Archive for the 'Baseball' Category

And Boy, Are My Arms Tired

Published by Bob Sanchez on December 18, 2008 in Baseball. 1 Comment

With mere days remaining between now and a visit home for Christmas and New Year’s, I can safely say that it’s time to shut things down for baseball in 2008.

In truth, I never stopped working. There were always people to call, videos to watch and edit, news items to keep up with, and reports to write. I will continue to do those things from my family’s living room if need be.

The line between in-season and off-season is drawn by the traveling, I suppose. It began with a trip to Kagoshima Prefecture in late February to see Junichi Tazawa face off against professionals in “spring” training and ended last month at Osaka Dome with an industrial league tournament, featuring - who else? - Tazawa.

Getting to any baseball event outside of Shikoku Island is a chore and a challenge, but I chose to live in Kochi and am glad that I did.

A mistake on my part led to my placement in Kochi Prefecture. I received a phone call from the teaching company while I was scouting and enjoying (but mostly enjoying) the 2007 College World Series in Omaha. The voice on the other end of the phone offered up “Kochi” as my assignment, and I thought for a few seconds.

I knew Kochi to be one of the four prefectures on the island of Shikoku, just across the Seto Inland Sea from Osaka and Kobe. I knew that its southwestern location would give me a relatively warmer and easier winter than the rest of Japan.

Images of palm trees and clear skies jumped into my mind thanks to the 1970s Japanese baseball cartoon Dokaben, which featured a rival team from Kochi.

I should have stopped there, because incorporating Dokaben into my decision was where I welcomed fiction into the equation. The players from Kochi trained with a fighting bulldog and walked, in their metal cleats, from Kochi to the Koshien Tournament in Kobe, which would have necessitated a ferry ride in those days.

“H’mmm, if those kids could have walked from Kochi to Osaka, it certainly can’t be that far. I’ll bet it’s right across the sea, on the near side of Shikoku.” I am not kidding, this is what went through my mind when I accepted the job in Kochi. I drew upon memories of a cartoon to help me choose a place to live.

I felt more than a bit stupid after getting home to California and checking an atlas - Kochi is on the south side of Shikoku Island, separated from the rest of the world. It’s the Eastern Australia of Japan.

I learned so much during the first season and a half of scouting from Kochi:

It is possible to start the day outside of Shikoku Island and make it to school on time for first period. However, it’s best to plan ahead for that situation.

It is not a good idea to wait until the last minute to reserve hotel rooms, especially during Golden Week or any other three-day weekend featuring mass travel by three-quarters of the entire Japanese population.

It is a good idea to bring sunscreen and a hat to every game, and an umbrella and a jacket to any game happening before July or after August. The umbrella still comes with in July and August.

It is a bad idea to watch a high school game at the beginning of a multi-day, multi-city trip - nobody will watch your luggage for you at the municipal stadium and there will most definitely not be any coin lockers big enough at the podunk, one-train-an-hour train station.

It is a bad idea to try and see a pro game in another city after a high school tournament game as the tourney will certainly run late. It is an even worse idea to try and do this with luggage at the beginning of a multi-city, multi-day trip.

It is a good idea to bring a jacket to Sapporo even though all of the games will take place in a dome. The weather will differ by about 15 degrees any time of year and you will get sick. There was definitely room in your luggage at the beginning of a multi-city, multi-day trip.

It is a great idea to eat a decent meal before going to the ballpark. There will not be anything acceptable inside any venue and it is not necessary to try the greasy junk food and subpar bento boxes before making that decision.

It is a fantastic idea to reserve a seat on the Bullet Train equipped with an outlet for a weak computer battery.

It is even better to reserve a seat in the car closest to the escalator to the platform - nothing is worse than sprinting (with luggage at the beginning of a multi-city, multi-day trip) to Car 14 only to find that your seat is in Car 4, nearly a quarter-mile away. Have fun elbowing your way through ten cars’ worth of cranky passengers and three smoking cars.

Okay, most of the lessons came on one horrid, nightmarish trip in July. Shoot me, why don’tcha?

