The Meaning of Ichiro (50 page)

One newspaper article breathlessly noted recent revelations about gays in Major League Baseball and stressed the need for
Matsui to be vigilant in the Yankee Stadium shower room when he bent over to pick up the soap. That same article mentioned
the reportedly keen interest of the San Francisco gay community in Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s “tight little butt” and Ichiro’s boyish
charm. The writer quoted ex-Expos and Mets hurler Masato Yoshii as saying he had been propositioned by a San Francisco taxi
driver, and reported the interesting fact one player always carried around a condom just in case he was raped in the U.S.;
he wanted to be able to provide protection.

In January, after being sent off to the U.S. by a small gathering of 800 of his closest friends at a downtown hotel, Matsui
finally crossed the Pacific and signed his contract ($21 million over three years) at a ceremony presided over by New York
mayor Michael Bloomberg. Then he headed for the Yankees training facility in sunny Tampa, Florida, trailed by more than 150
reporters, photographers and other media personnel from Japan, who gave new meaning to the term blanket coverage.

Matsui’s first
batting practice
in Tampa was televised live back to Japan at one o’clock in the morning. His first exhibition game home run earned several
pages of analytical articles in each of the leading sports dailies. And when he missed practice one morning because of a root
canal, a photo of his open mouth adorned the front page of the
Sports Nippon
daily newspaper. All in all, there were more Yankees preseason games televised live nationwide in Japan than were shown in
New York City.

The presence of so many Japanese reporters—the Yankees fielded 90 separate requests for interviews with Matsui on Opening
Day alone—quickly became an irritant to the Yankee front office, which had to deal with their constant demands. George Steinbrenner
growled at his media relations personnel to exercise more control, and they in turn began to vent their frustrations at the
unending requests for entry. (Said a representative of
Time
Asia, repeatedly rebuffed while pressing for a photo shoot of Godzilla, “It was the first time in my career anyone yelled
at me just for requesting access.”)

The Yankees would eventually restrict admission to the Yankee Stadium home locker room, limiting entry for the reporters from
Japan to groups of three at a time, moving them in and out in shifts of five to ten minutes each, like tourists in the Sistine
Chapel, while putting no such limits on the 25 or so New York–area-based reporters who regularly covered the team. Since space
in the Yankee Stadium press box was limited, most of the Japanese contingent was consigned to a dank workspace in the bowels
of the stadium where the field was visible only on TV monitors. The dismal state of affairs prompted more than one Japanese
media man to label the individuals ultimately responsible for the restrictions “racist.”

The only person who seemed unfazed by all the media hoopla was Matsui himself, who, after all, had spent years enduring such
scrutiny in Japan. He patiently sat for interviews, wearing a smile of seraphic sweetness on his face, answering the same
banal questions in session after session in a marathon display of courtesy. One memorable evening, he even took a dozen New
York baseball writers to dinner at an expensive restaurant, playing host through his interpreter and the smattering of English
he was picking up from the textbooks he studied daily, charming his guests with his polite attentiveness. It was a first in
Yankees history (as were the porno tapes he later gave them).

“Talking to the press and signing autographs as often as I can is my way of fulfilling my obligations as a player,” he told
startled and bemused MLB reporters. It was a view decidedly out of sync with the vast majority of current big leaguers.

After charming New Yorkers with appearances on
Regis and Kelly
and the
Late Show with David Letterman,
Matsui started off the official season with a bang, smashing a dramatic grand slam home run in his first game at Yankee Stadium,
a feat which understandably caused paroxysms of joy back in Japan. The historic ball was immediately flown back to Neagari,
where it was enshrined in the Matsui museum. Said one aged farmer, staring at the ball in wonder as a TV crew filmed him,
“You can see Hideki’s character in it.”

Then, however, came a difficult period of adjustment. After one month, Matsui was hitting .255, with only two home runs, and
was in the midst of a 9-for-47 slump. The only bright spots were his fielding and his 22 RBIs.

“It’s quite different here,” he confessed to the everpresent writers. “The MLB is much harder than I thought. It took me a while to realize it, but American pitchers will throw a strike on 2-2.
In Japan, they try to get you to hit something off the plate.” He kept trying to pull those two-seam fastballs, resulting,
unfortunately, in a succession of infield grounders.

Particularly embarrassing was the greatly anticipated first matchup between Seattle’s Ichiro and New York’s Matsui, a three-game
set scheduled for April 29 through May 1 at Yankee Stadium. The series did not live up to its fanfare. That included, for
the first time, simultaneous big spreads on the back page of the tabloids in both New York and Tokyo. The headline in the
New York Daily News
was “Ichiro vs. Godzilla” and featured cartoon caricatures of the two icons with the caption, “Japan’s big shots battle in
the Bronx.”

