Ichiro

SEATTLE MARINERS POSTER BAT 9 ICHIRO SUZUKI 1 GAME 3125
$4.95

The Samurai Way of Baseball: The Impact of Ichiro and the New Wave from Japan
$21.99
Robert Whiting's third book on Japanese baseball, The Meaning of Ichiro: The New Wave From Japan & the Transformation of Our National Pastime (2004), deftly chronicles the flight of elite Japanese baseball players to the Major Leagues over the past 15 years (although the first Nipponjin to play for a major league franchise was actually Masanori Murakami in SF in 1964. (detailed in Chapter 4). As the title suggests, Whiting's early portions of the book focus on the Zen-like education of Ichiro under the tutelage of his father and practicing Buddhist, Nobuyuki. His father ran a family-owned electrical parts factory but at 3:30 everyday, Nobuyuki excused himself from work and took his son to the neighborhood field to play ball. After some jogging and light game of catch, the nine-year old Ichiro would throw 50 pitches, take 200 swings at pitched balls, and field 50 balls each both as an infielder and outfielder. Dinner and homework began at 7pm and when completed, father and son would head out to the nearby batting center where the boy would take 250-300 swings emulating his favorite batter stars from the Japanese pro leagues. Returning home usually after 11pm, Ichiro's father would dutifully massage his son's feet for as dad said, "If the feet are healthy, you are healthy." It is little vignettes like this that give you a better understanding of why the disciplined Samurai-like Ichiro (who weighed a mere 175 lbs when signed by Seattle!) was able to break the single-season hit record this year with 262 hits (in 162 games) held for over 84 years.

Still, the exploits of Ichiro may not have happened if not for what many Japanese at the time saw as the wagamama (selfish) attitude of Hideo Nomo in 1995. Whiting points out that an odd clause in the contract between Japanese and Major League baseball as well as strict owner rules regarding player rights limited the ability of Japanese players to move from team to team within Japan and virtually prevented players from jumping ship to the major leagues as well. All that changed when Nomo, the son of working-class parents from Osaka, pushed to fulfill his dream of playing in the American major leagues--even if it went against all of the Japanese mores of the time. He (along with a Japanese-American lawyer) found a loophole in the league's rules and "voluntarily retired"-Nomo could not play for another team in Japan but was eligible to play in America. The Los Angeles Dodgers scooped him up for a mere $2 million dollars and he went 13-6 with 236 strikeouts that first year in the majors. All his pitching starts games were shown on jumbotrons to huge crowds all around Tokyo-even at the wee hours of three or four in the morning. Nomo, quite literally, become an overnight sensation on both sides of the Pacific and the rest is history; the gates had opened and other ballplayers would follow.

Still, the Japanese owners tried to close the loophole but were sued by Major League Baseball. The eventual compromise led to the current posting system in place today. Players in Japan become eligible for free agency after ten years of service in Japan. Over 20 players have followed the path of Nomo since he first landed in the US. Some like Ichiro and Hideki "Godzilla" Matsui have become superstars. Others like former Yankee Hideki Irabu (once called a fat toad by owner George Steinbrenner) and the Mets Tsuyoshi Shinjo had short stretches of success in the US but eventually fizzled out and returned to play ball again in Japan--both are still in uniform today. Finally, the jury is still out on the likes the Mets Kazuo Matsui (no relation to Godzilla Matsui) as to whether or not he can measure up to the numbers he posted in Japan as an All-Star for the Seibu Lions.

I still miss Japanese baseball but thanks to the Internet, I can follow the exploits of my teams via The Japan Times online or even listen to streaming broadcasts of the games via real audio via links on the teams' Web Sites (The Japanese broadcast is pretty basic, i.e. ballru for ball, striku for strike, hitto for hit, etc.). Even better, as Whiting's book happily points out, I know that more Japanese sluggers like catcher the Fukuoka Hawks' Kenji Jojima are sure to be on their way or that Seibu Lion's fireballer Daisuke Matsuzaka will be on the hill at a major league venue real soon. The "New Wave," as dubbed by Whiting, is here to stay and our national pastime will forever be transformed....I'll sake to that!

Ichiro's Art of Playing Baseball: Learn How to Hit, Steal, and Field Like an All-Star
$15.95
I don't usually feel compelled to write a highly negative review, and particularly when the remainder copy of the book I bought (at a Seattle bookstore) cost only $3.99. But -- if such a thing is possible -- I actually feel I wasted my money, and I write this to encourage you not to waste yours.

Ichiro is an absolutely marvelous hitter, and a quirky, one-of-a-kind personality (for instance, a Mariners trainer once told me that Ichiro eats precisely the same number of chicken wings each day -- I think it was 13 of them). Unfortunately, this book does nothing to convey the slightest insight either into his personality or his game. The chapters have promising titles, but there is simply nothing inside - no instructive photos, no illuminating text, nothing.

Any baseball book you could find -- including one as far back as Ted Williams's "Science of Hitting" -- would be better than this one. It's a shame that this book tells us nothing about one of the most skilled hitters in baseball.

Lupin the 3rd - Dragon of Doom [VHS]
$29.95
It begans when Goemon is attacked by ninjas trying to claim his Almighty Sword which can cut through any material on Earth. Lupin, Jigen, and Fujiko discover notorious Hong Kong mobster Chin Chin Chou is searching for a treasure that lies hidden within the Titanic.