It is all worth it for the five or six hours I get to spend at the ballpark, doing my job. Everything else melts away once the visiting club wheels out the batting cage and begins to warm up. When I am at the game, I am where I am supposed to be.

——————————

I am at a very early stage in my professional baseball career. My organization invests money and time in me and, I gather, is honestly concerned with my development. There are times when I feel like a player.

My bosses, let’s call them coaches, check my progress through reports and by watching games together with me. I meet other scouts in the organization and learn about what they do; the club shows me a possible future. I get to work out with the Big Club in Spring Training.

I am praised for a job well done and encouraged when I make mistakes. There are nights when I go out there and know that I was at my best - I nailed every player that set foot on the field and wrote succinct, smooth, entertaining reports. I pitched eight innings, struck out five, walked none, and got a couple of hits at the dish.

Other times, I showed up as the first pitch was being thrown, I completely missed an important free agent, or I froze up on a chance to meet a new, valuable contact. I didn’t get out of the second inning, walked six guys, balked in a run, missed an important bunt, broke my hand punching the water cooler, and flipped over the postgame buffet spread, ruining dinner for everyone.

I had an amazing stretch in mid-summer, seeing thirty games in 35 days and cementing my knowledge of this season’s parade of professional players. I was untouchable and unstoppable coming out of the All-Star Break, leading my team to first place by hitting over .400 and smashing four home runs per week.

However, I also over-covered a few Central League teams and was not very effective with my last few pro trips in September, including one with my boss sitting right next to me. I ran out of gas in the dog days of August, complaining of a sore arm and losing my spot in the lineup. I was limited to pinch-hitting duties and kept off the postseason roster.

I may be a little hard on myself with that last assessment, but I didn’t pace myself very well this season. In 2009, I will be smarter about luggage and trip planning, but I don’t want to cut back on the work. Let’s say that now I know just how long the season is and will continue strongly into September and October.

Still, I don’t think that comparing myself to a prospect is all that far off. There are days when I have it, when the boss and I can see the future and what I could be to the organization. And there are days when I just plain stink at what I do because I’m not experienced enough yet.

I love the way my club treats and teaches me and hope that I am in its long-term plans as much as I feel like I am.

———————–

Let’s close 2008 with the final numbers:

Trips to Hiroshima: 5
Trips to Nagoya: 3
Trips to Osaka: 9
Trips to Tokyo: 2
Miles Traveled: About 25,000
Most consecutive weekends spent outside of Kochi: 9 (July-September)
Most consecutive weekends spent in Kochi, May-September: 1
Rainouts: 2
Domed Games: 28
Plastic Giveaway Fans Received: 17
Plastic Giveaway Fans Used: 1 (Kenta Kurihara, Hiroshima Carp)
Trains Missed: 1
Teaching Days Missed: 0
Autographs Given: 3
Viagra Pills Received: 1
Sushi Dinners: 5 (?)
Mexican Dinners: 3
Highest Gun Reading: 99 MPH (Marc Kroon, RHP Yomiuri Giants)
Lowest Gun Reading: 56 MPH (Shunsuke Watanabe, RHP Chiba Lotte Marines)
Fastest Time to First Base by a Well-Known Player: 3.53 seconds (drag bunt by Tsuyoshi Nishioka, SS Chiba Lotte Marines)
Fastest Time to First Base by a Player Whom I Pray is Unknown and Unnoticed: 3.40 seconds (drag bunt)
Slowest Time to First Base, Non-Home Run: 6.07 (Jose Fernandez, 1B Rakuten Eagles)
Highest Grade Given on 20-80 Scale: 90 (Mr. 3.4’s range in center field!!! Off the charts!!!)

Thanks to Patrick at www.npbtracker.com for the article on Tazawa.

The Head Hancho

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 17, 2008 in Baseball, Funnies and Lessons. 5 Comments

Yo, did you know that “hancho” is a Japanese word? I didn’t until I got on the horn a few weeks ago with a man from one of the Nippon Pro Baseball teams.

He’s an older Japanese gentleman who spent some time working and studying on the East Coast, losing his job after a company named Federal Express bought out the smaller shipping company for which he worked.

