One winter day, unofficial baseball scout Kyosuke Mizuno was driving near Nagoya Airport.

He happened to look out at a baseball field, which looked like a field with weeds growing on it. There, a junior high school team was playing catch.

Mizuno stopped the car and watched through the window. He was riveted by the prowess of a certain slender player.

“Typically, junior high school students throw the ball in an arc,” Mizuno said. “But he was the only one who threw it a long way with a straight trajectory, even though it was cold in the winter.”

The boy’s name was Ichiro Suzuki. He was in the second year of Toyoyama Junior High School in Toyoyama town in Aichi Prefecture, belonging to the school’s softball team.

“I knew I can’t let this one go,” Mizuno thought. “He was no ordinary boy.”

Mizuno is a graduate of Aikodai Meiden High School in Nagoya and has been a huge fan of his alma mater’s baseball team.

Mizuno was so fond of the team, a baseball powerhouse, that he used to voluntarily serve as a kind of “team scout.” He was friends with Takeshi Nakamura, the team's manager.

So much so that whenever Mizuno saw a promising junior high school player, he would encourage the youth to attend Aikodai Meiden to play baseball.

On that fateful day, Mizuno accidentally discovered a genius hitter, who would later become the first Asian player to be inducted into the major league Hall of Fame.

On another day, Mizuno went to watch a practice game and found that the boy named Suzuki was the starting pitcher and hitting third.

“I knew he was a pitcher,” Mizuno said he thought.

Watching from behind the back of the net, Mizuno was impressed by the way Suzuki “threw a ball with great speed even though he was thin.”

But it was Suzuki’s hitting that really caught Mizuno's eye, he said.

Suzuki batted left-handed and hit a pitch with a softly flexed wrist.

The plunk of the bat hitting the softball was heard and the line drive sailed over the right-center field fence.

“He was batting like Shinozuka,” Mizuno recalled, referring to Kazunori Shinozuka, a star hitter of the Yomiuri Giants.

Mizuno approached a man who was watching the game nearby. The man said, “He is my son.” It was Suzuki’s father, Nobuyuki.

Mizuno told Nobuyuki about Aikodai Meiden’s baseball team. But Nobuyuki said, “He is not the kind of kid who can go to Meiden.”

At that time, there were four private baseball high school powerhouses in Aichi Prefecture, known as the “Aichi Four.”

But the father said his son would likely attend a high school that had never competed in the “Koshien” national high school baseball tournament.

However, Mizuno’s ability to recognize talent was proven correct.

Toyoyama Junior High School went on to compete in the national tournament, and its ace pitcher became the focus of attention from top baseball high schools both in and outside the prefecture.

When Suzuki was in his third year of junior high school, Mizuno asked him about his aspirations. 

“I want to go pro,” Suzuki said.

Suzuki was a boy of few words, but his words carried an unfathomable power, Mizuno recalled.

Mizuno said Suzuki’s father also told him that the father and the son “had gone to the batting center every day since he was a child and had spent enough money to build a house.”

Eventually, Suzuki applied to Aikodai Meiden. His academic performance was fine, and according to Nakamura, the manager of the baseball team at the time, Suzuki was “admitted as a special student for his grades.”

Soon after entering the school, Suzuki was used as a starter in a practice game and promptly slashed a single to center field.

According to Mizuno, Nakamura saw many blood blisters on Suzuki’s hands and said, “I have nothing more to teach (him) about hitting.”

Ichiro grew both mentally and physically under the unconventional guidance of his mentor Nakamura and in the team's dormitory life.

He competed in the Koshien national tournaments once each in spring and summer. After graduation, he went on to play for the Orix BlueWave, a Nippon Professional Baseball team based in Kobe.

Shortly after joining the BlueWave, Mizuno received a uniform with the name “Suzuki” on the back and his autograph from him.

When Suzuki returned home to Aichi Prefecture, he sometimes came to see Mizuno and expressed his gratitude in his own unique way, saying, “Mr. Mizuno, the food at the (Aikodai Meiden’s) dormitory was delicious.”

Mizuno recalled Suzuki in high school used to always say confidently, “I can always hit to center field.” 

Eventually Ichiro would go on to set the single-season record for hits in the major leagues, the mother country of baseball.

Mizuno’s stories about Ichiro never stop.

“You know, his first hit in the major leagues was to center field,” Mizuno said. “When I saw that, I knew he was going to be OK.”

Mizuno also said, “He is sometimes called a genius, but he is indeed a man of hard work. I didn’t think he would go to America, though.”

Mizuno said he sometimes feels that the boy he met has become an unapproachable celebrity, but he also feels that he is still the same person as he was back then.

For Mizuno, Ichiro remains an enigmatic figure.

Mizuno watched the game between the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics at Tokyo Dome in March 2019, the last game of Ichiro’s career, from the second-floor deck behind home plate. Mizuno said it is still an unforgettable experience.

After the game, Ichiro slowly circled the stadium while basking in the warm applause from fans who held melancholy feelings about his retirement.

The baseball legend, who had reached the end of his career at age 45, sported a head of gray hair. 

But in Mizuno’s eyes, he still looked like the baseball-loving boy he saw on a field full of weeds that day.

“I listened to the cheering. Then I thought, ‘Is this the Ichiro Suzuki I met back then? He has become this amazing man.’”

Mizuno said he will be forever proud that he pulled over that day and “discovered” that boy, who will be forever immortalized as a Hall of Famer.