The Meaning of Ichiro (47 page)

A famously sloppy dresser (baggy shorts and T-shirts), who wore a perpetually morose expression, he appeared often on TV celebrity
shows. In the first game of the 2001 Japan Series, he pitched eight innings of one-hit scoreless ball against Tuffy Rhodes
and the Kintetsu Buffaloes, striking out 12 batters and walking five in a 1-0 victory. The Swallows won the Championship in
five games and then Ishii had himself posted. He signed a four-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers worth $12.3 million.
He picked Los Angeles at the urging of his new wife, a TV announcer with Fuji Television, who had lived in L.A. and spoke
fluent English. The Dodgers had selected Ishii hoping that the fans might take to him the way they had to Hideo Nomo. It turned
out to be a false hope. Had they watched a documentary on Ishii filmed by NHK that spring, they might have toned down their
expectations in this regard. In it, Ishii is seen unwrapping a gift from Sammy Sosa, an autographed bat. He looks at it, lays
it down, shrugs and is heard to say, “I’m only interested in myself.”

Ishii was impressive in the first half of the year when he got off to a 10-1 start. Dodgers catcher Paul Lo Duca claimed no
left-hander in the National League had better stuff. But then Ishii inexplicably (or perhaps
predictably
would be the better word) fell to a 4—8 record over the next half of the season. His ERA ballooned to 4.27 late in the season
before a batted ball hit him in the forehead and put him in the hospital with a concussion. (He was lucky he wasn’t killed.)

Ishii’s critics complained that the speedballing solipsist was more interested in beach ball and other off-the-field activities
near his beachside digs than he was in the goings-on at Dodger Stadium. His coach Jim Colborn found himself in the unusual
position of urging Ishii to mingle more with teammates and do more to win their trust. “Try to come earlier,” he suggested,
“spending time getting to know these guys. It will pay off in the long run on the field.” It was something coaches in Japan
had long been prompting their foreign charges to do.

In the weeks after the All-Star break, Ishii had become an object of derision in the Dodger Stadium press box. In late August,
he was kayoed yet again, this time in the first inning of a game against the Atlanta Braves, and was booed loudly. This came
on the night after a team from Louisville had defeated a Japanese squad 1-0 in the Little League World Series final, telecast
on ESPN. A suggestion by an American reporter that Ishii be traded to the Little Leagues in return for the 12-year-old Japanese
ace drew laughter and nods of assent by other writers. Cracked the reporter, “At least this one would have better control.”

Recovered from his concussion, gratified by the show of concern over his welfare by his teammates—“The letters and the visits
and the words of encouragement really moved me,” he was quoted as saying—and concerned about his future perhaps for the first
time in his career, some people said they thought they detected a new attitude. (He also had a new son to take care of.) He
improved his conditioning routine with extra time on the treadmill each morning in Dodgertown camp.

Said his pitching coach Jim Colborn, attributing Ishii’s second-half slide in ‘02 primarily to his inability to adjust to
the longer American season, “When you redline your effort from Day One without any sense of where the finish line is, you’re
eventually going to peter out. Certainly, that was the case with Ishii. He’s got it now, I bet you. You watch.”

We watched.

And Ishii came through with a record of 9-7, 3.86 ERA and 147 IP—which included a stint on the disabled list with an injured
knee. He followed that with a mark of 13-8 and a gangrenous ERA of 4.71. He was so unreliable that, in the end, the Dodgers
simply left him out of their playoff pitching rotation.

Japanese fans are finally standing up to Japanese sports, which for so long have resisted internationalization by using every
trick in the book to hold on to its popularity like a desperate dictator. And the Giants have been the biggest offenders.
To wear a
Kyojin-gun
uniform is no longer every schoolboy’s dream. The stars of the future are looking to follow in the footsteps of their heroes
Nakata and Ichiro—to become soccer stars in Europe or baseball stars in America. Giants’ owner Tsuneo Watanabe may continue
to do his utmost to reverse this trend. Yet, Watanabe and the Giants are fighting a losing battle. They cannot reverse the
tide of Japanese people finding the confidence to succeed on an international playing field.

Y
o
T
AKATSUKI,
A
SAHI
S
HIMBUN,
2002

Of all the players to come to the MLB, Matsui was the one who most represented the Japanese personality. He was the most normal.

Y
USUKE
K
AMATA, PRODUCER,
F
UJI-
S
ANKEI
C
OMMUNICATIONS

Matsui reflected a wider spectrum of Japanese society than Ichiro and Nomo who, while excelling at what they did, were somewhat
alienated and unhappy because they really didn’t fit in anywhere.

