He’s the 30th player ever to hit 3,000 and the second to reach third base doing so.

It hasn’t been that long ago since baseball players from Japan started entering Major League Baseball, but among them, Ichiro Suzuki has always been a standout player. He entered the league playing for the Seattle Mariners in 2001 after a long run playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball circuit. He’s played with the New York Yankees and is currently calling the Miami Marlins home for a second year in a row. This year has been especially exciting for him as he reached a milestone combined hits total earlier in the season, but his teammates and his fans have been waiting for him to hit the big 3,000 in the Major Leagues.

August 7, 2016 was finally that day.

[mlbvideo id=”1024068183″ width=”580″ height=”285″ /]

It almost appeared that the hit would be a home run, but instead, the ball bounced off the back wall making Ichiro only the second player to reach 3,000 base hits on a triple (the other being Paul Molitor). The entire stadium gave him a standing ovation and his teammates rushed to third to give their congratulations. He joins 30 other players with at least 3,000 hits. Of the celebrated few, he is the first Japanese person to complete the impressive feat and he did it at 42 years old.

As you might imagine, Japanese commenters were ecstatic for Ichiro’s accomplishment, with many noting what appeared to be tears on Ichiro’s face after returning to the dugout.

▼ One popular tweet even drew a comparison to a certain fictional character.

If everything goes his way, he’ll still be playing baseball when he’s 50 and aiming for a “real” 4,256 that Pete Rose can’t possibly deny.

Additional information: Wikipedia
Top image: Twitter/@MLB
[ Read in Japanese ]