The confrontation was viewed by tens of millions of people and analyzed by an NHK guest commentator, Matsui’s ex-mentor and
manager Shigeo Nagashima (who took the opportunity of his visit to Yankee Stadium to inform New Yorkers about the “great nationalistic
pride as a Japanese that Matsui had inside”). It also featured one of the briefest pregame handshakes in MLB history—so fast
that most in the mob of photographers on the scene were unable to record it—as a distinctly uninterested Ichiro appeared out
of the dugout, offered a limp wrist without even removing his batting glove and then quickly escaped to the outfield. Adding
injury to insult, the Yankees were swept and Matsui managed only three miserable, insignificant singles.

Going into the last week of May, Matsui was on the verge of oblivion. His average stood at .249, with but five home runs (one
less than Ichiro, to add to his shame), contributing to a serious Yankees swoon. He had also taken a commanding MLB lead in
infield groundouts, earning the uncomplimentary nickname “4-3”’ for his one-bounders to second base, and was becoming an embarrassment
to executives at NHK, who had filled their sports programming schedule with wall-to-wall Matsui coverage.

The typical telecast of a Yankee games featured numerous reruns of Matsui at bat—in slow motion, wide screen, split screen
comparison with other at-bats, and all from as many different angles as the on-the-spot producers could think up. Being thrown
out at first time after time and vying for the league lead in double play balls (he would finish second with 25) was not an
automatic crowd pleaser in Japan. Nor was the title of “Groundball King,” as he was also known.

The absolute low point for Matsui came during that period when George Steinbrenner, tired of watching Matsui flail away helplessly,
declared, “This isn’t the man we signed on for.” That public insult was featured prominently in the tabloids back in Japan.

The normally unflappable Matsui fell into what was for him a depression, albeit one that was indiscernible to anyone else.
In reply to a question from a
Tokyo Sup
tsu
reporter as to how “enjoyable” his experience had been thus far, he said, “My heart’s in a slump…. I thought I was going
to have a good time playing. But I would not call this fun. It’s
hisshi
[desperation] every day. I’m just trying to keep up.”

“It’s not just one or two pitchers here who have great velocity,” he told another inquirer ruefully.
“Everyone
does.”

Matsui lived alone in a Manhattan high rise. He did his own laundry and socialized mostly with his assistant Isao Hir
ka, a few Japanese writers, visitors from Japan, and occasionally his teammates, if the services of an interpreter were available
(Matsui’s English having not yet arrived at a conversational level). Like most ballplayers, he eschewed the museums and art
galleries and other such NYC attractions, preferring to spend his free time eating at Japanese restaurants and going for long
reflective drives along the Hudson River in his new SUV. At night, he might visit the sedate, refined Manhattan hostess clubs
for Japanese ex-pats—such establishments a noted feature of the exclusive Japanese community in New York. One Tokyo tabloid,
worried about Matsui’s sex life, interviewed a top porno actress in Japan who volunteered to fly to the States and service
Matsui whenever required, just in case blonde, Western women were not to his liking.

Despite Matsui’s struggles at the plate, Yankees manager Joe Torre defended his new left fielder from the Far East, praising
his defense and his ability to drive in runs even while having to adjust to a new league. Torre and Matsui, in fact, exchanged
numerous missives during the season, translated by Matsui’s assistant Hir
ka, about how to cope with MLB pitching, and the Yankees pilot was certain that it was just a matter of time before Hideki
would show what he was really made of. “Stand closer to the plate,” was Torre’s advice.

Team batting coach Rick Down (destined to be ex–batting coach by the end of the year) added his analysis. “In Japan, Hideki
only had to face two major-league-level pitchers per team. Here, it’s a different story, but sooner or later he’ll catch fire
and I predict he’ll single-handedly carry this team for long stretches at a time.”

Both predictions proved to be accurate. At the end of May, Matsui suddenly righted himself. The reversal in his fortunes was
triggered by a discussion with Yankees catcher Jorge Posada about Matsui’s stance, which had grown increasingly timid and
defensive. “You’re not swinging aggressively enough,” he said. “And you’re not hitting the ball where it’s pitched. Cock the
bat and get your body into the swing.” The advice worked.

On May 29, Matsui hit a huge home run to help Roger Clemens win his 300th career game and delivered several more key hits
after that, including a three-run homer in Cincinnati and a dramatic grand slam versus the Mets in the widely watched crosstown
matchup on June 30. The blast was his 10th homer of the year. He had also raised his average to .300 and moved into the top
10 in the American League in RBIs.

Back home, a greatly relieved Japanese public participated vigorously in the All-Star balloting, overwhelmingly voting for
Hideki and putting him into the starting lineup for the 2003 midsummer classic, to the dissatisfaction of some in the American
media who thought there were more qualified players.

As
ESPN.com
’s Sean McAdam pointed out, for example, Matsui’s 64 RBIs at the midway point tied him for sixth place in the A.L.,
but he was not among the league leaders in batting average, total bases, run scored, slugging percentage, OBP or extra-base
hits. Nor was he even close to the top 10 in batting average with runners in scoring position.