The Meaning of Ichiro (33 page)

At this, Mitchell went ballistic. He accused the Hawks of spying on him, which was sort of stating the obvious because that
was exactly what they had been doing. Daiei responded by refusing to pay him his salary for the month of May, estimated at
nearly $400,000, upon which Mitchell packed up his suitcases—all several dozen of them—and returned to the United States.
Both parties later sued each other, unsuccessfully.

The next American after Mitchell to give cross-cultural relations a black eye was Brian Warren, a late-inning right-handed
relief pitcher who toiled for the Chiba Lotte Marines. He was guilty of a number of transgressions in his two years with the
team, acts which earned him the nickname “Devil Man.” He once described his own team to a reporter as “second rate shit.”
Another famous Warrenism was “I can’t wait to get out of here.” In 2000, in what many consider his crowning achievement, he
became the first person in the history of Japanese baseball to be fined for giving the middle finger.

Warren had a habit of scuffing up the ball to make it break more sharply, a practice clearly forbidden by league rules on
either side of the Pacific. Opposing players frequently complained about Warren’s treatment of the baseballs they were trying
to hit. One night in June 2000, a Seibu Lions coach spied Warren making a rather large abrasion on the cover of the ball between
innings and demanded his head from the umpires, or at least enforcement of the penalty for scuffing or defacing a ball, which
was ejection. However, since Warren had already been taken out of the game by his manager for strategic reasons, the protest
was moot.

To the Japanese mind-set, being caught cheating this way was no small thing. True, various forms of institutionalized cheating
were, if not sanctioned exactly, accepted as social realities—witness the frequent political bribery, graft and violations
of campaign contributions law; the regularity with which corporate agents stole industrial and trade secrets; and the fracturing
of tax and accounting standards to disguise the extent of post-Bubble disasters in the corporate and financial worlds. But
getting caught red-handed stealing signs was something worthy of front page headlines in the sports dailies. So was defacing
a baseball, especially given the respect, if not reverence, for the equipment demanded by Buddhist and
bushido
tradition. It was especially unforgivable in an outsider who was supposedly there because of his superior skills.

In Warren’s case, public contrition was the only acceptable remedy. The next day, however, rather than grovel in apology,
he arrived at the ballpark with a glove he had fitted out with a screwdriver, a fork, and a tape cutter sticking out of various
gaps in the leather. The joke worked, and Warren was temporarily out of hot water.

The next time Seibu and Lotte met in July, and Warren was put in the game, Seibu manager Osamu Higashio made repeated requests
of the home plate umpire to check the balls that Warren had thrown, attempting in the process to disrupt his concentration.
In retaliation, Warren ended his game-saving performance that night by stepping off the mound and flipping the middle-finger
salute to Higashio in the Lions dugout.

Now, not all Japanese understand the seriousness of that gesture. There is no taboo against its use in the media (nor for that matter is there against the word “fuck” and its
katakana
equivalent
“fakku”;
it’s just a word they hear repeatedly in Hollywood movies). But Higashio understood what Warren was trying to convey and
filed a formal complaint. Warren was subsequently reprimanded and his place in history assured.

Darrell May broke his share of taboos as well. May was a left-handed pitcher who had joined the Osaka-based Hanshin Tigers
in 1998 at the age of 27, after a brief and unremarkable stint in MLB bullpens. Playing for what was hands down the worst
team in baseball, perhaps in all of Central League history, May compiled a respectable enough record of 4-9 with an ERA of
3.40 in his first year, but became the subject of constant criticism when the new manager Katsuya Nomura—stepfather of agent
Don Nomura (see
Chapter 6
)—took over the following year.

