The Meaning of Ichiro (34 page)

Indeed, perhaps what separated Japanese baseball from its American counterpart more than anything else was the low respect
accorded arbiters in Japan. There, umpires are regularly pushed and shoved around by the managers, coaches and players with
impunity—or very light penalties: a 50,000 yen (a little more than $400) fine, a three-day suspension, or, often, just a “severe
warning” to the attacking parties. Given the right circumstances, they can be intimidated into changing their rulings.

Consider, for example, a game that took place in May 1996 at the Tokyo Dome between the Seibu Lions and the home team Nippon
Ham Fighters. In the fourth inning, a Lions outfielder hit a drive to deep right center that cleared the fence, but popped
back onto the field after striking a railing. When the second-base umpire signaled a home run, the Ham Fighter manager Toshiharu
Ueda came running out of the dugout and, angrily man-handling the umpire, argued that the ball had hit the top of the fence.
Perhaps, in part, because Ueda had once (in the seventh game of the 1978 Japan Series) pulled his team off the field for more
than an hour to protest an umpire’s call, all four arbiters conferred in midfield and decided to change the ruling from a
home run to a double. This, of course, brought the Lions manager Osamu Higashio screaming out of the dugout to do some protesting
of his own—which he punctuated with a stiff forearm to the chief umpire’s throat.

Eventually, after considering which manager had more stature, who had argued the hardest and what the odds were that the cheering
section would storm the field if they didn’t like the ruling, the compromise was struck—in the true spirit of
wa.
The hit was adjudged to be a “ground-rule triple.” There were no ejections, only a small fine, and a suspension dealt with
later. The accuracy of the call never came into play—not even after Higashio stormed into the umpire’s room to launch a postgame
assault on one of them, an attack which included a swift kick to the shin. (When informed of the incident, Ham Fighters manager
Ueda remarked, without a trace of irony,
“Shiai no ato wa ikenai”:
“It’s not acceptable to do that sort of thing
after
the game.”)

Such an occurrence would have been unimaginable in the U.S., where the umpire’s power is absolute. Any such physical assault
could result in a year’s—if not a lifetime’s—suspension.

Thus, it was inevitable, given this environment, that the first American umpire to work in the Japan pro leagues would meet
with disaster. DiMuro, a 29-year-old AAA level umpire when he got the call in 1997, thought that working a year in Japan before
its famously huge crowds in domed stadiums would be good preparation for the U.S. big leagues.

Yet, with typical obtuseness, no one in the league office saw fit to brief him on the differences in Japanese ball—to tell
him, for example, that the strike zone in Japan was historically somewhat higher or that the phrase “Kill the Umpire” was
taken more seriously than it was in the U.S. Worse yet, no one in the Central League offices sought to caution the managers
and the coaches that violence against the umpires would no longer be tolerated. Perhaps they were afraid to, given the fact
that they were ranked not much higher in the food chain than the umpires themselves.

Only days into the season, DiMuro found himself the subject of attack from Japanese managers like the churlish Katsuya Nomura,
who did not like his concept of the strike zone. Said Nomura, “This man is ruining Japanese baseball.” During one game in
May, DiMuro found himself being rushed by a small group of Chunichi Dragons, angry over a called strike. The batter, a beefy
first baseman named Yasuaki Taiho, led the charge, slugging DiMuro in the chest, pushing him back and nearly knocking him
over. Dragon Leo Gomez was forced to come to the clearly shaken DiMuro’s rescue. The penalty handed down by the league for
the attack was, predictably enough, a mere letter of reprimand.

The incident highlighted again what were often gross differences in the disciplinary standards for foreigners and Japanese.
One might ask why Balvino Galvez was suspended for half a season for throwing a ball at an umpire and
missing,
while Taiho, who actually succeeded in making contact, received only a warning. Ditto for numerous other Japanese managers,
coaches and players who have drawn blood from the umpires and received only light punishments. (We might also mention Kazuhiro
Kiyohara, who once threw his bat at a pitcher and was barely reprimanded.)

However, when all is said and done, one or two things are clear: It is easier for the Japanese baseball establishment to punish
outsiders than it is to discipline members of its inner circle. Foreign players dwell at the bottom of pro baseball’s pecking
order, right below the umpires. That means there is nothing lower in the Japanese game than a foreign umpire.

Dismayed by the lack of support, the American League, which owned DiMuro’s contract, “ordered” him to return to the States
because it was “not safe to umpire in Japan.”

I went there thinking I would be there for many years. Instead I wound up being the only manager to be fired in both the U.S.
and Japan.

