A Post Worth More Than 4,000 Hits -- Highlighting the Remarkable Runs of Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki

In conjunction with this article, please take the poll atop the right column (unless it's gone by the time you read this).

It's an imperfect poll as I have no idea how many non-baseball fans are apt to visit Seth Saith on any given day, and I would presume that even passing fans of the national past-time will be familiar with all six of the names listed.

But my thought is that although Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki are every bit the hitters (if not well-beyond as some would argue) that Reggie Jackson and Pete Rose were in the 1970's, they do not have anywhere near the same renown among the general public. (And the Q ratings of Halladay and Lincecum are likely even less, despite being two of the best pitchers in baseball).

But rather than ruing Pujols' and Ichiro's relative lack of mainstream popularity, I just felt like celebrating their accomplishments, which over the past 10 years have been truly historic.

Albert Pujols
...is the first baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. He entered the major leagues in 2001 and put together a better first decade than anyone in baseball history. These are his stats:

Year	Age	Tm	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB
2001	21	STL	161	676	590	112	194	47	4	37	130	69	93	.329	.403	.610	1.013	157	360
2002	22	STL	157	675	590	118	185	40	2	34	127	72	69	.314	.394	.561	.955	151	331
2003	23	STL	157	685	591	137	212	51	1	43	124	79	65	.359	.439	.667	1.106	187	394
2004	24	STL	154	692	592	133	196	51	2	46	123	84	52	.331	.415	.657	1.072	172	389
2005	25	STL	161	700	591	129	195	38	2	41	117	97	65	.330	.430	.609	1.039	168	360
2006	26	STL	143	634	535	119	177	33	1	49	137	92	50	.331	.431	.671	1.102	178	359
2007	27	STL	158	679	565	99	185	38	1	32	103	99	58	.327	.429	.568	.997	157	321
2008	28	STL	148	641	524	100	187	44	0	37	116	104	54	.357	.462	.653	1.114	190	342
2009	29	STL	160	700	568	124	186	45	1	47	135	115	64	.327	.443	.658	1.101	189	374
2010	30	STL	159	700	587	115	183	39	1	42	118	103	76	.312	.414	.596	1.011	173	350
10 Seasons			1558	6782	5733	1186	1900	426	15	408	1230	914	646	.331	.426	.624	1.050	172	3580
162 Game Avg.			162	705	596	123	198	44	2	42	128	95	67	.331	.426	.624	1.050	172	372

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 10/5/2010.

I'm no statistician, sabremetrician or mathematician, but 10 full seasons makes it easy to see that Pujols has averaged 41 home runs and 123 RBI while hitting .331 over the decade. Combining the power numbers with the batting average, and more in depth statistics that hopefully one of my friends can explain, what Pujols has done ranks up there with Mays, Williams, Aaron and the greatest of the all-time greats.

Using a 162-game average, which makes comparing players of different eras a bit easier, here's how Pujols compares in average, home runs, RBI and OPS (On-Base + Slugging Percentage; more info here) for his career to date vs. the entire careers for the others listed.

                                 HR   RBI   Avg.   OPS
Albert Pujols              42    128   .331   1.050  (still active)
Babe Ruth                  46    143   .342   1.164
Ted Williams              37    130   .344   1.116
Lou Gehrig                 37    149   .340   1.080
Barry Bonds               41    108   .298   1.051
Alex Rodriguez           43    129   .303   .958   (still active)
Hank Aaron               37    113    .305  .944
Willie Mays                36    103   .301   .941
Reggie Jackson          32     98    .262   .846

Clearly, the numbers state it with more clarity than I can, but what Pujols is doing has only been topped by a select few (only Ruth bests him in all 4 categories). And unlike his closest contemporary, A-Rod, or recent stars like Bonds and Sammy Sosa, Pujols has never been tainted with having failed a test for performance enhancing drugs or even strong anecdotal evidence, especially as more stringent testing is now in place and he's not exactly dropping off much.

Ichiro Suzuki
...is the right fielder for the Seattle Mariners. Like Pujols, he began playing in the major leagues in 2001. But he previously played 9 seasons in his native Japan, where he had 1,278 hits and a .353 career batting average (seasons in Japan are shorter than the 162 in the U.S.; previously 130, now 142. Ex-Cub Matt Murton just broke Ichiro's single-season hits record in Japan, but it took him more games).

Although Ichiro can't compare to Pujols due to the lack of comparable power stats, beyond the hitting stats I'll show below, he has also been one of the best fielders and base runners in baseball.

