Johnny i 👀

Curtis Pride was born 95% deaf. His parents found out when he was nine months old. There was no history of deafness anywhere in his family. He grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and got bullied relentlessly for it. "I used to come home angry and crying, frustrated, and I didn't know what to do," Pride said. "I didn't know how to defend myself. And my dad told me, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself." So he became an athlete. Not a good one. A phenomenal one, in three different sports. He played for the United States Junior National Team in soccer and was considered one of the best 15-year-old players in the world. He earned a full basketball scholarship to William & Mary. And the New York Mets drafted him in 1986 to play baseball. Baseball was always the one he loved. Then he spent eight years in the minor leagues. Eight years of buses and back fields and being passed over, while also finishing his college degree. The Mets never called him up. He peaked at Double-A and got released. The Montreal Expos signed him as a minor league free agent in 1993. That September, at 24, they finally brought him to the big leagues. On September 17, 1993, in the middle of a pennant race at Olympic Stadium, Curtis Pride came off the bench to pinch hit against the Philadelphia Phillies. He doubled. Two runs scored. The Expos came back and won. And then 45,000 people stood up. The ovation lasted five minutes. The whole building, on its feet, for a deaf rookie nobody had heard of who had just waited eight years for that swing. Pride stood on second base and had no idea. He couldn't hear any of it. He said later that he felt the vibrations, the stadium physically shaking underneath him, but he didn't understand what was happening until his third base coach signaled him to tip his cap to the crowd. So he did. "It was very emotional," he said. "I tried to keep a straight face to let people know that I'm serious. I'm not a one-hit wonder or a charity case. I'm here to stay in the Major Leagues for a long time." He was. Pride played 11 seasons in the majors for six teams, 421 games, and 23 professional seasons in all. He became the first deaf player in Major League Baseball since 1945. His best year came with Detroit in 1996, when he hit .300 with 10 home runs. He won the Tony Conigliaro Award, given to the player who best overcomes adversity. He homered in his very first at-bat as a Boston Red Sox. When he retired, he became the head baseball coach at Gallaudet University, the world's only liberal arts university built for deaf students. He wrote a book about his life. He titled it "I Felt the Cheers." These days he spends his mornings answering letters from deaf kids. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap

Ichiro Suzuki is 52 years old. He last played in the Majors in 2019. He's already in the Hall of Fame. He has nothing left to prove to anyone on a baseball field. On Sunday at the Tokyo Dome, he threw a complete game shutout. 127 pitches. 17 strikeouts. Zero runs. Here's what the game is. Every year, Ichiro hosts an All-Star game against the best high school girls baseball players in Japan. It was created to grow women's baseball in a country where girls have had almost no path in the sport, and it's become one of the biggest showcases they get. Ichiro doesn't show up for an inning and wave. He pitches the whole thing, at full effort, because he believes treating them like real competition is the entire point. And he was better this year than last. In 2024 he threw a 116-pitch shutout with nine strikeouts. This year, two years older, he threw eleven more pitches and struck out eight more batters. One Japanese fan summed it up perfectly online: what's most monstrous isn't the strikeouts, it's that after 127 pitches his velocity and command never dropped off. Then he walked off the mound, sweat still on him, and did a 30-minute talk show, cracking jokes the whole time. This is the same guy who, last month, hit eight home runs in the Mariners Alumni Home Run Derby. At 51. Afterward, he explained why he keeps doing it. "I wanted to see what my current limits were, and this gave me confidence in myself." Ichiro collected 4,367 professional hits between Japan and the Majors. He's one of the greatest hitters who ever lived. And somehow, at 52, the more interesting story is what he can still do with his arm. The man simply refuses to be done. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap