Listen: Ichiro Suzuki has come unstuck in time.
With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, the Seattle Mariners took their 60th victory of the season Thursday, beating the Kansas City Royals, 4-1 – and Ichiro played like the player he’d been most of the past decade.
Not the one who came in batting .271.
Jason Vargas went six innings, Justin Smoak broke a tie with his 13th home run, and the Mariners’ bullpen stopped the Royals for three innings.
But make no mistake, Ichiro’s fingerprints were all over this game, and a crowd of 14,377 appreciated him and the second Mariners win in the past seven games.
“Please,” he said, after the game, “pay attention to the younger players here.”
Well, rookie Dustin Ackley walked in the sixth inning and scored when first baseman Smoak hit his first home run since June 12.
Was Smoak aware it had been that long?
“No, not at all,” he said, then laughed. “Just before I went to the plate, (manager) Eric Wedge told me I’d been wiggling my bat at the plate. He told me to stop wiggling and – what do you know? – I hit one out.”
And in the second inning, with Vargas holding to a 1-0 lead, the Royals got a one-out triple from Jeff Francoeur but were denied a run when Ackley’s throw home to catcher Chris Gimenez was in time for the out.
In time, but a little low – it short-hopped Gimenez, who caught it then took a face-to-face collision from Francoeur.
“I knew I’d caught the ball, but I couldn’t feel it in the glove,” Gimenez said. “When I held the glove up for the umpire, it was still in there.”
As for Vargas, the left-hander who had lost eight of his last nine decisions put together his best start in a while, though it wasn’t easy. In the sixth, for instance, the Royals had one run in, two on, two outs and a tie game.
Vargas struck out Mike Moustakas to strand the runners, using his 102nd pitch to get out of trouble. By Wedge’s account, that was good enough.
“He’d thrown a lot of pitches, worked out of some tough situations,” Wedge said. “He was as good as we’ve seen him in a while, just really had command of his fastball, which made his other pitches even better.”
And then, there was Ichiro.
For the 36th time in his remarkable career, Ichiro led off a game for Seattle with a home run, sliding past Bobby Bonds and into sixth place on baseball’s all-time list.
“Ichiro picks his spots,” Wedge said. “You watch him in batting practice, you know he has power. If he gets his pitch, he can hit it as far as anybody.”
Kansas City manager Ned Yost was a bit stunned by the homer.
“You don’t see that very often, a first-pitch curveball hit out of the park – you just don’t see it,” Yost said. “You’ll see first-pitch fastballs hit, but I thought it was a pretty good curveball.”
With the Mariners clinging to a 3-1 lead in the seventh inning, Ichiro singled into right field – his 163rd hit of the season with 19 games to play.
Was Ichiro caught up in his chase for an 11th consecutive 200-hit season?
“I’m not as aware of it as you are,” Ichiro said.
With two outs, he stole second base, then third, his 36th and 37th steals of the year. And when Brendan Ryan’s ground ball to shortstop was bobbled for an error, Ichiro scored his 73rd run of the season to make it a 4-1 game.
From there, Wedge went with three of his nine right-handed relievers.
Veteran Jamey Wright worked a 1-2-3 seventh inning.
Rookie Tom Wilhelmsen pitched the eighth, and pushed his scoreless streak to 10 consecutive innings.
And closer Brandon League …
… Well, he got the first two outs in the ninth inning easily enough. Then Moustakas grounded sharply off League’s leg for an infield single, and Johnny Giavotella was safe on Ryan’s error.
Two on, two out, tying run at the plate.
League got a ground ball to Ryan, who turned it into a game-ending force play at second – and capped League’s 34th save of 2011.
In a battle for … better records? … the Mariners pulled theirs to 60-82, dropped the Royals to 60-85.
And Ichiro, now batting .273, collected his 54th multihit game of the year.
He didn’t want to talk about himself, didn’t much want to talk about those “younger” players, either.
“A lot of young players have talent,” Ichiro said. “It’s too early to talk about them.”
larry.larue@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/mariners
TODAY
Kansas City (Jeff Francis: 5-15, 4.72 ERA) at Seattle (Blake Beavan: 3-5, 4.33), 7:10 p.m., Root Sports, 710-AM
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