You’re welcome to split all the hairs you like, cling with arthritic digits to the go-go, vial-in-pocket exuberance of Pete Rose’s heyday and say, as Rose gaseously has, that Ichiro’s great and all but he’s sure as hell not the all-time hit leader, because he notched his first 1,278 in Japan which, sorry, ain’t no major league. We can have that debate, if you’re dead set on digging your heels in, or we can say that they’re different things, both impressive, and agree that the only loser here is the already besmirched respectability of Rose, a man clutching with deathlike desperation at the remaining tatters of his relevance. It’s hard to blame him, when everything’s weighed, but that doesn’t render his graceless reaction to all this any more becoming.

— “Ichiro Runs the Numbers Down,” for Eephus