Mr. Shipping returned to Japan and began working for a famous Japanese shipping and transportation company that happened to own a baseball team. Now he does more work for them on the baseball side of operations. His is an interesting but not uncommon route to becoming a Japanese baseball team’s manager of international affairs.

Unlike some other “international” guys, Mr. Shipping speaks English very well and is an extremely learned man to boot. I imagine that he would be an excellent JEOPARDY! contestant, as he never fails to sprinkle a few of the latest headlines and add a dash of old-fashioned wit to each of our conversations.

Once, I was asking him about a player in whom my club was interested, and found that his Port City . . . Longshoremen . . . held an option on his contract for 2009. The option gave the Longshoremen rights to the player within Japan, but he was free to sign with an American club in the event that there was interest.

I pressed on with more questions and found that the player’s wife had a lot of weight in the final decision, and my one-yen cell phone was burning up with all of the great information I was getting.

However, I asked one question too many, and Mr. Shipping responded in a delicate, smooth tone:

“Well, Mr. Mac, I do believe that what you’re asking me could be considered what you call ‘tampering,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Though delivered in nearly accent-free English, he couched the comment in the typical Japanese layers of politeness and indirectness. The above phrase is very close to what spoken Japanese sounds like, especially when you’re accusing somebody of something.

I was as surprised to hear the word come out of his mouth as I was that I had crossed the line. So many times on this baseball journey, I have learned that I don’t know as much as I think I do about business and the way things work in the game.

We get words like “tampering” and “option clauses” on the television sports reports, but I would surmise that most people don’t know what they really mean. I know that I have thrown words around the concepts of which I was sure that I knew.

I was standing on a land mine in front of Mr. Shipping because I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing; I never thought that I would come close to committing an unethical business practice.

His tone was calm and he gently coaxed me out of the mess into which I had greedily stumbled. Our relative ages and experience left no doubt as to who held a higher position, but he assumed the upper hand so gracefully that he was easy to listen to and learn from.

I apologized tensely and took the lesson to heart, and he followed up with what could be described as a verbal muscle relaxer:

“So, I got it right, didn’t I? ‘Tampering?’”

Instant relief shot through my body and I almost dropped the phone. I chuckled and confirmed that he had indeed knocked that one right out of the park.

On another occasion, I called him to ask about an impending rule change for foreign scouts in Japan. An industrial league player named Junichi Tazawa is making huge waves right now by attempting to become the first scandal- and hardship-free Japanese player to play in the Major Leagues without first playing professionally in Japan.

There are plenty of young Japanese players ahead of him in the minor leagues who may get there more quickly, but Tazawa is a highly sought-after pitcher and officially asked not to be drafted in Japan for the second straight year. He is the banner case, the poster child, the final unwelcome wake-up call to those who want to protect Japanese baseball from evil, foreign predators.

NPB and the amateur leagues freaked out and slapped a multi-year penalty on any player, including Tazawa, who refuses to play in Japan first and goes abroad instead. Should they try to return, they will have to sit out two or three seasons, depending on the circumstances upon their departure.

Among other suggested measures was a registration system for MLB scouts, and I assumed that other, more stringent regulations would accompany such a system. In short, I was worried about my status in the country and with my club in the event of a rule change.

The day of the draft passed, Tazawa went untouched, and the penalty will be enforced for the first time. But there was no news on the MLB scouting registration. I wanted to know what was up, so I gave Mr. Shipping a ring.

He let me know the particulars from the NPB meetings and it sounded like there was nothing to worry about. My club does things on the up and up and we already have all of the pieces of proof and approval that we would need should the rule go through.

Mr. Shipping continued with the minutes of the meetings:

“You know, there were some problems a few years ago with some people posing as scouts or agents in order to get contact with our amateur players,” he explained.

“One man made false business cards and distributed them to high school coaches in order to gain access to the players and their families. Another disguised his voice on the telephone and tricked team officials into giving him free tickets.”

The whole while, I was giggling inside because Mr. Shipping is very meticulous with his pronunciation and his diction is a little stiff, but never incorrect as far as I’ve heard.

