The Meaning of Ichiro (22 page)

Also setting new standards for fickleness were those writers who called him cowardly and willful only months before, but now
lionized him for his courageous independent streak. Whereas Nomo had been “sullen,” he was now “serene.” The “Shame of Japan,”
as he had been called by some editorialists, was now being put forward as a candidate for the People’s Honor Award. Bushy-browed
Prime Minister Tom
chi Murayama, a Socialist who oversaw a multiparty coalition dominated by conservatives, took time out from compromising his
party’s principles to fax Nomo a message of encouragement. In one of the more stunning turnabouts, the Pacific League president,
who had earlier lambasted Nomo for his self-centered ways, now proclaimed, “He makes me proud to be a Japanese.”

It was not all sweetness and light for Nomo, however. At the beginning of the season, he received his share of hate mail—not
only from Japanese fans angry that he had deserted ship but also from racist fans in America, unhappy that a Japanese was
playing big league ball. He received letters calling him a “yellow monkey,” among other things, and demanding that he go home.
“I could understand how
gaijin
ballplayers in Japan must have felt,” he said.

There was one particularly ugly incident at Shea Stadium where a number of young white fans began shouting “U-S-A, U-S-A”
and making derogatory gestures toward Japanese spectators in the stands, behavior which triggered a four-man fistfight. Eddie
Kochiyama, a third-generation Japanese-American attending the game, was quoted in the L.A.–based
Rafu Shimpo
as saying, “Each time a group of Japanese fans wearing Dodger caps and shirts held up Nomo and K signs, standing for strikeouts,
some whites sitting in front of them would turn around and give them the finger and chant U-S-A.”

Kochiyama’s companion at the game, a man named Steve Sandler, declared, “There’s an atmosphere of anti-Asian and especially
anti-Japanese feeling afoot in this country. There’s a perception they’re buying up the place and abusing trade privileges.”

Nomomania was also grist for a flurry of editorials on both sides of the Pacific as to “what it all meant.” The
New York Times
saw Nomo’s arrival on the scene as a sign that the “samurai culture” and Japanese penchant for exclusivity were receding.
David Friedman, a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saw Nomo as a symbol or catalyst for rising Japanese
nationalism. Writing in the
Los Angeles Times,
he said,

The U.S. media cannot get enough of the unusual windup and delivery of Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Hideo Nomo. Cheering fans
ignore nationality when rooting for Japan’s strikeout king. In the United States, showcasing the world’s most skilled athletes
at the highest level of competition is what baseball—indeed, sports—is all about. But the beauty of top-flight baseball is
largely lost on the Japanese expatriates filling National League ballparks wherever Nomo takes the mound. To them, Nomo is
the latest in a long line of national champions doing battle for their country in enterprises—like autos, electronics and
finance in the past—where foreigners once seemed invincible. Each ball and strike Nomo throws produces an exhilarating moment
of national validation—or excruciating anguish.

Indeed, back on the other side of the Pacific, baseball traditionalists who had once heavily criticized Nomo’s unorthodox
corkscrew pitching motion were now saying that his performance showed the superiority of the Japanese baseball techniques.
The august, if somewhat pompous,
Asahi Shimbun
opined that the significance of Nomo’s success was that it served as a “catharsis” for the Japanese public—a release from
the “disgust” Japanese felt toward the U.S. over the constant carping by its government over trade.

Well-coiffed and articulate TV personality Tetsuko Koyanagi remarked in an interview with
Josei Jishin
(The Woman Herself) that Nomomania was a lesson for Japan in that “America is a country that judges people on their talents
and respects those with ability… . whereas Japan is a country that tries to hold the talented back, instead of letting them succeed.”

On the other hand, there were people like noted Japanese author Yasuharu Honda, who, in a jaundiced essay for
Views,
a popular monthly magazine, wrote that Nomomania demonstrated that Japanese fans were “the country bumpkins of the world”
for their “unsophisticated, hysterical adoration” of a successful Japanese player, while virtually ignoring every other star
in the U.S. major leagues. (The notable exception was the Dodgers’ hirsute slugger Mike Piazza, not because he was one of
the premier hitters in the majors, but because he was Nomo’s catcher.)

When Nomo returned to an eagerly awaiting Japan that fall (having finished with a record of 13-6, a 2.54 ERA, 236 strikeouts
and the Rookie of the Year Award), he gave them more raw material to analyze.

He and his agent Don Nomura responded to the barrage of media interview requests with unprecedented demands. For a one-hour
TV appearance, he would require a minimum of 500,000 yen (then about U.S. $5,000), twice the average paid to Japanese celebrities.
For simple print interviews, he wanted 50,000 yen for 30 minutes in a deluxe hotel room, with the exorbitant room cost to
be paid by the interviewer. He signed endorsement deals with Kirin Beverages, Toyota, Nike, Sumitomo Life Insurance and IDC
for a total of 480 million yen and eventually agreed to a 60 million yen pact with TBS for a series of exclusive appearances
on that network.

This full-bore attempt to cash in on his name naturally rubbed some people the wrong way. One weekly magazine, the
Sh
kan Jitsuwa,
ran a story sarcastically entitled, “Nomo’s Back in Town. Pass the Collection Plate.”

