Sunday, August 24 2008 -- Sunday, August 24, 2008 -- The Seattle Mariners accomplished a rare feat - they got a win today! They defeated the Oakland As 8-4.

Ichiro Suzuki, chasing his ninth season of 200 hits or more, went 1-3, and is now at 170 hits with 32 games to go. (He'd gone 0-4 the previous night.)

By any description it's been a disappointing year for the Seattle Mariners, and they started looking ahead to next year a long time ago.

Many rookies have been called up to the Mariners to give them a taste of the bigs, but you can bet that Ichiro won't be sat down in a single game.

He deserves the opportunity to set that record, of course. Ichiro did his best for the Mariners. He signed a large contract last year, but there was a lot of deferred money in it that enabled the Mariners to pick up some players.

He started out slowly, as far as his batting is concerned, but has really ramped it up in the last half of the season as far as that's concerned. His defense has always been stellar, especially now that he's moved back to his normal position of right field.