The Meaning of Ichiro (21 page)

The American and Japanese commissioners were still bound by the United States–Japanese Player Contract Agreement described
in
Chapter 4
, a.k.a. the Working Agreement, which had been drafted and signed in the wake of the Murakami affair. It obligated
both sides to abide by the rules as specified in the respective contracts and conventions and, as such, defined which players
could be approached. However, because of the failure of the Japanese side, inadvertent though it may have been, to specify
worldwide rights in regard to the ownership of its players, it was now becoming depressingly clear that the U.S. side could
go after Japan’s stars without violating any of the conditions of the Working Agreement. The omission was, perhaps, understandable.
Given the big gap that was believed to exist between the levels of play in the two countries at the time the document was
signed (not to mention the social taboos that Murakami had come up against and which, most people thought, still existed),
such a possibility was no doubt as far from the minds of the two signatories as a Japanese invasion of the U.S. auto market
was in the minds of the then management at Detroit’s Big Three—or as far removed from the realm of probability as a takeover
of the Pebble Beach golf course by Osaka gangsters was in the daily thoughts of the residents of California’s Monterey Peninsula.

The existence of this anomaly was confirmed and clarified in a series of letters exchanged between the U.S. and Japan baseball
commissioners’ offices—the exchange prompted by Don Nomura in a query to the U.S. commissioner. The operative instrument was
a fax sent by Yoshiaki Kanai, executive secretary to the Japanese commissioner, on December 9, in response to consecutive
faxes from William A. Murray, executive director of baseball operations in the Major League Commissioner’s Office in New York,
inquiring about the eligibility of voluntarily retired players moving abroad. Kanai’s fax stated clearly and unequivocally
in writing, “If a voluntarily retired player in Japan wishes to return to active status, he may sign only with his former
team as far as he chooses to do so
within our country,
in other words, he would be able to contact [sic] with teams in the United States.” That was about as concrete as Kanai could
possibly make it. Although the relatively inexperienced Kanai (he was a former sportswriter) doubtless never intended his
missive as an instrument by which Japanese stars could liberate themselves from the maximum security chains that bound them
to their teams, nevertheless, that is exactly what it became. A “voluntarily retired” Nomo, wishing to play in MLB, would,
in fact, find the door leading out of Japan wide open.

In postseason contract discussions, Nomo made a pretext of negotiating. He asked for a three-year, $9 million contract, a
demand he knew in advance the front office would never agree to. When, as he had predicted, they turned him down—“You’re too
young for that kind of deal,” said one official. “You’re ineligible for free agency and besides, you’ve got a sore arm”—Nomo
said fine and declared his voluntary retirement from Japanese baseball. He was going to pursue other avenues of endeavor,
he informed them.

It took more than one meeting for the powers-that-be on the upper floors of the staid corporate headquarters of the Osaka
Kintetsu Railways, unaware of the existence of the Kanai–Murray letters, to fully grasp the fact that Nomo was serious. At
one encounter, tempers flared and angry words were exchanged.

“Think of what you’re doing to your career,” exclaimed one official. “Think of the team.”

“I am,” said Nomo, “that’s why I’m leaving.”

When team president and general manager Yasuo Maeda angrily challenged him to sign his letter of retirement right then and
there, Nomo readily complied. And just like that, he was free to play in America.

It was one of the most embarrassing incidents in the history of the franchise. The Kintetsu front office had been completely
sandbagged, losing their best player without even realizing exactly what it was that had happened to them. In the following
days, as word got around that Nomo and Nomura had put out feelers to West Coast teams, Maeda appealed to the commissioner’s
office for help, to no avail, however, because that institution had been caught off guard as well. League officials could
only stand by helplessly as the Kanai–Murray letters surfaced in the press. At first, they tried to claim, somewhat lamely,
that the documents were “private” and that they had been wrongfully made public, as if that somehow made them less valid.
They also tried to claim that said letters referred to foreign ballplayers like Seibu’s Orestes Destrade (a Florida-based
Cuban who had also been mulling a return to North America). But no matter how they tried to spin it, a close inspection of
the correspondence could not ignore its devastatingly clear wording. Kintetsu had no choice but to move into a face-saving
mode.