With his 10th 200-hit season, Ichiro just broke his own major league record for most consecutive seasons of 200 hits or more, and tied Pete Rose for most such campaigns in a major league career (and Rose played 24 seasons).

Look at Ichiro's stats below and think about this: Ichiro has 2,244 hits in just 10 seasons. If he were to have the same number of plate appearances as Rose (15,864;  impossible due to his late-start in the U.S.) and maintain the same consistency as he's had over 10 years, Ichiro would attain 4,850 hits. Rose holds the major league record with 4,256. 

Year	Age	Tm	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB
2001	27	SEA	157	738	692	127	242	34	8	8	69	56	14	30	53	.350	.381	.457	.838	126	316
2002	28	SEA	157	728	647	111	208	27	8	8	51	31	15	68	62	.321	.388	.425	.813	120	275
2003	29	SEA	159	725	679	111	212	29	8	13	62	34	8	36	69	.312	.352	.436	.788	112	296
2004	30	SEA	161	762	704	101	262	24	5	8	60	36	11	49	63	.372	.414	.455	.869	130	320
2005	31	SEA	162	739	679	111	206	21	12	15	68	33	8	48	66	.303	.350	.436	.786	113	296
2006	32	SEA	161	752	695	110	224	20	9	9	49	45	2	49	71	.322	.370	.416	.786	106	289
2007	33	SEA	161	736	678	111	238	22	7	6	68	37	8	49	77	.351	.396	.431	.827	122	292
2008	34	SEA	162	749	686	103	213	20	7	6	42	43	4	51	65	.310	.361	.386	.747	102	265
2009	35	SEA	146	678	639	88	225	31	4	11	46	26	9	32	71	.352	.386	.465	.851	129	297
2010	36	SEA	162	732	680	74	214	30	3	6	43	42	9	45	86	.315	.359	.394	.754	113	268
10 Seasons			1588	7339	6779	1047	2244	258	71	90	558	383	88	457	683	.331	.376	.430	.806	117	2914
162 Game Avg.			162	749	692	107	229	26	7	9	57	39	9	47	70	.331	.376	.430	.806	117	297

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 10/5/2010.

One thing that's fascinating to note is that Pujols and Suzuki, both having played 10 full seasons in the majors (averaging 156 and 159 games per season, respectively), each have a lifetime batting average of .331, which tops all other active players.

Pujols is actually percentage points ahead, .3314 to .3310, despite having 344 fewer hits over the decade. Largely by virtue of being a lead-off hitter, Ichiro has 557 more plate appearances than Pujols, who typically bats third in the Cardinals' lineup. But this turns into 1,046 more at bats for Ichiro, due to Pujols drawing exactly twice as many walks, 914 vs. 457.

Fincher, Facebook, Fight Club and Citizen Kane -- Some thoughts on The Social Network

Movie Commentary

The Social Network
directed by David Fincher
screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
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I saw The Social Network on Saturday and thought it was excellent. As such, it was nice to see that the movie had a good opening weekend at the box office, earning $23 to "win the weekend."

Since you can read much more insightful reviews in a zillion other places, and I am one who prefers to know as little as possible about the plot details of a movie before seeing it, I won't really write about the film itself or detailing its merits.

But I wanted to share a few thoughts, since in the Facebook age, it's forbidden to have thoughts without letting the world in on them. Hopefully, these aren't quite that trivial.

1. Director David Fincher - Ever since I loved his "Fight Club" in 1999, Fincher has been among my favorite current directors and one of relatively few modern artists in any genre from whom I actively look forward to what will come next. (For Fincher, the American adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is now "on the clock").

I've liked Fincher's films after Fight Club, including Panic Room, Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, as well as Seven and The Game, which preceded it. But while I still consider Fight Club to be his best work, and although The Social Network doesn't quite fit into the quirky, suspenseful style that defined Fincher early on, with a little more time and another viewing or two, I suspect I might perceive it as his high-water mark to date.

Perhaps this is because The Social Network doesn't feel overtly like "a Fincher movie" yet tells a story about computer programming and lawsuits without even seeming slow, tedious or confusing. I think it's almost more impressive when directors make great movies that don't have such clear personal stamps on them or fit clearly into an auteur theory.

