The Meaning of Ichiro (27 page)

Although some people wondered whether or not he should have left in the first place, it may also be said that it was his odyssey
that transformed him from Steinbrenner’s “toad” into a prince of Tigers (if you will pardon the expression).

Before Alfonso Soriano became known as a New York Yankees prodigy, he was already historically important in Japanese baseball
as the focus of a dispute which eventually led to the demise of the famous Working Agreement.

A tall, spindly-legged infielder, Soriano was a native of the Dominican Republic and a graduate of the Hiroshima Carp Academy,
an institution established by the eponymous Central League franchise outside Santo Domingo as a means of cultivating cheap,
local talent for use back home. It had one to two dozen members enrolled at any one time.

Soriano earned his first plane ticket to Japan in 1997 at the age of 17. Playing for the Carp farm team in the Western League,
he hit .252 with eight home runs and 34 RBIs in 242 at-bats, statistics that were hardly cause for excitement, but promising
enough for someone who had yet to graduate from high school. Soriano, cheerful and outgoing, did not particularly enjoy the
grueling practice sessions day and night, the bleeding and blistered hands from hours in the batting cage, the hectoring coaches
yelling incomprehensibly at him in Japanese and the military-like dormitory life. He was homesick and sick of the Japanese-style
game. “It’s like a job,” he complained, “there’s no joy in it.”

But he did recognize that the training he received had helped make him a more well-rounded player, better skilled at some
aspects of the game—with the notable exception of his defense around the second base bag. He had also added several pounds
of muscle, increasing his home run pop, and upped his speed down the line to first base by nearly half a second. He might
have hung around Japan longer if the Carp had deigned to pay him a little more money than the $45,000 minimum he had been
getting. But they refused to give him a raise and so he employed the services of Don Nomura.

Nomura, who had been prowling the ballparks looking for disgruntled ballplayers, had also been studying with great interest
the Carp’s practice of signing Dominican youths out of abject poverty and binding them to long-term low-paying “worldwide”
contracts. Promising Academy players were asked to ink a bridge contract which bound them to the Hiroshima organization for
seven years—whether they were in the Dominican Republic or Japan—then, if they made the Carp varsity, they would have to sign
an NPB contract which obligated them for another nine years until free agency kicked in. Thus, it was entirely within the
realm of possibility that a player recruited from the Dominican Republic could spend his entire career fulfilling contractual
obligations to the Hiroshima franchise.

Nomura also discovered that the Carp had signed the underage Soriano without the approval of a legal guardian as required
by Japanese law. A Carp attorney argued that because Soriano was a Dominican, Dominican law, where the age of consent was
18, should be applied, not the Japanese statutes, which put the age of majority at 20, even though Japan was, in fact, where
Soriano was living when he signed his NPB contract. Nomura’s attorney, After-man, asked if that meant in the Japanese legal
view a Saudi wife, living in Japan and committing adultery in Japan, would thus be beheaded in Japan, in accordance with Saudi
law.

Ichiro Suzuki goes through his famous pre at-bat exercise ritual. Said one Japanese writer of the Seattle Flash, “Because
of him, we’ve become Members of the World.” (Photo by Brad Mangin/ Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

Hideo Nomo: Japanese Braveheart. He opened the door to Major League Baseball for others from Japan to follow. (Photo by Chuck
Solomon/ Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees poses with a small detachment of the vast Japanese press contingent that covers his
every move in North America. Cracked one American sportswriter, “I wouldn’t mind having the Yankee Stadium film concession.”
(Photo by Heinz Kluetmeier/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

The first time
Sports Illustrated
asked Ichiro to pose for their cover, he turned them down: He didn’t think he had proved himself yet. (Photo by Peter Read
Miller/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

Hideo Nomo and his distinctive corkscrew or “tornado” windup, which he developed as a child. “I was trying to impress my father,”
he said. “It helped me throw the ball faster.” (Photo by V. J. Lovero/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

The Journalist and the Samurai: Sportswriter Steve Wulf extracts a rare comment from Japan’s famously silent warrior. (Photo
by Chuck Solomon/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

Hideo Nomo before his historic start in the 1995 All-Star Game in Arlington, Texas. This was the game in which Japanese baseball
announced itself to the world. (Photo by Chuck Solomon/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)

Kazuhiro Sasaki. They called him
Daimajin
in Japan, after a celluloid stone samurai that came to life to rescue imperiled Japanese villagers. As Seattle’s ace closer,
Sasaki regularly rescued his teammates from late-inning trouble. (Photo by Al Tielemans/Courtesy of
Sports Illustrated)