The Meaning of Ichiro (54 page)

However, others argue that the loss of NPB’s biggest stars, however painful, is not exactly the end of the world, because
realistically speaking, NPB does not have that much talent to lose. Experts estimate that there are anywhere from two dozen
to three dozen MLB-level players in Japan—Valentine’s claim of “a hundred” notwithstanding. Few of them approach the Ichiro
or Matsui level, while the liberty to move abroad via free posting and free agency takes years to attain. Then too, not every
professional in Japan is that eager to take on MLB. Many borderline players of, say, Shinjo’s level, are afraid to risk their
well-paying jobs and their stature in Japan for a spot on the bench with some MLB team. After Kazuo Matsui, in fact, legitimately
available stars are few and far between.

Said Shigetoshi Hasegawa of the game he had left behind, “While players from the Dominican Republic or Venezuela must leave
their homeland to make a good living at baseball, Japanese players can still make a good salary at home. That’s why I don’t
think everybody wants to come to the States. With the different culture and the different language, it’s pretty tough. So
Japan will continue to have good baseball. The game is still strong.”

Moreover, many young amateur players are reluctant to start their careers in the U.S. minor leagues, where teams do not provide
interpreters, where pay is barely above subsistence level and where their games are not televised back in Japan for family
and friends to see. Better, they believe, to start in the comfort of the NPB minors, where at least they are paid a living
wage and have a dormitory room in which to hang their baseball cap and jockstrap, or perhaps try a season or two on one of
the industrial league teams, where one can play ball as a company employee.
Shakai-jin yaky
,
as it is called, provides a steady number of players to NPB each year (17 in 2003, as opposed to 67 from high school and
universities). For most players, it makes sense to build up a name, make some money and enjoy some recognition at home before
thinking about a move abroad.

A merger between the NPB and MLB is one idea that has been mentioned occasionally. In such a scenario, a handful of teams,
utilizing both local and imported talent, would form a Japan division, joining either the American or the National League
(or perhaps both, if two Japan divisions were created). Japanese stars who want to test themselves against big-league competition
would not have to pack up and move all the way to North America to do so; they would simply join one of Japan’s entries in
MLB. At the same time, according to MLBPA attorney Gene Orza, there are any number of skilled major leaguers who, having participated
in exhibition tours of Japan, would jump at the chance to play in a city like Tokyo, as long as it was
Major League
Baseball and not the practice-until-you-die variety.

Speculations about an NPB–MLB merger are, well, just that. Among the many obstacles it would face are 10-hour flights (unless
Boeing Aircraft’s new super-fast passenger jet program, which would cut flight time in half between Japan and the West Coast,
is resurrected), debilitating jet lag, higher costs, and other logistical headaches, such as the need for work visas and processing
through customs. The Chicago Cubs played their first two official games of the 2000 season in Tokyo (versus the New York Mets),
but then returned home and, exhausted, lost their next 10 in a row; no one on the team was eager to repeat the experience.
A season opener between the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland A’s was canceled in 2003 due to terrorist worries. But the New
York Yankees successfully opened their 2004 season in Tokyo, and with all the fans they had acquired there, it seemed like
just another home opener.

Any serious attempt at a merger of such great pith and marrow, however, would require a wholesale restructuring, from a system
of corporate sponsorship to one of business orientation, the building of a better minor league system and overcoming what
seems sure to be virulent owner opposition to any American invasion of their markets. The Yomiuri mandarins, in particular,
seem unlikely to smile.

Of an NPB–MLB merger, sniffed
Kyojin
honcho Tsuneo Watanabe, “It’s totally impossible. The idea is nonsense and has no merit; people like Whiting who favor such an idea show they don’t understand anything about Japanese baseball.”

The sense of national pride that many Japanese players feel further confuses the issue. Ichiro Suzuki, a man who three years
earlier had said that “the only thing I will miss about Japanese baseball is my dog,” seemed to contradict himself in a joint
interview with Nagashima for the
Yomiuri Shimbun
New Year’s Day issue in January 2003. “My wish in the long run,” he said, “is for Japanese baseball to be recognized as the
best in the world, even though that distinction belongs to the major leagues at the moment. I feel that way because I am Japanese.
Sure, I want fans to see regular-season games (like Seattle vs. Oakland) to feel the seriousness, the aggressiveness of them
all. But take Koji Uehara’s performance at the 2002 Japan-MLB All-Star Series. He fanned Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi three,
four times each, and that made me happy. I was on the other [MLB] bench, but rooting for Uehara. I want Japanese baseball
to be the best in the world.”

When asked about Hideki Matsui’s then-impending defection to the States, Ichiro further replied, “It’s impossible to control
your growing desire to play in the major leagues because we all know that it’s the best in the world. Many are worried what
effect Matsui’s move to the majors would have on Japanese pro baseball. But I don’t think that shock would last long…. As
an athlete, you have to compete against the world’s best. In that sense, Japanese baseball lags behind a bit. I hope Matsui’s
move will open the closed doors. In the short run, the popularity of baseball might recede a bit. But in the long term, I
believe, it would have more positive effects than negative ones. It has to happen to become the No. 1 baseball. If you remain
an outsider, you never know what’s going on inside. There’re many things that you haven’t got a clue about if you have no
first-hand experience.”