“Do you want our permission to let you go to the States?” offered a rather desperate Buffalo official at a subsequent meeting
with Nomo. “We can arrange to do that.”

But Nomo was merciless.

“We don’t need your permission to go to the States and play,” he replied.

All Kintetsu could do was to grin and bear it and pretend they were being magnanimous. In January, their front office called
a press conference and announced that Nomo would be released so that he could pursue an MLB career, with the blessing of the
NPB commissioner’s office (although, in point of fact, Kintetsu never did formally file the papers granting Nomo his
unconditional
release, meaning that they continued to hold on to Nomo’s rights within Japan). Maeda also announced that he would take another
look at the Kintetsu policy in regard to multiyear contracts.

In the wake of all this, the Japanese sports press went into its DEFCON 4 mode, labeling Nomo an “ingrate,” a “troublemaker”
and a “traitor.” Everyone had turned against him, baseball officials, fan groups and big names like Nagashima and Oh. Even
Nomo’s own father was against the move.

“Don’t kick up sand with your feet,” his father had admonished him, using an old Japanese saying. “You don’t have to embarrass
the Kintetsu front office like this. If you really want to go, you have to choose a better way. But why ruin what you already
have here in Japan: wealth and status.”

“It’s my life,” replied his son, aware that a “better way” did not exist. “I don’t want to spend the rest of it regretting
that I never tried. I want to see if I can do it.”

Pere Nomo stopped talking to his son for quite some time.

It took an enormous amount of courage for Nomo to do what he did. But to hear him tell it, in his droll, laconic way of speaking,
there was never any question as to the correct course of action. Whenever Nomura would begin to express doubts as to whether
perhaps they had gone too far, it was Nomo who always straightened him out.

“Don’t worry, Don,” he would say. “We’re doing the right thing.”

To some people, it seemed fitting that the Chinese character for Hideo meant “hero.”

When Nomo first left Narita Airport in February 1995 for interviews with major league teams he might join, not many reporters
were there to cover his departure. Granted, there was an MLB lockout in place, one that had begun the previous August and
had forced the cancellation of the rest of the season and the 1994 World Series. But when that dispute ended and Nomo was
offered $2 million to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers—who had received an okay from the commissioner of Japanese baseball
to pursue the ex-Buffaloes star—interest started to build. Those very same newspaper and magazine reporters who had accorded
Nomo second tier coverage because he was playing for a lowly Pacific League team could now not get enough of him. There were
24 photographers and 15 TV cameras on hand to record his signing ceremony with the Dodgers at a Los Angeles hotel. And when
Nomo began his preseason workouts, a squadron of video cameramen followed him like a heat-seeking missile, logging every microsecond
of his new Dodgers existence and relaying it back to Japan by satellite. It was more press than he had ever seen in one place
in his entire life, except of course when he attended a Giants game as a fan. Bothered by the intrusiveness, and the adverse
effect it might be having on his new teammates, Nomo drew a line in the dirt near the dugout and announced that no one in
the group was to cross it.

“If you come beyond this line,” he warned, “I’ll stop talking to you.”

It did not seem like much of a threat because the recalcitrant Nomo seldom talked to them anyway. Yet when an NHK crew ventured
forth across the line, Nomo, true to his word, initiated a boycott against them which would last for three years.

Some people back in Japan, still upset by what they perceived to be Nomo’s underhanded ways, seemed to be rooting for him
to fail. A Seibu coach named Haruki Ihara declared that Nomo could no longer be effective in Japan anyway because the opposition
could read all his pitches. That was why he was leaving. “The key to beating Nomo,” revealed the coach, “is not swinging at
the forkball; his control is so bad, he’ll eventually walk himself into trouble.”

Another critic, a veteran baseball manager in Japan, told an inquiring Dodger executive they were making a mistake. “Nomo’s
arm is not that good anymore,” said the man, who was a friend and contemporary of Suzuki, “and he’s got a bad attitude.”

