The Meaning of Ichiro (32 page)

Oh’s supporters rose to his defense.

“No pitcher wants to be the one to give up the record,” said the aforementioned Harimoto, himself no stranger to discrimination,
in a Sunday morning talk show. “It’s understandable they don’t want to pitch to him.”

But such arguments were drowned out in a Greek chorus of boos by baseball fans who were beginning to feel embarrassed about
the Hawks or their manager’s inability to fight fair, especially when contrasted to the outpouring of genuine affection for
Ichiro in North America.

As the
Asahi Shimbun,
usually silent about such matters, bluntly put it, “[Oh] refuses to make a clean fight for the sake of an individual record.”

Added Seibu batting coach Koju Hirohashi, noting fairness by other PL teams, “I’m sad if the world thinks this is Japanese
baseball.”

When the season ended and Cabrera, like Rhodes, had been stopped at number 55,
Daily Yomiuri
sports columnist Jim Allen was moved to write, “From now on they should put an asterisk and a note next to Oh’s name in the
record book, saying that he repeatedly accepted the unsportsmanlike acts of his players to protect his record.”

Some people might argue that America is not entirely a bastion of fair play and equanimity, either. Critics usually cite the
hate mail Hank Aaron received while breaking Babe Ruth’s career home run mark, or the chilly reception Roger Maris received
when he passed the Bambino’s single season mark of 60 homers. What would happen if Ichiro hit in 55 straight games, threatening
Joe DiMaggio’s great record, and then came up against the Yankees in Yankee Stadium, where he is perpetually booed? It is
an intriguing question, but given the increased globalization and ethnicity of the U.S. game, the answer is, probably nothing.
At the same time, it is also worth mentioning that the most popular sports figure in Japan in 2003, if commercial endorsements
are any indication, was an English soccer star named David Beckham. Visiting Japan twice that year, he was mobbed each time
by thousands of adoring fans.

A former NPB commissioner named Ichiro Yoshikuni once said, “The teamwork involved in baseball fits in perfectly with the
national temper of the Japanese. It did not always fit the temper of
Americans.”
He was referring to the myriad of cultural and practical differences that have distinguished the two versions of the two
games from each other and have frequently been the cause of conflict when Americans have joined NPB teams. This has been especially
so where training and preparation are involved. As American Bobby Rose put it after his first season in Japan, “I ran a lot
in the U.S. to get used to the Japanese way, but there was no getting used to it.” A common refrain by Americans in their
first spring camp is “I know how to get ready for the season and this isn’t it.” Said Darryl Motley, a former Kansas City
Royals outfielder who joined the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Pacific League in 1992, “They don’t enjoy the game. It is work
to them. Work harder. That’s the answer to everything for the Japanese.”

Explained Kota Ishijima, interpreter for the Seibu Lions’ American players, and later for Hideki Irabu when he was with the
Yankees, “The way Japanese professional baseball has evolved is through college and high school baseball…. The school systems
still stress form in groups, like the military, and baseball is just an extension of that, as are companies, ministries and
government bureaucracies. When Americans come into this environment, of course, they get startled.”

Americans regularly balk at Japanese-style training camp with its orders and whistles and drop-dead drills and find the games
themselves generally overmanaged and slow-moving affairs full of 3-2 counts, sacrifice bunts and lengthy pauses for mulling
strategy. The idea that all of this chess could end in a tie, a result that was supposed to send everyone home happy, was
also hard for the Americans to swallow.

Warren Cromartie, reaching the end of the line after seven successful seasons with the Yomiuri Giants, summed up his career
by saying, “I like Japan, my teammates and my manager, but I can’t stand the way they play the game.” Phil Bradley, who joined
Yomiuri after Cromartie left, declared his team’s style of play “incredibly boring.” Said Mel Hall, who played outfield for
the Chiba Lotte Marines and the Chunichi Dragons, “They practice the game so much that sometimes the enjoyment leaves them.
Come late July and August, they’re just going through the motions, some of them anyway. They burn out.”

Matt Winters, an ex–New York Yankee farmhand who played several seasons in the ‘90s for the Nippon Ham Fighters, could not
believe some of the things he saw, as he told the
New York Daily News:

In 1992, we had this little left-handed pitcher on our team, a baby-faced kid. He got hit pretty good in one game so the manager
takes him out, calls him down the bench and starts hollering at him. The next thing, he grabs a helmet and—boom—I’m not talking
a little tap, man. He took the helmet and rapped the guy right on the head with it.

