Since he erupted onto our domestic diamonds that last Edenic pre-9/11 spring and summer, Ichiro has offered a pleasing opacity. He has been a quiet and stoically unreadable fixture in constant warming motion, his unending stretching, bending, lunging, and flexing providing a silent castigation of unpreparedness and sloth. He’s been so constant for so long that watching him decline seemed unthinkable, and indeed still largely does.

— “Until There Is No Ichiro Left,” at Vice Sports