B
OBBY
V
ALENTINE
, N
OVEMBER
1995

A
S A VEHICLE OF SOCIAL CHANGE, BASEBALL FELL SOMEWHERE BE
tween sumo and soccer in Japan. Sumo, dating back centuries, was the most inflexible. It was a world of feudal hierarchy where
wrestlers wore top knots, scant
mawashi
in the ring and
yukata
outside of it. Foreigners who entered this world were expected to thoroughly conform—to eat Japanese food, to master the
Japanese language and to obey the ages-old rules of medieval servitude, which included tidying up the senior wrestlers after
they had used the toilet. (Considering the girth of some of these behemoths, the custom was, in certain cases, of practical
use.) Hawaiian wrestler Jesse Kuhaulua, known as Takamiyama, overcame such difficulties to forge a long career and in 1980
became the first Westerner to open up his own sumo stable or
beya
in Japan. He enjoyed continued success with both Hawaiian and Japanese
rikishi,
while still adhering carefully to the age-old customs.

Soccer, introduced in the mid-20th century, had no discernible culture of its own in Japan. Numerous foreign coaches and players
were imported to teach the game much as Western experts were imported to Japan in the early Meiji Era to help modernize the
country. The coach of the Japanese national team, which had a good run in the 2002 World Cup, co-hosted by Japan and the ROK,
was French; his successor Zico was from Brazil.

Baseball, imported from America in the 1870s, had been Japanized to a degree with its incorporation of the martial arts values
of
doryoku
and
konj
,
as well as
wa,
but it was more flexible than sumo in dealing with foreigners.
Gaijin
players, especially those with big names in North America, were usually given special dispensation to train as they pleased
and foreign managers were allowed in as long as they did not veer too far from the Japanese orthodoxy.

But while hundreds of foreign ballplayers have crossed the Pacific to play in Japan, only a handful of foreign coaches and
managers have ever enjoyed gainful employment there. Although Japanese front office executives have long recognized that there
may be something to be gained by employing
gaikoku shunojin
(foreign heads), they have also worried that the imposition of Western teachings might have a corrupting influence on cherished
traditions, not to mention team harmony.

Familiar enough with the society to be keenly aware of the need for group harmony, two Japanese-Americans had reasonably successful
careers as managers in Japan in the early postwar era: Yoshio “Kaiser” Tanaka and Tadashi “Bozo” Wakabayashi from Hawaii;
the latter managed the 1958-59 Hanshin Tigers to consecutive second-place finishes. Wally Yonamine, a
nisei
from Maui who had played ten years with the Yomiuri Giants, managed the Chunichi Dragons and won a Central League pennant
in 1974.

On the other hand, Joe Lutz, a former Cleveland Indians coach who was hired to manage the Hiroshima Carp in 1975, lasted barely
a month amidst complaints he was trying to convert his players to American eating, bathing and umpire-baiting habits. Don
Blasingame, ex-MLB star and longtime player and coach in Japan, lasted a year and a half managing the Hanshin Tigers, weathering
constant caviling by the city’s obstreperous blue-collar fans that he played the wrong people and did not hold enough team
meetings.

Hanshin fans became livid when “Blazer” inserted an American named Dave Hilton into his starting lineup over a Japanese rookie,
Yukinobu Okada, who had been a nationally popular college star. Whenever Hilton came to bat, they showered him with abuse.
Blazer and Hilton received hate mail and death threats and were faced with angry mobs outside the park. An enraged crowd of
fans once nearly overturned a taxi carrying Hilton’s pregnant wife. Hilton, who found himself unable to play well in such
an environment, was released by the front office in midseason, while Blazer, upset over not being consulted on the signing
of Hilton’s replacement, resigned. Blasingame went on to manage the Nankai Hawks to two second division finishes, in 1981
and 1982.

Against this history, the news that the Chiba Lotte Marines had hired well-known MLB manager Bobby Valentine to run their
team in 1995 was greeted by lovers of
Nihon puro-yaky
with more than one set of raised eyebrows.

Valentine had a proven record of success in MLB. He was chosen by the Associated Press as American League Manager of the Year
in 1986, when he led the Texas Rangers from the cellar to second place in the Western Division. He had been offered the job
of helmsman for the Marines while he was working with the Triple-A Norfolk, Virginia, franchise and waiting for an MLB managerial
slot to open up.

A dyed-in-the-wool Pacific League doormat, Lotte had embarked on a radical rebuilding program under the leadership of new
general manager Tatsuro Hir
ka, one of the more respected thinkers in the Japanese game. A former shortstop who had a distinguished career with the Yomiuri
Giants in the ‘50s and ‘60s, he had gone on to win several pennants as field manager for the Yakult Swallows, then later the
Seibu Lions. A trim bespectacled man with a shrewd analytical mind—and the ability to physically mimic any player’s hitting
and fielding style and highlight its flaws—he had become famous for his own particular system of
kanri yaky
,
one in which he oversaw every facet of his players’ existence, including their diet and sex lives. His practices had been famous for their relentless season-long intensity—excessive even by Japan standards. He was a cold,
hubristic man, loathed and feared by many of his players, but the bottom line was that his teams usually won. Said a former
ace pitcher for the Lions, “I hated the SOB. But if you wanted to win, his way was the best way to do it.”