonkatsu on top of curry — unthinkable. For me, it cannot exist.