It didn’t take Nomo very long to prove them all wrong. He made his MLB pitching debut in San Francisco in early May and turned
in a solid five innings in a no-decision performance. He went without a decision in his next four starts as well, often pitching
before crowds filled with Asian spectators, but by the end of the month, he was leading the National League in strikeouts.

Then he switched into high gear. Setting up batters with his rising fastball, then finishing them off with his immaculate
sinking fork, he won six of his next seven games, pitching two shutouts and setting a Dodgers rookie record when he struck
out 16 Pirates in Pittsburgh on June 14. He was chosen the National League Pitcher of the Month for June. American hitters
had never seen anyone pitch like him.

Said Barry Bonds, “It’s really hard to pick up the ball with that corkscrew motion. Then he throws a forkball and the bottom
drops out of it. The only way to win is to wait him out and hope his control goes south.”

Through it all, however, he somehow kept his walks to a minimum. On the basis of a first-half ERA of 2.05 with 109 strikeouts,
he was voted the starting pitcher in the All-Star Game, which was, of course, an all-important first for a Japanese.

While all this was happening, a phenomenon called Nomomania had taken hold in Southern California. The gift shop at Dodger
Stadium was selling Nomo Dodger jackets, T-shirts and sweatshirts faster than they could be manufactured in third-world sweatshops.
More important, Dodger attendance rose 4 percent to an average of 38,311 per game when Nomo took the mound, thanks to the
increased patronage of Asian spectators. The stands rocked to the strains of “Day-O,” the old Harry Belafonte calypso standard
in which “Hideo” was now substituted for the refrain. His popularity helped jump-start overall MLB attendance, which had initially
slagged in the wake of the debilitating lockout of the previous year. Some people were calling him the “savior” of the U.S.
game. Wrote
New York Times
reporter Claire Smith, “The 26-year-old contortionist from Osaka is causing a refreshing flutter of genuine interest in baseball.
That is a welcome occurrence in a troubled sport too long preoccupied with depressing news about drugs, spousal abuse, strikes
and lockouts.”

The
Times
would also describe smog-choked Dodger Stadium as a “festival of Pacific Rim goodwill with Dodger pennants and flags of the
rising sun fluttering through the stands.” Even the festering bilateral trade friction and accompanying trash talk that had
dominated U.S.-Japan relations in the early ‘90s seemed to abate for a time.

Nomomania reverberated all the way back to Japan where, in a remarkable turnaround that demonstrated the enormous flexibility
of the Japanese, people had suddenly forgotten all the bad names they had been calling him. Foreshadowing Ichiromania, every
game Nomo pitched was televised live in Japan, often on huge outdoor high-vision screens erected in urban centers amidst neon
signs and billboards. This was a sight not seen since the 1950s, when the wrestling hero Rikidozan was body slamming American
foes before an audience of millions watching on street corner TV sets. Meanwhile, Japanese fans young and old streamed across
the Pacific by the jumbo jet planeload to watch Nomo pitch. They came in such great numbers that the Dodgers arranged for
a Japanese restaurant to open in the ballpark solely to accommodate them.

The singlemindedness of the coverage was something to behold. One radio station started something called a Nomocast, broadcasting
only those half innings of games when Nomo was on the mound, but returning to the studio when Nomo’s teammates batted and
Japan’s hero sat inactive on the bench. An estimated 15 million fans, many of them standing outside at 10
A.M.
in a light morning drizzle, watched the All-Star Game beamed to Japan via satellite. They continued watching even after Nomo
was removed from the game because the camera continued to zoom in on him sitting in the dugout. “25 Dream Pitches!” said a
headline in the evening edition of the
Asahi Shimbun,
summing up the game. Later in the season, one TV station ran an
11-hour
special on Japan’s newest national hero.

As with Ichiro seven years later, Nomo became a bigger star and bigger media presence than he had ever been when he played
in Japan, constantly pursued by a carnivorous pack of Japanese journalists. As with Ichiro, it was all so ironic because during
the height of Nomo’s years with the Kintetsu Buffaloes, hardly anybody came to see him pitch.