He uses so many official-sounding words, yet with his warm tone makes you feel like you’re sitting on the opposite side of a campfire from him, with a marshmallow on a stick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other.

“You know, I think that NPB simply wants to make sure that scouts are actually doing work at these games. So many of our [Japanese] scouts have been caught at the games with their friends, their families, their concubines - ”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I didn’t wake up that morning in Kochi, Japan expecting to hear the word “concubines.” Come to think of it, “mistress” is probably the only word (of the many we have for that . . . position . . .) he could have used there that wouldn’t have made me laugh.

All in all, I like calling Mr. Shipping because I get good baseball information from him, but he usually manages to enrich my day with some polite conversation or an eclectic bit of knowledge.

A few Japanese teams have shut down toward MLB guys thanks to the “Tazawa Problem,” and it’s refreshing to still have at least one official on your side. I’ve been hung up on, snarled at, ignored, and banished to the left field corner for scouting in the last two months. All of it makes me sad that my team isn’t interested in Tazawa, that might make some of the shoddy treatment worth it.

But Mr. Shipping and the other representatives of the Port City Longshoremen have been gentlemen since Day One.

Back to “hancho.” I think he made the comment in reference to that player’s wife, something along the lines of “she’s the head hancho in their home.”

He paused after he said it, and asked, “Do you know ‘hancho?’ It is an old Japanese word.”

He asked me to guess the origin and the characters used to write it, and I was searching through the Rolodex for matches to “honcho” because I had always seen it spelled that way in English. “Honcho” would have the long “o” sound in Japanese, and I came up with a pair of characters.

“Wrong,” he said gleefully. He then explained that a “han” is a squad or a patrol, and “cho” means “long” but is often used to refer to the head of a group or department (the words for “manager,” “department head,” and “principal” all contain the same “cho”). The word came from way back in ancient wartime Japan.

I instantly recognized “han” from the CSI episodes that make it over here. They’re called the “Chemistry Investigation Squad” in a literal translation, or “Kagaku So-sa Han” for those of you keeping score at home.

So there you have it. The origin of “hancho.” And the story of Mr. Shipping, the best ambassador of Japanese baseball and the head hancho of international relations in my book.

In the Ribs!

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 15, 2008 in Baseball. 1 Comment

I’ve yet to use a phrase that is taboo for me, but lately I have been admitting to people that I’m tired of baseball. Japanese baseball, that is.

I went hard at it this summer and the season has lasted too long for me. Later, I’ll go more into what happened on my end, but for now I want to vent frustrations with the Japanese professional game.

The Central League, home of the Tokyo Giants and Hanshin Tigers, just finished up its regular season two days ago after starting on March 28. It will start the first round of playoffs on Saturday, when Americans will already know which teams will face off in the World Series. The Nippon Series is slated to begin on November 1.

Central Leaguers don’t play doubleheaders and they don’t play on Mondays. Won’t, rather. In a country where you can bet the plantation on each team losing multiple games to rain, I am disgusted at the lackadaisical scheduling.

The Yokohama Bay Stars (48-94), the worst pro team on the planet, “ended” the season with more than a dozen makeup games to play. Games between non-contenders are played no matter what, and there is no priority given to games with meaning regarding playoffs.

The last pitch of the Central League regular season was thrown over three hours after the Pacific League finished Stage 1 of the CLIMAX SERIES (playoffs, for those of you scoring at home).

I haven’t been watching these games lately for a variety of reasons. Since we’re deep into autumn, let me just reach into the cornucopia and pull some out:

Some of my favorite players have been crying hurt and hiding out on the farm club over the last month to protect themselves and make a better campaign for free agency. Since their teams were in contention when they disappeared from the front lines, I have to consider that in my evaluation of their character.

A few clubs in both leagues have continued to abuse players and cheat them of service time by shuffling them off to Buffalo when they’re not physically in the lineup or needed on the bench. A player does not get service time if his name is not on the lineup card or his rear end is not in contact with the pine. There are no options and no rules to protect players from these malicious maneuvers.

