"As you grow older - and I started growing older earlier than most people, sometime in junior high - you grasp onto a handful of things to feel safe and comfortable. I no longer have my boyhood exuberance for baseball, but I still enjoy cherry-picking the box scores, whether online or in the morning newspaper, looking for tidbits of joy.

Over the last decade, Ichiro Suzuki has been my guaranteed daily morsel of joy.

This year, that agate-type happiness is being threatened - perhaps by the ravages of time.

In all 10 of his seasons with the Seattle Mariners since coming to Major League Baseball from Japan at age 27, Ichiro has batted over .300 and accumulated at least 200 hits.

As we reach midseason in 2011, Ichiro, now 37, is batting only .271 and is on pace for a 181-hit season.

Ichiro also has won 10 straight Gold Gloves - with never more than four errors in a season - but in 2011 he has been subpar at times defensively and already has committed three errors.

Hey, 60 might be the new 50 and 50 might be the new 40, but on a baseball diamond, 37 just might be too old.

The thing is, Ichiro Suzuki might be the most underappreciated great player of his generation. Part of this is he's been stuck on a losing team most of his career. Part of this is because he's Japanese; on our field of dreams, we prefer homegrown athletic superstars. Part of this is he's playing in the Pacific Northwest; many Americans couldn't locate the Pacific Northwest on a U.S. map, and most Mariners games end about the time Carson Daly is interviewing some indie actress I've never heard of.

Just think about Ichiro's 10-year MLB career again: 10 straight .300 seasons, 10-straight 200-hit campaigns, 10 straight Gold Gloves, 10-time All-Star.

If he played in New York, there might be a Baby Ichiro candy bar in every minimart and sushi bars bearing his name on every corner."