I was kind of watching, thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ and all the Japanese players were just sitting up staring
ahead like nothing was happening. I kept on watching, and, sure enough, he grabbed the helmet and smoked him in the head again.
I looked at my interpreter and asked, “He’s not going to try to do that to me, is he? Because if he comes up to me with a
helmet, I’m going to grab a helmet myself.”

But for a player to stand up to a manager in that case would have been considered inappropriate behavior and actually a sign
of weakness. Players have to accept authority. It is the only way the team can achieve
wa.
At the same time, it is understood that foreigners, uninitiated as they are in
wa’s
Eleusinian mysteries, were to be spared such abuse. Serious injury to both parties might ensue, along with financial loss,
since most ex-major leaguers came in with sizable guaranteed contracts. Thus, while his teammates are sweating through tortuous
pregame drills, often the American import is off by himself, doing his own thing.

The fact is, a great many do not succeed, whatever their treatment, and the history of American participation in the Japanese
game is dotted with spectacular failures. Not a few
gaijin
are in Japan because they have one or more defects in their game. Some can hit, but can’t run or field. Big-swinging American
stars often flop, while unknown reserves who work hard to adjust can succeed. Those who don’t make the effort or are unable
to adapt themselves to Japanese ways are prime candidates for early defections.

Don Money, a veteran major league star, left the Kintetsu Buffaloes after 29 games in 1984 complaining of poor living conditions
and a dirty locker room. Teammate Rich Duran soon followed suit, in protest over the harsh workouts the coaches put him through.
That same year Jim Tracy, who went on to manage the Dodgers, left in disgust over the way his manager was, or rather, was
not using him.

Ponk
ts
(Jalopy)

One of the more memorable cases involved former MLB star Kevin Mitchell, an endomorphic slugger capable of titanic performances.
In 1989, for example, playing with the San Francisco Giants, he was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player after
hitting 47 home runs, driving in 125 runs and leading his team to a National League pennant.

He also had a history of violence and a reputation for being lazy, moody and indifferent. His MLB career statistics included
234 home runs, one suspension by the league president for disciplinary reasons and two arrests for assault. He was traded
four times.

Prior to the 1995 season, his batting skills on the decline, Mitchell had declared his intention to retire. But then the Fukuoka,
Kyushu-based Daiei Hawks offered him $4.5 million to play for one year. At the time, it was the highest single-season salary
offer in the history of baseball in Japan, and Mitchell, who was not a complete fool, accepted.

In preseason media hoopla, Mitchell was hailed as the best
suketto
in the history of NPB. And in his first game, he seemed ready to live up to the billing, hitting a grand slam home run and
sending Hawks fans into fits of ecstasy. In a postgame interview, he professed an undying love for Japan.

“I’m really enjoying this,” he gushed. “Everyone here is so polite. I really admire the way the players carry themselves.”

But it was all downhill after that. Within two months, Mitchell was on a plane back to the United States, now proclaiming
that “Japanese are dirty. I really dislike them.”

The problem ostensibly was an injury, or to be more precise, Mitchell’s insistence that he was suffering from one and the
inability of physicians to find it. After playing 28 games in which he hit six homers and drove in 19 runs, Mitchell had complained
of a pain in his knee which he said he had twisted in practice going after a fly ball. However, an orthopedic physician at
Fukuoka University commissioned by the Hawks performed an MRI and, unable to locate any afflicted areas, pronounced the Hawks’
big
gaikokujin
fit to play baseball. Mitchell disputed the test results. He insisted that his knee hurt too badly for him to continue suiting
up and demanded he be allowed to go home to the States for a second opinion. The Daiei front office rejected this request
and ordered him to the farm as punishment for his intransigence. Mitchell refused to go, naturally, and an impasse resulted.

The folks at Daiei were not totally unaware of Mitchell’s reputation as a troublemaker. They suspected that Mitchell had been
jaking it ever since he arrived in camp three weeks late with well over 200 pounds on his 5′9′′ puffer belly frame, but claiming
that he was in tiptop shape and thus did not need to train with the rest of the team. They kept silent, but decided all the
same to have him followed. They discovered that Mitchell had been out partying until the morning hours on the night before
a game in Fukuoka. On another occasion in April, he had been spied drinking at a military club at Yokota Air Force Base before
a game at Tokorozawa, home of the Seibu Lions, one he had sat out with a cold. The news of that latter episode was published
in
Friday
magazine, accompanied by the screaming headline “4
Oku Yen no Ponk
ts
. Nameru na.”
(A 400,000,000 Yen Jalopy! Thumbing His Nose At Everyone!”)