This hurts the players with respect to their future earning power and opportunities to play, but it also makes more work for me in the here and now. The Bay Stars cycled through 31 pitchers to spread the losses and pain around more evenly.

The free agency circus doesn’t begin until the Nippon Series ends. That’s a week and a half of potential bedlam for scouts, and we can’t wait until the Series is asnooze under the covers.

Culture shock? Probably. I just hate how disorderly and lawless professional baseball sometimes seems to be here.

With all that going on, the single biggest reason I am not tuning into Japanese baseball is that the MLB Playoffs are beaming into my apartment from space. My DVD recorder has been working overtime, and I have had to cover my eyes and ears and shout silly phrases a few times because of well-meaning people who want to tell me the latest and greatest news. Damn the Internet?

It is difficult to describe how good it felt to flick on the box one morning last week and hear that “Matt Kimp will git the start in cinter field, boy, he sees the ball bettur than inybody in the game” from Tony Gwynn and his impeccable pronunciation.

The twelve previous summers of following baseball flooded my memory and overtook my senses, swelling to what seemed like hundreds of years. I felt the vertigo from looking over the edge of the top deck in Los Angeles, heard the opera-singing hot dog vendor in Detroit, tasted the lemonade like Grandma made in Phoenix, and saw the historic home run ball scrape the edge of the left-center field wall on its way down in San Francisco.

And I missed Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

I missed all American announcers.

I have dumped more than my share of criticism on them in my time watching the game, but I think that we need them in our living rooms. In my experience, they foster discussions and arguments between the viewers on the couch, and they do drop meaningful analysis and information on occasion. Their reflections on the game help me challenge, refine, and steel my own, making each contest a mental exercise as well as an entertaining event.

Japanese announcers don’t do that for me. They tend to have a narrow focus on what just happened and hardly ever go out on a limb to float a theory or make a prediction past the next pitch. I find their analysis lacking, and their language elementary and colorless. They simply sit there and talk about the game, complimenting players for their guts and outstanding talent, getting excited for nearly all fly balls, and agreeing with each other on just about every point.

It was refreshing at first, because they stay within the game at all times. They tend not to have agendas (Buck and McCarver, I’m looking at you and your campaign against Manny Ramirez) and freely admit when they didn’t recognize a pitch or when a manager’s decision is beyond their comprehension. They love to guess what the pitcher is going to throw next, what the runner is going to do next, or what look the manager will have on his face the next time the camera goes into the dugout.

It’s all missing something, though. There doesn’t seem to be any conviction behind what they say and none of it challenges the viewer. It became predictable for me in a matter of weeks, to the point where I could watch a game without the sound on and know what they were talking about.

So, it’s painful, but I miss those clowns on network television in the States.

That doesn’t mean they’re off the hook. I’ve noticed a smugness about them, and attempt to be so right so far ahead of the fact that it’s clouding what I assume should be their better judgment.

The Dodgers’ Russell Martin bristled at being brushed back early in Game 3 of the NLCS and McCarver correctly predicted retaliation by Dodger pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. Kuroda climbed the hill in the top half of the next inning, and McCarver and Buck did not get off the subject of the impending chin music until it happened three batters into the inning.

McCarver interjected ad nauseam about the utility of throwing at a player in this situation or that (behind in the count, ahead in the count, nobody on, no outs, one out). He echoed some of the perplexing “wisdom” that you never want to walk a hitter up five runs early in the game as a reason for not throwing at a guy in a 2-0 count.

The rules about throwing at a hitter are simple:

1) Do it with two outs and no baserunners.

2) Do it with a fastball in the ribs.

That’s it. McCarver knows that, he must. Phillie Shane Victorino walked up there with two outs and nobody on and knew what was going to happen. McCarver even said it after the fact. However, he was so concerned about staying ahead of the action and looking smart that he had to twist the whole situation into something much more than it was.

For the record, I was very pleased with the way it all went down. Kuroda showed the hardware that we saw in Japan, Victorino made a good point about where that ball should have been, and both sides came out even.

In Game 4, the dust had hardly settled on a new situation when Buck and McCarver began the self-satisfying commentary. With runners on second and third, one out, and Manny Ramirez still shaking the donut from his bat, the press box pair began talking about what an easy call it was to intentionally walk Ramirez and pitch to Martin with the bases loaded.

