Dee Gordon thought his words would be enough for everyone to understand the situation. They’d come from his heart. They were honest and emotional. They said everything that he wanted to his hero, his friend and his teammate — Ichiro.
So when the media surrounded his locker on Thursday afternoon, hours before the Mariners’ home opener at T-Mobile Park, he was a little taken aback.
“Uh, I did not expect all of this,” he said with wide eyes.
But his decision to take out a full-page ad in Thursday’s Seattle Times sports section to personally thank Ichiro was such an unexpected gesture that people had to ask about it.