What makes Ichiro such a compelling ballplayer and figure, then and now… is precisely what makes watching the Spring Koshien so entrancing. It’s baseball, unquestionably, but baseball after a direct collision of the familiar and the foreign. Baseball as filtered through a completely unique set of traditions.

— “Dispatch #1: A handful of dirt,” the first installment of a season-long column about Ichiro, baseball, and culture, for Sinkhole magazine