The hardest affront to bear, however, might have been his blunt attacks on Japanese baseball. Uncharacteristically talkative
in his highly paid interviews, he described Japanese baseball as a closed world in which the players could not reveal their
true feelings to the public and top echelon officials persisted in clinging to outdated customs. He was particularly critical
of the way managers and coaches treated pitchers, abusing their arms in games and practice sessions, causing them to end up
with shoulder and elbow problems that left them unable to pitch well, thereby putting an early end to their careers. He bemoaned
the fact that so few pitchers had the gumption to refuse to pitch when their arm hurt. He noted that American pitching coaches
like the Dodgers’ Dave Wallace were consultants who solicited players’ opinions, not just martinets who issued orders and
expected blind obedience.

“Japanese don’t think about money until it’s too late,” he complained. “In America, it’s you pay, I play. Japanese have to
be more aggressive.”

It was not something that the officials in the NPB were accustomed to hearing, especially from a 26-year-old player.

By the end of Nomo’s first month back in Japan, all his scheduled
taidan
(joint interviews) with other players had been canceled except for a meeting with former pitching star Yutaka Enatsu, fresh
out of prison where he had served a two-year drug rap. The word had gone out from the team owners that players were not to
go near Nomo or his Americanized agent: Nomura indeed had become the Darth Vader of Japanese baseball for damaging the delicate
tissue of the game’s
wa,
and, it was generally believed, for infusing Nomo with greed.

One pundit writing in the
Asahi Shimbun
summed up the general feeling of the owners when he wrote, “Nomo will grow tired of U.S. baseball and start to miss Japan,
but he will never be warmly accepted back into the fold.”

Nomo’s success provided one other important service. It offered contrary evidence to a set of views about Japanese baseball
long held by many Americans who have played in Japan—namely, that Japanese players will never challenge authority, that they
do not know how to be self-interested, that they fold under pressure, and that they would be unwilling (if not unable) to
play hardball in the big leagues. Like a golfer sinking chip shots, Nomo had stepped up and, one by one, shattered each of
these myths—at least as far as he was concerned. In the process, he became a symbol for a new generation of restless youth
and a perceived harbinger for change. One report in 1995 estimated that 30 out of every 100 Japanese players, if asked, would
say they wanted to play in the United States—although change itself, as we shall see, would come slowly, in baby steps.

Nomo, who once feared his career as a pitcher might end prematurely, went on to play longer in America than he had in Japan
and pave the way for a host of other Asians to follow him, including several players from Japan and a few from Korea. He spawned
a raft of magazine articles and books in Japanese about his accomplishments, many with titles in English. Examples included
“Stair to the King,” “Feel the Ecstasy,” “Tornado in USA. We Need Nomo.”

In Los Angeles, he set an MLB record of 500 strikeouts in his first 445 innings. On September 19, 1996, he pitched a no-hitter
in Denver versus the Colorado Rockies, an accomplishment that many baseball people had believed impossible, given the mile-high
thin air that sharply limited a pitched baseball’s spin and movement. What made his feat all the more amazing was that he
did it in near freezing rain, which made gripping the ball properly problematic and created perilous footing on the pitcher’s
mound as well. At one point, the rain halted play for 30 elbow-tightening minutes.

For a time, Nomo developed arm problems that reduced his effectiveness. He was released by the Dodgers and went to pitch for
the Mets, then a Cubs minor league affiliate, undergoing elbow surgery in the process. Gradually, however, he regained his
arm strength and returned to the big leagues, first with the Milwaukee Brewers and then the Detroit Tigers—where he became
the first Japanese pitcher to start on Opening Day. From there he moved on to the Boston Red Sox, where, in 2001, he pitched
his second no-hitter—becoming only the fourth man in history to throw one in both leagues—before finally returning to Los
Angeles from where he had started.

The peripatetic pitcher reminded Japanese fans of the old masterless samurai known as
ronin,
who used to roam the land centuries past looking for temporary employment under local feudal lords. By the time Nomo had
made his way back to L.A., he had added a change-up sinker and a curve to his repertoire. In 2002 and 2003, by sheer force
of will it seemed, he became arguably the most reliable starting pitcher in baseball, leading L.A. in wins and innings pitched
in 2002.

Dodgers manager Jim Tracy was so impressed he repeatedly described Nomo as a “warrior” to local reporters.

As popular as Nomo was, it might be added that he also made a number of enemies among the American as well as the Japanese
sports press because of his reluctance to talk to them. The notoriously close-mouthed Nomo (in his unpaid mode, that is) habitually
gave postgame “interviews” at Dodger Stadium consisting of sullen one- or two-word responses. In the beginning, many reporters
accepted the explanation that Nomo simply couldn’t speak the English language well and felt uncomfortable talking through
an interpreter. Indeed, many reporters simply stopped going to the Nomo postgame press conference because they knew, whether
he had won or lost, pitched poorly or well, he wouldn’t say anything worth quoting, unless he insulted them for the poor quality
of their questions—which he was apt to do.

“What kind of question is that?” was a standard Nomo reply, delivered in his unsmiling monotone.

Then, three years later, they witnessed the spectacle of Dodger Nomo interpreting for newly arrived New York Met Masato Yoshii
in a spring training get together for the assembled press, translating easily from English to Japanese. For the onlooking
members of the L.A. media, it was a stunning revelation.

“I felt like a complete fool,” said one veteran reporter. “It also made me realize what a jerk Nomo was. He could have made
our job in the press a lot easier with just a little bit more cooperation. A three-minute interview is enough for a decent
story. Three minutes, that’s all it takes, but he wouldn’t even do that.”