Seventeen years ago, a man named Ichiro Suzuki came east over the ocean to play baseball in Seattle. He was 27 years old then, and very good at what he did. Today, multiple reports indicate that Suzuki, now aged 44, will return to the Mariners. And it doesn’t matter, really, how good at baseball he is or isn’t anymore.

It matters a little, of course. The Mariners announced today that Ben Gamel will be out for four-to-six weeks with a strained oblique, and although that injury does not necessarily prohibit him from serving as the team’s unofficial hair model/Adonis, it does probably preclude him from playing the outfield, because Opening Day is about three-and-a-half weeks away. Suzuki, for all of his recent decline in offensive skills, can still play the outfield with reasonable competence — and certainly well enough to cover for Gamel where Guillermo Heredia and Taylor Motter cannot while also coming off the bench when needed.

I’m guessing that had a little to do with the timing of the deal, but it probably wasn’t everything.

In another sense, though, Ichiro’s performance on the field won’t matter a whole lot. Suzuki is a shadow of the player he once was, but the player he once was was one of the greatest to ever play the game, and he did most of it in a Mariners uniform. Only Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez generated more wins in teal than did Suzuki, and both of them will be in the Hall of Fame eventually. So will Ichiro. This year may well be his last on a big-league field — there was talk that he’d retire, or head to Japan, if not offered a big-league contract — and there’d be no better way to go out than in Seattle, no matter what form that exit takes.

Maybe Ichiro will make contact with the ball 90% of the time again, like he last did in 2015. Maybe he’ll strike out less than 10% of the time again, like he last did in 2012. Or maybe he’ll hit .300 again, like he last did in 2010. I doubt any of those things will happen. What will happen, I’d hazard to guess, is that he’ll play at about replacement level for the first few months of the season, run out of opportunities in the late spring, and make a dignified exit from a legendary career during some sunny Seattle homestand this summer. If that’s how it goes, there are worse ways to end a career. Ichiro is back home, heading west into the sunset.