I also find it somewhat fascinating that in bringing Fight Club--based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk--to the masses, with its story of an underground club where young men gather for a missing sense of belonging and purpose (albeit by beating each other to a pulp) that grows into a national network of fight clubs, becomes a phenomenon and morphs into a multi-faceted commercial enterprise, in a way Fincher presaged what Facebook would become, and predicted its growth pattern.

And in casting Justin Timberlake in The Social Network to play Napster co-founder, Sean Parker--who becomes a key ally to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in helping him see the site's mammoth potential--Fincher makes the movie version of Parker a good bit more slick, abrasive and largely unlikable than he seems to be in real-life. (This is an excellent Vanity Fair article on the real Parker). As Fincher says in a recent Time interview: "A lot of people said, 'That's not who Sean Parker is.' And I kept fighting for this. It doesn't matter who Sean Parker is; this character of Zuckerberg has to see him as this. He's got to see him as the guy who's got it wired."

For those who know Fight Club, doesn't this make the Mark Zuckerberg-Sean Parker movie relationship somewhat parallel to the Jack (Edward Norton)-Tyler Durden relationship?

2. The Citizen Kane Connection - At first, it may seem silly to put a brand new movie about Facebook in the same sentence as Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece that many consider the best movie ever made. But after Fincher himself jokingly called The Social Network, "“the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies” in a New York magazine article, a little Googling has revealed that many reviews and commentaries on the new movie have also made the association. While I don't think that The Social Network will be supplanting Citizen Kane atop the AFI 100 list anytime soon (even if its IMDB user composite rating currently bests Kane's), I think it actually is a surprisingly sage comparison.

Although this LA Times blog piece by Patrick Goldstein primarily serves to shrewdly point out a key distinction in how the two films go about fictionalizing real-life figures, it correctly asserts that "the movies have a lot in common, both being wildly ambitious dissections of incredibly powerful but deeply flawed media visionaries." 

Another similarity that I haven't read elsewhere is in how--and I guess I should throw in a SPOILER ALERT for those that don't know anything that happens in The Social Network, or Citizen Kane for that matter--the dissolution of the partnership and friendship of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin (his college roommate, best friend and Facebook co-founder) is largely akin to that of Charles Foster Kane (a pseudo William Randolph Hearst, played by Welles) and Jedidiah Leland (played by Joseph Cotton; I don't know that he's directly modeled on any one person).

And while it might be too harsh on the 26-year-old Zuckerberg--both the real one and even as depicted in the movie--to say his, like Kane's, is a story of someone who gains the world while losing his soul, both films certainly touch on the unseemly consequences along the road to immense riches.

If the association helps any more of Facebook's 5 billion worldwide users come to know about and see Citizen Kane, that's nothing but a good thing in its own right.

A Graceful Approach to A Grim Subject -- Theater Review: Suicide, Incorporated at The Gift Theatre

Theater Review

Suicide, Incorporated
a world premiere play by Andrew Hinderaker
The Gift Theatre, Chicago
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I have high regard for the difficulty of writing any play, let alone a very good one, let alone a drama tackling the difficult topic of suicide.

For Andrew Hinderaker--a Resident Playwright at Chicago Dramatists--to do so, in memory of a lost friend, and in turn have the world premiere production of Suicide, Incorporated at Chicago's Gift Theatre earn rave reviews, merit a Jeff Award nomination and extend its initial 6-week run multiple times, is obviously quite admirable.

I felt fortunate to get a ticket to see the show Sunday afternoon, a week before it has to close, as the Gift's tiny Jefferson Park venue continues to sell every seat. The 80-minute drama centers around a fictional business enterprise that specializes in helping those planning to off themselves write better suicide notes.

Although I respect Hinderaker taking imaginative dramatic liberties in having the company's hiring of a new writer--who used to compose Hallmark cards--serve as the jumping off point for a compelling story that intertwines several characters contemplating and/or affected by suicide, I was a bit bothered by the implausibility of the enterprise. Not so much because it couldn't theoretically exist, but because it had three employees and seemingly just one customer. And how much would one really pay to have their farewell statement spruced up a bit?

Which isn't to say Suicide, Incorporated isn't quite worthwhile. I very much enjoyed it and would recommend that avid theatergoers try to see it, this week or in a future staging. Hinderaker is certainly a skilled writer, at a relatively young age, and this is a substantive new work. I wouldn't be giving it @@@@ (out of 5) if I wasn't largely impressed, enlightened and entertained.