M
ARK
S
CHREIBER, LONGTIME
T
OKYO-BASED AUTHOR

I
T WAS FINALLY TIME TO FACE THE CAMERAS.
B
ASEBALL SLUGGER
Hideki Matsui looked at the battery of reporters in the banquet room of Tokyo’s plush Imperial Hotel and cleared his throat. Into the breathless silence, he delivered a grim-faced, 40-minute monologue. His words were unrehearsed and he occasionally
stuttered with the emotion of it all. He had consulted with scores of family members, friends, teammates, former teachers;
he had even asked God for guidance. He had tried to tell himself he needed to stay for the prosperity of Japanese baseball.
But in the end, the nine-time All-Star’s love for his team had given way to a stronger personal ambition. He was opting to
become a free agent and go to America to play.

Although others had preceded Matsui to the majors, he was special. A left-handed hitter with 332 career home runs and three
MVPs under his belt, Matsui had batted cleanup for most of his career on the legendary Giants, a spot occupied by some of
the greatest names the Japanese game had produced: Tetsuharu Kawakami, the “God of Batting”; Shigeo Nagashima, “Mr. Giants”;
Sadaharu Oh, who hit more lifetime home runs than the great Hank Aaron; and matinee idol Tatsunori Hara, Matsui’s manager
in 2002. It was a sacred trust and Hideki Matsui had been the latest keeper of the flame. Abandoning such a prestigious post,
not to mention leaving the proud
Kyojin,
simply wasn’t done.

Until now, that is.

Matsui bowed his head and apologized profusely to Giants management, teammates and the fans. But then, after expressing more
contrition for his selfishness, he said, “I have to do this. Even if people think I’m a traitor.”

It was hard to envision an American superstar like, say, Barry Bonds making such a speech, but fans of Hideki Matsui would
have expected nothing less. For nine years, the 6′2′′, 210-pound hero toiled industriously for the Giants, never missing a
game despite a plethora of injuries. His streak of 1,250 consecutive games played was the second longest in Japan. With an
unparalleled work ethic and unglamorous ways, he was a diligent poster boy for the Japanese everyman, an empathetic hero for
those who wondered if their endless, anonymous toil as salarymen, or office ladies, might ever pay off. In an era where Japanese
heroes tended to be pop stars with spiky hair and equally spiky personalities, he was reassuring evidence that the old ways
still survived.

An unabashedly nice guy, always ready to accommodate his adoring Japanese fans with an autograph and reporters with an interview,
Matsui had never been known to complain about anything to anyone—not even to an umpire. He was a living monument to the words
of Yomiuri founder Matsutaro Shoriki, whose deathbed wish several decades earlier was “May the Giants always be strong and
may they always be gentlemen.”

So respected, in fact, was Japan’s iron man that when he announced his seismic move to MLB, the daily
Nikkan Sports
noted that it was the first selfish act Matsui had committed in his 28 years.

Mercurial Yomiuri Giants honcho Tsuneo Watanabe had done everything he could to keep his star. He had lashed out at players
like Ichiro for abandoning their country and had accused Ichiro’s team, the Orix BlueWave, of “selling out Japan” when they
accepted $13 million for Suzuki’s rights via the newly instituted posting system. He even equated MLB’s invasion of Japan
to the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and his Black Ships a century and a half before, prying open that closed island
nation to world trade after two and a half centuries of isolation.

In May 2001, Watanabe had appeared at the Giants’ home ballpark, the Tokyo Dome, with his crony, the former prime minister
and noted right-wing hawk Yasuhiro Nakasone, symbolically at his side, imploring his fellow owners, in an impromptu press
conference, to exhibit a little more “sports patriotism.” (The irony of such a plea surely did not escape these other 11 men,
who for some years now had watched him raid their teams.)

In light of this PR offensive and the likelihood that the departure of a star of Matsui’s magnitude would cause the Yomiuri
fan base to further erode, most fans had assumed that the Giants cleanup hitter would be loath to go against his powerful
boss’s very public wish that he stay put. Thus, at the end of the year, when Matsui turned down a $64 million, six-year offer
from Yomiuri—the highest in NPB history—the nation was collectively astonished. Japan’s most obedient salaryman had stood
up and the country was forced to take notice.

Hideki Matsui was born in snowy Ishikawa prefecture on the Sea of Japan on June 12, 1974, the second of two sons, and was
raised in the small industrial hamlet of Neagari. His father, Masao, worked for a computer software company and also managed
a private church founded by Hideki’s grandmother Ruriko Matsui, a shaman faith healer who specialized in sick children and
who reportedly had the gift of second sight. It was called the
Ruri Ky
kai
(Church of Ruri) and was affiliated with the 50,000-member
Tenso K
ky
,
a nationwide religion that attempted to consolidate the teachings of Christianity, Buddhism and Shintoism, admonishing its
followers against greed, anger, gluttony, dishonesty and other evils proscribed by all three.

Athleticism ran in the Matsui family. Hideki’s mother may have been so traditional that she kept her opinions to herself in
the presence of men, but she had also been a star volleyball player in her school days—the daughter of a kendo expert and
younger sister of a third-degree black belt holder in
aikido.
Young Matsui, always a head taller than his classmates as a boy growing up, was himself a multi-sport phenom, earning a first-degree
black belt in judo and winning a city-wide walk-on sumo tournament.