Nomura was Japan’s greatest catcher. His 657 career home runs, while playing mostly for the Nankai Hawks in their tiny park
(280 down the lines, 350 to dead center), ranked second only to Sadaharu Oh’s total of 868. Nomura retired in 1980, after
26 years as a player, and went on to pilot the Yakult Swallows to three Japan Championships in 1993, 1995 and 1997. Nicknamed
“Moose” for his hulking Berraesque physique and droopjaw mien, he had an almost disdainful attitude toward his players. His
philosophy was common in Japanese sports: “Don’t praise your players. Otherwise they will get big heads and slack off.”

While his stepson Don was busy paving the way for Japanese stars to emigrate to MLB, the elder Nomura himself was not overly
crazy about American players with big egos, fat paychecks and what he saw as a lackadaisical attitude toward practice and
discipline.

Nomura axed many American players in his long managerial career. Perhaps the most famous axee was Larry Parrish, a former
Detroit Tigers star who had played for the Swallows in 1989, the year before Nomura took over as manager, leading the league
in home runs with 42 and finishing second in RBIs with 103. Parrish expected a fat new contract for 1990; instead he was fired
by the incoming Nomura, who criticized the aging first baseman’s defense, which, in truth, was not helped by a gimpy knee.

“I was completely stunned,” said Parrish, who played every game. “I just had the best year of my life and they fire me. I
couldn’t believe it.”

Then there was Tom O’Malley, who helped Nomura’s Swallows win a Japan Championship in 1995, hitting .302 with 31 home runs
and 87 RBIs in the regular season and winning both the Central League and Japan Series MVPs. He sparkled again in 1996, marking
the sixth year in a row he had hit over .300, but then was suddenly given his walking papers, Nomura citing O’Malley’s poor
fielding, advancing age (37) and slowness afoot.

Rex Hudler, who in 1993 hit .300 with 13 homers in 410 at-bats and played consistently good infield defense in his first year
was also invited not to return. Hudler spoke for most Swallows foreigners when he told a reporter, “Nomura was one of the
strangest managers I have ever played for. I said hello to him every day when I arrived at the ballpark for a solid month
during one stretch. Sometimes, he’d grunt. But most of the time, he ignored me. He just stood there frowning.”

Midway through the 1999 season, the Tigers were once again buried in last place, 14 games under .500. Nomura cited May’s inconsistent
pitching, which stood at 6-7 with a 4.25 ERA at the halfway point, as one of the primary causes.

Now, moderation of temper was not May’s strongest suit. On July 18, 1999, he had been suspended for six games for bumping
an umpire. And while serving his suspension, he took a brief team-approved trip to Guam to have a painfully swollen jaw treated
by an American dental specialist living there. May’s girlfriend Heather accompanied him, a fact not missed by the ever-vigilant
sports press.

When May returned, Nomura sent him to the farm team. Nomura complained that because May was in Guam, he had missed two whole
days of practice and was therefore not physically ready to pitch. Besides, Nomura said, the Tigers “didn’t need any foreign
pitchers.”

May, who had been eager to return and claim his place in the starting rotation, refused to go. He appealed to the president
of the Tigers, but when the executive sided with Nomura, May requested his release. When that too was denied, May took matters
into his own hands. He wrote a letter to all Hanshin fans and had it published in a newspaper, handing out his own English
release in the belief that his interpreter might water down any remarks in Japanese. It essentially accused Nomura of being
a xenophobe.

On August 6, 1999, I officially asked the organization to release me. My request was denied by the Hanshin Tigers. This disappoints
me greatly as I feel my request for my release was a valid one. I feel that our manager, Nomura, is against having foreign
players as part of his team. I feel as though he had not treated me as a professional nor has he given me the same respect
I have shown him. Due to this, I have decided if asked I will not return for a third season next year to the Tigers, as I
feel it would not be in my best interests professionally or personally. Once again, I asked for my release because I felt
it would be in the best interests of the ball club as well as myself. I want the fans to know that I thank them for their
generosity and kindness and support towards me. I have truly loved playing in Japan because of them. It is going to be difficult
to forget the Hanshin Tigers fans as they are the best fans in the world, but it is obvious to me now that the club does not
have belief in my ability. Thanks again to the fans and the press that have been so supportive of me over the past two years.