But I was a bit less enthralled than the Tribune's Chris Jones--who gave it 4 stars out of 4, although his review also garnered several comments of disagreement--and without meaning to be glib given the subject matter, Suicide, Incorporated just doesn't feel life-changing. Few plays truly do, and this one is better than many I've seen, but coming within the same 8-day span as viewing David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow and Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon, it was all the more obvious that Hinderaker's fine piece is a good bit shy of the highest praise heaped on it, at least in comparison to more consummate works.

Not that it wasn't presented extremely well. Though some of the performers are now replacements for original cast members, almost all were quite good, particularly Michael Patrick Thornton, the Gift's artistic director (at right in the photo) who embodied the despondent character of Norm with a combination of poignancy and humor.

Yet at least one of the main characters didn't feel quite right in the personification, which perhaps added to my conclusion that while Suicide, Incorporated is an excellent work, and really quite astonishing for a storefront drama by a new writer, it is not "note perfect." Like the letter that Norm has drafted, the script and staging still have room for improvement, and are even apt to be taken in a slightly better direction.


(Hinderaker's newest play, Kingsville, opens soon at Chicago's Stage Left Theater and has been called "one of the most anticipated shows of the fall.")

An Unimpeachably Dramatic Take On A Revelatory Conversation -- Theater Review: Frost/Nixon at TimeLine Theatre

Theater Review

Frost/Nixon
a play by Peter Morgan
TimeLine Theatre, Chicago
Thru October 10
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With no disrespect nor disparagement to the theaters Steppenwolf,  Goodman, Northlight, Next or Profiles--and others where I have also seen numerous stellar works--and excepting musical-only producing venues such as Marriott Lincolnshire, Drury Lane Oakbrook and Light Opera Works, there is no Chicago area theater that I attend with a greater expectation of satisfaction than TimeLine.

Granted, I don't see nearly as many productions there as at some of the others, but of the six shows I've seen at TimeLine, all have been very good to truly exceptional, giving them a higher "batting average" in my book than anywhere else.

And it seems I'm not the only one who thinks so, as although TimeLine continues to perform within a Lincoln Park church complex rather than in a posh downtown theater with its own marquee, I had to pay full price--still only $28--a month ahead of time just to get a ticket to Wednesday night's performance of their latest outstanding production, Frost/Nixon. Except for day-of-show and turnback ticket possibilities, the rest of the run through October 10 is already sold out.

Deservedly so. Although my familiarity with the 2008 movie version of the 2006 play--both penned by Peter Morgan--depleted some of the inherent suspense in the dramatics surrounding and within the televised 1977 interview of Richard Nixon by David Frost, everything about the Chicago Premiere at TimeLine was first-rate. And the friend I attended with, who had not seen the movie or acutely recalled the actual events, confirmed that the narrative was as riveting to him as the movie had been for me, which led me to call it my favorite film of 2008.

Because of my basic familiarity with the material and key plot points, the fine production didn't quite bristle with edge-of-your-seat tension, but I can't hold that against any of those involved. As you might not be able to get tickets this time around, the Ron Howard-directed movie could serve as a worthwhile introduction to this fascinating material, but the TimeLine cast delivers it with typical crackerjack panache.

Terry Hamilton--who I perhaps not so coincidentally remember leading rousing odes to corruption in TimeLine's magnificent version of "Fiorello"--gives a finely nuanced performance as the disgraced yet defiant former president giving his first interview after resigning in 1974. But the true standout is Andrew Carter, who captures David Frost--a British television personality but not heretofore respected journalist--with a tone and temperament that rivals Michael Sheen's remarkable movie portrayal. And Carter had to adopt an English accent, which he seemed to do perfectly.

In his role as Jim Reston, an advisor to Frost who serves as the play's narrator, Matthew Brumlow is also notably superb, as is David Parkes as Nixon chief-of-staff and staunch defender, Jack Brennan.

I won't pretend I'm astute enough to have naturally considered the connection between the Nixon we see here and reality-defying ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, but the parallels pointed out in a similarly laudatory review by Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones only serve to add a level of acuity to one of the best plays of recent times.

While it may seem that my recommendation may be moot given the scarcity of tickets, you needn't be resigned to being shut out. As the TimeLine website states, it may be possible to obtain tickets turned back by subscribers or get on a day-of-show waitlist. I suggest you try, as you'll not only be seeing a exemplary historical drama, but also a work emblematic of what very well may be the best theater group in Chicago.

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Here's an absolutely fascinating clip of the real Nixon in his interview with Frost: