The Meaning of Ichiro (29 page)

Smiling in Seattle: Ichiro would go on to sign a new contract worth $44 million. Sasaki, however, citing “family reasons,”
would suddenly return to Japan for the 2004 season, giving up some $9.5 million remaining on his two-year deal. Insiders would
say the real reason had more to do with his declining effectiveness and the loss of 10 mph on his fastball than anything else.
(Photo by JIJI PRESS/PANA)

Nomura took Soriano’s case to arbitration, a hearing lasting several days that was adjudicated by the NPB commissioner and
the two league presidents. Nomura was barred from attending.

The resulting ruling was, not surprisingly, adverse. So Nomura advised Soriano to take a page from Nomo’s book and voluntarily
retire. Soriano took this advice, left Japan for the U.S., and began taking part in tryouts for MLB teams.

The news of this defection was not well received in the Hiroshima camp. The Carp filed an injunction to block Soriano from
playing anywhere else, claiming that he was still their property. They sent letters to all MLB clubs expressing an interest
in Soriano, demanding that those organizations cease further attempts at communicating with him.

Once again the MLB Executive Council was convened to decide the matter, this time in New York. Among those attending was a
delegation led by NPB executive secretary Yoshiaki Kanai, the ex-reporter who had no legal background, accompanied by several
minions who were equally untrained in the law. Present on the U.S. side were MLB officials and a cadre of lawyers—men who
had spent considerable time in federal courts fighting on behalf of human rights issues.

Until that time, everyone in the United States had assumed that the operative baseball agreement between the two countries
was the one signed in 1967, the one which allowed voluntarily retired players to emigrate abroad. The Americans were unaware
that the NPB in the post-Nomo era had unilaterally expanded the scope of their worldwide protections under the 1967 Working
Agreement, because the Japanese side had failed to notify them and there was thus nothing else in writing to cancel out the
Kanai–Murray letters. It was during this meeting that—surprise!—they first became aware of it, when the Japanese delegation
began arguing that the Carp claim on Soriano was validated by the arbitrary amendment they had made in their own relevant
Japanese-language documents.

One American official was said to be so irate at the Japanese side’s unilateral attempt to change the rules that he had difficulty
maintaining his composure. He faced his Japanese counterparts and said, “We in Major League Baseball simply cannot tolerate
this kind of thing—you cannot keep trying to change the rules.”

Director of baseball operations William Murray, of Kanai-Murray letters fame and a noted stickler for detail, said, somewhat
testily, “For the past three years, we have been relying on this document for an interpretation of ‘voluntary retirement’
in Japan. Now you are asking us to give blind support to you for arbitrarily changing the system? … It’s very difficult.”

An American witness to that meeting actually found himself feeling embarrassed for the Japanese visitors over their lack of
professionalism, lamenting, “These guys do not appear to have a clue about what the term ‘human rights’ means.” Added another
observer, “It was a joke that these guys were representing Japanese baseball. They might as well have sent Soupy Sales.”

In a prepared statement, acting commissioner Bud Selig publicly criticized the Japanese commissioner’s office for having unilaterally
amended, in 1996, the conventions referred to in the 1967 agreement without going through proper channels.

A terse, pointed memo was dispatched to all major league general managers and scouting directors. It went as follows:

After extensive communication with the Japanese Baseball Commissioner’s Office, including recent meetings held in New York,
we have come to the conclusion that Mr. Soriano was or should have been placed on the Voluntary Retired List of the Hiroshima
Club. Based on earlier correspondence from the Japanese Baseball Commissioner’s Office at the time Hideo Nomo was signed and
the Japanese professional baseball rules, players placed on the Voluntary Retired List may only play for their former Japanese
team should they choose to play in Japan. However, Japanese Voluntarily Retired players may play for any other team outside
of Japan. The current U.S.-Japan Player Agreement does not restrict Major League Clubs’ ability to sign a player on the Japanese
Voluntarily Retired List.

Thus was history made. Soriano, now declared a free agent, signed with the Yankees. Also, in the wake of that meeting, the
old 1967 Working Agreement was scrapped and a new protocol took shape, which forbade Japanese professional baseball from unilaterally
making changes in its rules, and stipulated that such an attempt in the future would result in an immediate revocation of
said agreement.

The Hiroshima Carp, understandably upset over the Soriano affair and Nomura’s role in it, retaliated against the agent in
a series of nuisance lawsuits that were eventually settled out of court, with no penalties levied. The Carp took no legal
action in the U.S.