That certainly got everyone’s attention. One of the great sins for a player in Japan to commit is to publicly criticize team
management. And May’s criticism was about as public as you could get. Both English and Japanese versions of his letter were
plastered across the front pages of all the morning sports dailies, while evening TV news programs gave them prominent play.
It was an extraordinary public embarrassment for the Tigers and there were loud calls for May’s head.

The
Nikkan Sup
tsu
ran a huge headline quoting a furious Nomura saying,
“May Yamero!”
(May Get the Hell Out).
“Gocha gocha iu nara yamero”
(If you’re going to shoot off your big mouth, just quit), ran the subhead. A chagrined front office executive exploded at May for airing the team’s dirty laundry in the Japanese media. It was something that just wasn’t done. “If you don’t want
to play for this team,” he said, echoing the sports sheet, “and if you can’t keep quiet, just quit.”

Unfortunately for all concerned, quitting was not an option for May because in the event he did turn in his uniform and glove,
according to his contract, the Tigers would not be obligated to pay him for the rest of the season and that came to a considerable
amount of money.

Although May had some sympathizers—Yujiro Fujiwara, a 59-year-old independent contractor and Tigers fan, was quoted by the
Nikkan
as saying, “Nomura should not be criticizing his players to the press. If I were May I’d do the same thing”—his actions amounted
to the scandal of the year.

Hanshin suspended May and threatened to keep him in limbo for the rest of the season, purely out of spite for embarrassing
the team, but they eventually wearied of having to deal with the matter and granted him the release that he wished for.

But May wasn’t finished yet. A free agent, he signed on with the Yomiuri Giants, the Tigers’ archrival. Under manager Nagashima,
the man who had overshadowed Nomura in the press for so many years, he responded with his best season ever, beating the Tigers
several times. He also made a point of praising Nagashima at every opportunity; the implied contrast was lost neither on Nomura
nor the fans.

“Nomura said hello to me about three times all the while I was there,” May told the Yomiuri newspaper’s Ken Marantz, “but
Nagashima is very friendly. He talks to me all the time.”

May finished the year with a mark of 12-7 and an ERA of 2.95. (The following year he was 10-8 with a 4.13 ERA.) He also added
injury to insult in June when he nearly beaned Tigers batter Yutaka Wada with a pitched ball (in retaliation for Hanshin batters
repeatedly stepping out of the batter’s box as he began his delivery)—earning himself a second suspension and a 500,000-yen
fine. So infuriated was May at this that he lashed out at Japanese baseball and the media with a flurry of F-words, which
were then printed in the headlines of several sports dailies by obliging editors.

May’s relations with the press reached a nadir on March 8, 2001, when he left practice early complaining of a sore thigh.
Emerging from the training room, he found himself surrounded by querying reporters who wondered if he weren’t jaking it. He
sprayed spittle on a photographer’s camera and unleashed another flurry of
fakku
words, which also wound up in the dailies.

Enough was apparently enough. According to one report, May was offered a three-year $10 million contract by Yomiuri, and he
turned it down to return to MLB with the Kansas City Royals.

“I didn’t grow up wanting to play Japanese baseball,” May told the
Kansas City Star.
“I was ready to come back home after the first season, but the money kept getting better. I just felt four years was enough.”

Not all the tales of woe involved imported players: Take the strange case of Mike DiMuro, a young American umpire headed for
the big leagues, who was brought out to Japan by Central League officials to help raise the level of umpiring in NPB, which,
it was universally agreed by all who had experienced it, was sorely in need of a boost. Unlike in the U.S., there are no umpiring
schools in Japan and arbiters were hired on the basis of their performance in brief tryouts and their personal connections.
They were often failed ex-ballplayers, which was perhaps the main reason for their humble place in the general scheme of things
NPB.