TOKYO -- He had left the field a while earlier. The fans stayed in Tokyo Dome, chanting his name: Ee-chi-ro! Ee-chi-ro!

It was past 11 pm.

Ichiro was talking to Seattle’s local media in the bullpen behind the clubhouse. Teammates attended the press conference, taking pictures and videos behind the reporters. A’s manager Bob Melvin, who managed the Mariners in 2003 and 2004, showed up after his own press conference.

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TOKYO -- Driving around Phoenix during spring training, I saw several advertising billboards with “Suzuki’’ posted dramatically (most of which represent a law firm). Interestingly, Ichiro Suzuki said he never saw those billboards. Then again, he also never had Suzuki printed on his Mariners jersey either, even though that is his last name.

Instead, he has always been referred to in Seattle as Ichiro – “Ee-Chee-Ro!’’ as the fans often shout -- which has been on his jersey since he started with the Mariners in 2001.

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The search for familiar players among the 2019 Mariners took a hit Monday when word came from spring training in Peoria that 3B Kyle Seager will have surgery to fix a tendon in his left hand that was damaged when he dove for a ball down the line in a game Friday  against the Cubs.

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The Mariners' self-described theme for this season is "a step back." Not that they plan to use it as a marketing slogan. While the move wouldn't be as embarrassing as, say, former Sonics owner Howard Schultz threatening to run for president, there's only so many tinfoil hats that can be tolerated in a single sports market.

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At the apex of his national popularity, Ken Griffey Jr. created a huge youth fashion trend by often wearing his baseball cap backward. Griffey also was the subject of a national TV publicity stunt in 1996 that had him running for president (which if held today, he would be far more credible than either Howard Schultz or Donald Trump).

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The easy joke would be that the Mariners in 2019 are planning an anniversary celebration of the Pilots' single year in Seattle 50 years ago by having a replica season.

The expansion Pilots were 64-98, drew 848,000 to hastily remodeled Sicks Stadium and were so bad that they were subjects of a seminal sports book (Ball Four) and a hijacking to Milwaukee.

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As former Mariners manager Lou Piniella put it so aptly, "It was the hit, the run, the game, the series and the season that saved baseball in Seattle."

In honor of Edgar Martinez's selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame -- and for the edification of the many sports fans too new to Seattle or too young to know -- I'm re-publishing a portion from my 2002 book, Out of Left Field: How the Mariners Made Baseball Fly in Seattle that illuminates his signature moment.

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The custom in Seattle sports for projects taking years, if not decades, to complete, usually is reserved for the building of venues and the pursuit of  franchises.

The Kingdome was funded in 1968 and opened in 1976. The Pilots were lost in 1970 and Major League Baseball didn't return until 1977.  Efforts to draw the NFL to Seattle began in the 1960s, and didn't pay off until 1976. The NBA was lost in 2008 and still hasn't returned. Top-tier pro hockey ended in 1924 is booked to return in 2021.

Rarely does a long ordeal in sports here include the pursuit of sports justice for a single individual.

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The Mariners made it official Wednesday: Safeco Field is dead. Long live (25 years) T-Mobile Park.

The club confirmed the naming rights switch to the Bellevue-based telecom powerhouse matches the length of its recent lease extension with the Public Facilities District, the public entity that technically owns the building so that the Mariners don't have to pay King County property taxes.

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One of the more intriguing observations about CF Jarred Kelenic, said to be the prize in the Mariners' inefficient trade with the New York Mets that required sacrificing All-Star closer Edwin Diaz in order to dump Robinson Cano and his contract, is his birth year of 1999.

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It seems as if James Paxton has been a Mariner a long time. Not Felix Hernandez long (since 2005) but long enough (2013) that he is a fixture. Which is why I've been amazed at his total accumulation in the simplest measurement of a starting pitcher's contribution.

Wins.

His career total is 41. For most of six seasons at the MLB level.

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Leading off, Philip Rivers. Batting second, Jared Goff. Hitting third, Aaron Rodgers. And at the cleanup spot, Cam Newton.

If you've been following this ruthless little four-week run of of top-shelf NFL quarterbacks, you know that the Seahawks are 0-2 against the Chargers' Rivers and the Rams' Goff, and face No. 3 Rodgers Thursday (5:20 p.m., FOX) at the Clink. Worthy of note is that the Green Bay Packers have won the past three games between the teams by a combined score of 82-36.

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Well, that hire certainly didn't go well.

Dr. Lorena Martin, seen a year ago as a cutting-edge figure, in the sport -- the Mariners' first director of high performance -- was fired Oct. 10 and unleashed Monday a social media tirade against general manager Jerry Dipoto, blaming him for a culture that produced derogatory racial remarks she alleges were made by club officials about Latino players, and also firing Latino trainers at their Dominican Republic facility.

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A good defensive catcher is a little like a good middle linebacker in football. Fortunately for the Seahawks' Bobby Wagner, they don't ask him to play running back, even even if he volunteers.

But as with all MLB teams, the Mariners wanted points out of catcher Mike Zunino too. So much so that they shipped him to Tampa Bay Thursday, despite it being one day after he received national recognition as MLB's best defensive catcher.

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In keeping with the plan to drive the franchise with data, the Mariners Tuesday hired Paul Davis, who had been manager of pitching analytics with the St. Louis Cardinals, to replace Mel Stottlemyre Jr. as pitching coach for 2019.

A five-year member of the Cardinals staff, Davis was assistant pitching coordinator for the club's minor leagues in 2016 and 2017.

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Edgar Martinez wants a better life. The Mariners want a better offense. So the hitting coach and the club Tuesday seemed to have reached a mutually convenient solution: Martinez will leave his current job to become next year the organization's overall hitting advisor.

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In a season of awkwardness -- sudden team achievement followed by even more abrupt ineptitude, a forced exit of Ichiro to purgatory, an 80-game suspension of Robinson Cano for PED use, a sex-harassment scandal in the front office, and an inability to improve a contending roster better at mid-season -- the Mariners did avert another ghastly moment that may have eclipsed all of those palms-over-face episodes.

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OAKLAND – As much as any team other than the one he plays for, the Oakland A’s have been responsible for seeing that Felix Hernandez has never appeared in a post-season series.

Sunday, they may have done it one more time in what was a make-or-break game for Seattle.

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OAKLAND – There are times when baseball looks easy.

Thursday night looked easy for Seattle, a 7-1 win over the A’s on the road. Jump up with a five-spot in the first inning, then coast home.

There are other times when nothing looks easy in the slightest.

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In 2005, the first season in the bigs for Felix Hernandez, 50 major league pitchers threw at least 200 innings. He went on to have eight seasons of 200-plus.

By 2010, there were 45 pitchers who reached the benchmark. In 2015, 28. In 2016 and in 2017, there were 15 each season. In 2018, there will probably be fewer. None of them will be Mariners.

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