Pitchers and catchers report
The long cold winter begins to break and hope once again raises a weary head and rouses itself in the hearts of the faithful.
= new reply since forum marked as read
dancin' cleats.
It seems like football only ended a week ago!
For most of us, the hope will die by the 4th of July.
We play two games in Tokyo on Mar 20-21 that count as regular season games. We could be two games back by the 29th. 
You're not far from wrong, and that scenario is far too possible to really laugh at.
Ichiro is a rock star in Japan, as the first (IIRC) position player to make it in the American bigs, and he is well loved around Seattle TBS. We're in a "step back" year with a lot of "who are these fucking guys" going on these days. Ichiro as a hook to the 'almost' glory days of yore makes for good PR.
We're gonna know about 5 guys on the 40 man roster this year, if we're lucky I think. If one of them is Ichiro, most of our fans won't mind. 
TBH, I'd rather have Ichiro out there than Felix Hernandez. The king is dead.