In December 1998, the new agreement, forged between the respective commissioner’s offices of Major League Baseball and Nippon
Professional Baseball, went into effect. It was called the Posting System and under this framework, there would theoretically
be no more Nomos, Irabus or Sorianos. In the posting system, all 30 major league clubs in the United States would be allowed
to bid for a Japanese player, made available by a Japanese club, with the exclusive negotiating rights going to the club which
submits the highest bid. It thus represented a new, third path for Japanese players to go to the U.S. (The other two, of course,
were the granting of an outright release or exercising one’s rights as a free agent after playing nine full seasons.) The
infamous voluntary retirement clause, or “Nomo Clause,” would no longer be in effect.

Under the provisions of this agreement, Japanese clubs would post the names of players whom they were willing to make available
(assuming, of course, the players involved were amenable) during the off-season period from November 1 to March 2. Within
four days of posting, any interested big-league team would be permitted to submit a bid to the major league commissioner.
The bid would be the amount to be paid to the Japanese club if the major league team did in fact wind up signing the player
they had bid for. The MLB commissioner would then determine the highest bidder from all participating clubs wishing to acquire
the services of said player and that lucky franchise would have 30 days to attempt to sign him.

In the event the Japanese club found the bid figure unacceptable (which it fully had the authority to do) or the U.S. club,
for some reason, failed to sign the player in question after reaching agreement with his team (by, say, not offering enough
money), the player’s name would be removed from the available list and he would not be eligible to be posted again until the
following November 1, meaning that the player would then have to play at least another season in Japan.

The posting system was obviously designed to benefit the Japanese team owners; it allowed them to maintain the integrity of
their game for the time being and to control the flow of players to the U.S., and was thus in keeping with the long tradition
of the professional game in Japan, whereby the front office wielded power over their players like feudal lords over their
vassals. The man who devised the system, Shigeyoshi “Steve” Ino, then general manager of the Orix BlueWave, said simply, “Well,
it gave the players something more than they had before. It was a way of meeting their needs as well.”

That the system would not be very beneficial to the player went without saying. A U.S. team that wanted to sign a Japanese
player had to pay for him twice, once to the team that owned the player’s contract and once to the player—an expensive restriction.

Many American observers think the posting deal is a violation of U.S. antitrust law and an infringement of human rights, because
the system prohibits a player from cutting the best deal possible for himself. MLBPA attorney Gene Orza questioned its legality
“because it limits a player’s freedom of choice; it totally ignores his rights.” Nomura called it simply “a slave auction.”
Added Tony Attanasio, Ichiro’s agent, “The player literally gets zero advantage from it… . the Japanese teams benefit by holding
the players hostage.”

Orza and many other knowledgeable attorneys believed that a lawsuit challenging the validity of the posting system in a U.S.
court could, in fact, be won. All that was needed was a willing Japanese player with the patience and capital to pursue the
matter in America’s judicial system. The Japanese player would have to unilaterally leave his team, go to the States and sign
with an American club. Then, when Major League Baseball and Japanese baseball took their inevitable action to block the move, the player would have
to file a lawsuit claiming price-fixing and market discrimination.

It is worth noting that the Japanese Professional Baseball Players Association never ratified the Posting Agreement. Nor,
in fact, were they ever consulted about its imposition by the owners. The MLBPA offered to help the NPBPA fight the new system
in court, but received a tepid response.

“Going to court,” said union chief Toru Matsubara, “especially if the Japanese system is involved, simply takes too long,
so the problem can’t be helped.”

“You can’t force the Japanese players to stand up for their interests,” replied Orza. “The U.S. players’ union can only do
so much.”

Whether it remains in place or is dismantled, the Posting Agreement will certainly go down in history as a tribute to the
efforts of Don Nomura to liberate Japanese players. For, whatever his real or imagined faults, it was he who found and opened
up the loopholes that led to its creation. Had he not, who knows how long it would have taken for Japanese to make their mark
in the major leagues.

Baseball society in Japan is a strange beast. It would be too easy, and not entirely accurate, to say that it is as closed
as some of the Japanese markets. Baseball in Japan is open to players and coaches from the United States, Taiwan and South
Korea, but at the same time, the cartel nature of the game bottles up the competitive spirit.

The Japanese approach to the sport incorporates moral guidance, business management and company-based role assignments, making
professional baseball a simple job for wages. Baseball in Japan has lost its passion and imagination.

Y
OICHI
F
UNABASHI
,
A
SAHI
S
HIMBUN

I
T IS NOT POSSIBLE TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF BASEBALL IN
J
APAN WITH
-out discussing the impact of the
gaijin.
It was an American professor from Maine named Horace Wilson who is generally regarded as being the one to have introduced
the game—ahead of other Meiji Era American professors in Japan who exposed their students to the sport—when, in the early
1870s, he taught his students at Tokyo’s elite
Kaisei Gakk
b
sub
ru’s
basic rules and fundamentals. For this, Wilson was eventually inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.