Baseball beat writers may have the job everyone else dreams about, but you would never know it from talking to seamheads. For all its excitement, pleasure and reward, covering baseball full-time can also be a demanding and exhausting job -- as we're only too happy to let you know. We're only truly content when able to complain, and we do so about anything and everything.

About not getting enough space. About getting too much space. Not having enough time to write. Having too much time to write. Editors not paying enough attention. Editors paying too much attention. The room rate at the Marriott being too high so we can't stay there and get reward points. The rate at the Marriott being too low so we don't get enough reward points.

	“	If something were to change in the future because of Ichiro, this would be the first year of a new Japanese baseball history. This is very special for me. ”
		— Keizo Konishi, Japanese sports writer

You name it, we'll bitch about it.

And then there is Keizo Konishi of the Kyodo News. He covered Ichiro full-time this season, reporting on every single game, writing about the same player day after day for nearly eight months with scarcely a day off.

I went to him a couple times this year expecting to hear a list of complaints as long as the foul lines at Dodger Stadium. He didn't provide them. Instead he said, "I'm a very lucky man."

Now, Konishi might have just been being polite. But for any seamhead not to complain when given the opportunity is about as remarkable as a rookie from Japan winning the MVP award. This has been a very special, very important season in Japanese sports history and Konishi says he is proud to have been a part of it in his small way.

"If something were to change in the future because of Ichiro, this would be the first year of a new Japanese baseball history," he said. "This is very special for me."

Konishi was the pool reporter for the dozens of Japanese reporters and cameramen who covered Ichiro and the Mariners this season. He covered Ichiro every day of spring training. He covered him during the Mariners' 162-game regular season. He covered him during the Mariners 10-game postseason. And then he covered the seven-game World Series.

All told, he covered more than 200 games this year, a feat no American writer could match -- or would attempt. Naturally, he was at the stadium Tuesday afternoon when Ichiro was named the first Japanese MVP in major-league history. He truly covered the story from beginning to end.

The reporters who covered Ichiro full-time this year had a grueling assignment. They were away from their families for the entire season, living in a foreign country and a foreign culture. Very few of the people they came into contact with spoke their native language. They put in hours that would make a coal miner weep. Every day they were under enormous pressure to write about one person who almost never talked to them, and when they filed their stories, the usual response from editors was, "What else can you tell me about Ichiro?"

And yet, when I saw Konishi at the World Series and I asked him what his favorite moment of the season was, he said, "I can't choose the best moment because there were so many good things."

The Seattle Baseball Writers Association of America welcomed Konishi and two other Japanese reporters into the chapter this season, making them the first writers from outside the United States or Canada in the organization's history. Konishi held up his membership card at the national meeting during the World Series.

"Maybe this will go in the Japanese Hall of Fame," he said proudly.

We see so many games and write so many stories in this business that it often is easy to forget why we wanted to be sports writers in the first place. Because of the constant travel, the many nights away from home, the hours wasted waiting for an agent's phone call, the relentless deadlines and the mind-numbingly repetitive games, we too often fail to look up from our laptops to appreciate that we write about games for a living. We too often take for granted a job that pays us to attend events (with free soda and hot dogs) that so many care so much about. We too often forget that we are witnesses to history from the best seats in the house.

Konishi is right. To get to do what we do, we are very lucky men and women (even if means occasionally waiting for phone calls from Scott Boras).

Sports writers receive a lot of early morning wakeup calls from hotel operators. And sometimes, the wakeup call comes from reporters who crossed an ocean to deliver it.

Boxscore line of the week
The major-league season is over but baseball continues around the world, including Taiwan, which hosted the game's World Cup last week when the U.S. team routed the French team 17-0. The U.S. scored two runs off French starter Remy Lejeune before hammering the bullpen for 15 runs. The pen's combined line:

7 IP, 12 H, 15 R, 13 ER, 9 BB, 2 K

Apparently, while Japan is doing great, France still has a ways to go in baseball.

Lies, damn lies and statistics
The last MVP (non-pitcher) to hit fewer home runs than Ichiro's eight? Pete Rose, who hit five while leading the league in hitting (.338) and scoring 115 runs in 1973. The fewest home runs by an MVP (non-pitcher)? That would be Dick Groat, who hit two in 1960 for the Pirates, Nellie Fox, who hit two while batting .306 for the Go-Go White Sox in 1959, and Mickey Cochrane, who hit two for the 1934 Tigers. ... Among those receiving MVP votes were four players (Doug Mientkiewicz, Cristian Guzman, Torii Hunter and Corey Koskie) from those supposedly worthless Twins. That's more players than every American League team but the Mariners, Athletics and Yankees. By comparison, Bud Selig's extremely valuable and very competitive Brewers had no players receiving National League MVP votes. ... Roger Clemens not only has won more Cy Youngs (six) than anyone else, he's won them with more teams (three). Thirteen pitchers (Clemens, Greg Maddux, four, Randy Johnson, four, Steve Carlton, four, Pedro Martinez, three, Jim Palmer, three, Tom Seaver, three, Sandy Koufax, three, Tom Glavine, two, Bret Saberhagen, two, Gaylord Perry, two, Bob Gibson, two, and Denny McLain, two) have won almost half the Cy Young awards.

From left field
After becoming the first Japanese position player in the majors in April, Ichiro became the first Japanese player to win an MVP award this week when he edged Jason Giambi. That makes Japan the seventh country, including the U.S. and Puerto Rico, to produce an MVP winner. Here are the winners born outside the U.S.:

Country	Player
Canada	Larry Walker (1997)
Cuba	Zoilo Versalles (1965) and Jose Canseco (1988)
Dominican Republic	George Bell (1987) and Sammy Sosa (1998)
Japan	Ichiro (2001)
Panama*	Rod Carew (1977)
Puerto Rico	Roberto Clemente (1966), Orlando Cepeda (1967), Willie Hernandez (1984), Juan Gonzalez (1996, 1998) and Ivan Rodriguez (1999)

* Carew was born in the Canal Zone

Win Blake Stein's money
This week's category: Hint: It Wasn't Barry Bonds Or Ernie Banks

Q: Who was the last player to win an MVP Award and play for the World Series champions in the same season?

Answer below.

Infield chatter
"Judge orders Twins to play next year (also orders them to bunt, hit-and-run more.)"

-- Headline in the "Ironic Times"

A. Kirk Gibson with the Dodgers in 1988.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.