Follow that star!(baseball player Ichiro Suzuki)

Ichiro Suzuki's countrymen track his every move. Now Japan's best ballplayer, who has been compared to Tony Gwynn and Rod Carew, has come to America--no easy place to hide.

Late on an Arizona spring-training afternoon, somebody trails Ichiro out of the Peoria Sports Complex, tracks him through the parking lot and shadows him on the streets of suburban Phoenix. Ichiro, his antennae always up when he's out in public, spies the tail right away in his rear-view mirror and goes into zigzag deception mode.

A feint here, a bluff there, and his mission is accomplished. He's home free.

"I'm hoping this won't be true of other American fans," says Ichiro, who for four or five hours a day finds safe haven as the new right fielder for the Mariners. "But this one tried to follow me home from the ballpark. In a car. An American fan. I had to go to a different place and lose him."

Nothin' like a good ol' fashioned stalker to make a fella feel at home. In Japan, the hounds of the public nip at Ichiro's heels 24/7, so this little escapade in suburban Phoenix doesn't raise much of an eyebrow. After you've experienced the adulation of a nation of Japanese fans, one overzealous Arizonan isn't much of a challenge.

"In Japan, I can't use a public restroom along the highways," says Ichiro, speaking through an interpreter. "For me to stop at a large public restroom would be asking for trouble, so I have to hold it until I get to a smaller one. And even then, when I use the facilities, the person next to me starts going, `It's Ichiro! It's Ichiro!' And all of a sudden, they start lining up, standing behind me when I'm trying to use the restroom. Picture that. This may be rude, but there are some very strange Japanese fans, in that aspect."

In Japan, Ichiro is an icon, as big there as ... who here? J. Lo? Britney? Tiger? Elvis? Yes, he's that big, at least in the name game. For the record, his last name is Suzuki, but that knowledge is handy only as the answer to a trivia question. Japanese fans don't need it to refer to him, to greet him or even to correspond with him.