Ichiro Goes Home, Confronts the Bright White Future

Baseball semi-started this week, with a Mariners-A's series at Tokyo Dome. I saw my first-ever professional baseball game there in 2005 with Marti. In this picture, I didn't really like baseball and I'm holding a #24 flag with absolutely no awareness of its emotimagical connotations. Life gets different, sometimes.

For instance, Japan turned the Mariners Moose into a giant, break-dancing inflatable.

Time made Ichiro's hair turn gray and Dustin Ackley's beard grow. Time may also have turned Dustin Ackley into a good baseball player, because he hit the first home run of 2012.

I've been so singularly focused on Derek Jeter aging that I've neglected to remember that the same thing is happening to Ichiro out on the West Coast. Acknowledged or not, we're all getting older. Here's a photo of Ichiro confronting the bright white future.

Dustin Ackley is still young. TWENTY-FOUR, in fact. Are you going to be great this year, Dustin?

It's not "now or never," but it is "soon or get old and disappear."