Overlooked in discussions about the death rattle of the NPB is the fact that it is still very much alive. Although MLB has
made real inroads—an average of 1.5 million viewers were estimated to have watched the 272 games shown in Japan in 2003, with
12.5 million viewers watching each early-morning cast of the six games of the 2003 World Series (this compared with an average
of 20.1 in the U.S. on Fox in prime time), and a month later MLB signed a TV deal with Japan estimated to be worth $275 million
over six years, which was triple the previous contract—surveys still show that
Nihon Puro-Yaky
has remained the favorite sport of well over half of all sports fans. Although Yomiuri TV ratings dropped to 14.6 percent
on average in 2003, an all-time low for that team, that still works out to approximately 18 million viewers a night. Moreover,
overall attendance was up by 3.1 percent, to 23,664,500, an all-time high—a state of affairs some people actually attribute
to the success of Japanese in MLB, which, perversely, has lent more credibility to the local game even though its top stars
are no longer in the country.

The enhanced interest in the 2003 version of the NPB was also due in part to the Osaka Hanshin Tigers, a team frequently compared
to the Chicago Cubs or the Boston Red Sox in terms of passionate local fan support and historical futility. The Hanshin club
won their first pennant in 18 years, drawing over 3 million fans for the first time in the team’s history (the third franchise
in either league to surpass the figure in 2003, after Yomiuri and Daiei), earning prime time “Golden Hour” ratings for many
of their games, mostly those versus the Giants. In fact, four national networks interrupted their regular evening programming
to telecast the moment that Hanshin clinched the flag. The event caused so much excitement that an estimated 5,300 fans, overcome
with elation, leapt exuberantly into the highly toxic Dotonbori River in downtown Osaka to celebrate—an act of lunacy that
has become a local ritual in that boisterous metropolis, previously demonstrated after Japan’s last victory in 2002 World
Cup soccer play. It resulted in the death of one overexcited soul, who made the jump three times but only came up twice.

On the other hand, pessimists were happy to point out that Hanshin had
not
won the Japan Series, falling to the Daiei Hawks in seven games, and that their manager’s subsequent retirement, forced by
bad health, did not bode well for future repeats of the Miracle of ‘03. Moreover, the Japan Champion Hawks were so financially
unstable that the front office deemed it necessary to unload their popular power hitter/third baseman Hiroki Kokubo to the
Yomiuri Giants—for nothing—just to rid themselves of his expensive contract.

The future of the NPB was increasingly being seen in the establishment of an Asian League, or, in lieu of that, a round-robin
playoff system involving the champions of the ROK, Taiwan and Japan pro leagues, in which the winner would be awarded a wild
card slot in the MLB postseason. Still another idea was the creation of a World Cup baseball tournament, like that in soccer,
to be held once every four years, a plan MLB wholeheartedly supported. (MLB had, incidentally, set up an exploratory office
in Tokyo in 2003 captained by one Jim Small. Ironically enough, it was located right above the NPB commissioner’s office in
the Imperial Towers.)

In the meantime, with the player exodus to North America destined to continue, some speculate that both sides are in line
to reap benefits. Said noted playwright Tetsu Yamazaki, a longtime NPB fan, “Let Japanese players go to the States. That is
good for Japanese baseball because someday they will come back and raise the level of the sport.” This is in fact what happened
with Irabu, who helped lead the ‘03 Tigers to their miracle, not only with his pitching but also through his positive influence
on the younger members of the squad and the lessons he had brought back from MLB, such as proper care of the pitching arm.
A similar theme was echoed in the words of Kazuo Matsui, an avid observer of the MLB way, who told a magazine interviewer,
“The 100-fungo drill makes more sense than the 1,000-fungo drill. What’s important is your concentration level when you practice.
I don’t like being tired in vain. I want to take what’s best from both places.” And, miracle of miracles, the Yomiuri Giants
even allowed their pitching ace Uehara to use an agent/ attorney in contract negotiations for 2004—although they could not
bring themselves to actually refer to the man as an agent, publicly insisting he was only an “adviser.”

At the same time, Japanese organizations
appear
to be becoming more flexible about adopting American ways, as indeed evidenced by the hiring of Trey Hillman and the rehiring
of Bobby Valentine—although how the sagas of these two men, especially that of the latter, would play out remained a keen
point of interest. There was, after all, still resistance to the idea of full and unlimited participation in the Japanese
game by foreign players, led by the NPBPA, as evidenced by the 2004 restrictions of no more than four foreign players per
varsity team.

The flowback seems to be working the other way as well, as MLB coaches and players, marveling at Hideki Matsui’s solid fundamentals
and Ichiro’s determined grace and style, are beginning to incorporate certain Japanese ideas about extra training—as evidenced
by Mariners manager Bob Melvin’s 2003 spring camp routine. Many are beginning to wonder if Japan’s system—where players start
lengthy training from Little League on, stressing basics and such old-fashioned ideas as bunting, advancing the runner and
stealing—might not be such a bad idea.

In 2004, Ichiro returned to hitting “inside-out” as Lee (and others) had suggested and the results were astonishing. He won
the American League batting championship with an average of .372 and shattered the 84-year-old single-season hits record of
257, set by George Sisler in 1920, by five. When he legged out number 258 on an infield grounder at Safeco Field on October
1, the game was halted for several minutes as teammates poured onto the field to congratulate him and the capacity crowd,
which included Sisler’s daughter and grandson, delivered a standing ovation. The ball and bat he used were later enshrined
at Cooperstown.