One comment about it would have sufficed, but Buck and McCarver sang a snide chorus, saying all but “What idiot would pitch to Ramirez in this situation?” I really wanted Charlie Manuel and the Phillies to be those idiots. I have never wanted so badly to see the announcers crossed up.

But again, this is why I miss American broadcasts. Though I probably would have walked Ramirez, the maddening dialogue between Buck and McCarver got the wheels turning in my head, got me searching for arguments to the contrary. Their Japanese counterparts fail to do so night in and night out.

I suppose the ideal would be an American announcer equipped with a bit of Japanese humility, or a Japanese announcer with a little more American whimsy and ego. But then, what would I have to write about?

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 6, 2008 in Baseball and Lessons. 0 Comments

I want to travel back in time and visit a young man who didn’t know what he was quite literally throwing away.

I want to see him in 1999 and tell him that he doesn’t have to throw the ball as hard as he can to get guys out. Also that it wouldn’t hurt to let up a little bit when his teammates and he are doing rundown drills without gloves.

I want to see him in 2001 and make him promise never to set foot on a pitching mound again, no matter how tempting it may seem. Furthermore, I’d tell him that even though curve balls are standard fare in the Sunday beer league that he still isn’t quick enough or nasty enough to be effective at all.

I want to see him in 2002 and tell him that it’s just C-league intramural co-ed softball. Again, that he doesn’t have to throw the ball as hard as he can to get guys (and girls) out.

I want to see him in 2004 and convince him that it’s not worth it to wind up a cold, drunk arm to try and throw 82 MPH to beat some guy named Brett Hughes at the speed pitch booth. I’d also let him know that the girl with the gun was probably lying when she said, “The last two were 100 miles per hour, I think you need to throw again!”

I want to see him in 2006 and tell him not to try and tough out batting practice, not even for one more batter. I’d remind him that he hates batting practice and that he could do a better job helping players hit while giving them soft-toss.

In all of these situations, I would try and explain to him that it makes more sense to enjoy throwing for a long time rather than spending all of his bullets in relatively meaningless endeavors.

Let’s see, play catch with your son in twenty years, or attempt to throw your friend out from left field on a softball field when the first baseman isn’t even looking and everyone is just there to screw around and hit some balls? Obviously, he wasn’t smart enough to make those decisions on his own, time and time again.

Sadly, this young man is still making stupid decisions regarding his shriveled, rotten shadow of a throwing arm. The head baseball coach at his high school asked if he would be willing to throw BP, and for unfathomable reasons, the guy agreed to give it a shot.

Four batters and eighty pitches later, he descended the dirt mound, having bitten the inside of his cheeks to keep from screaming or otherwise showing his pain on his face for the last thirty or so. He cursed the stubbornness and idiocy that kept him from quitting in the middle of a hitter or simply and politely refusing to throw in the first place.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know this young man as well as I do.

Hiroaki’s Song

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 30, 2008 in Baseball and Lessons. 0 Comments

Three summers ago, I met a Japanese fellow by the name of Hiroaki. One of my best friends was visiting me in Japan, and another Japanese friend of mine invited Hiroaki along to make it a foursome.

We met at an English pub in Ikebukuro, one of the many fun parts of Tokyo, and the Americans introduced the Japanese to their first Irish Car Bombs. Twice. We said, “Let’s internationalization!” many times that night.

We couldn’t quit there, so we crammed ourselves into a karaoke box, followed the shaded words, and howled the night away. Sometime during the caterwauling and boozing, Hiroaki and I exchanged our cell phone addresses.

Fall fell quickly in Fukushima, and I took every opportunity to escape to the capital and watch pro baseball games. Hiroaki and I kept in contact, and he was happy to meet me in front of the various stadiums, provided that I had a backpack full of snacks and chilled beers.

We sat together in the outfield seats, right in the middle of the infamous cheer groups, and drank, sang, and shouted our heads off. He always had a last train to catch, and with the last bus to Fukushima leaving the city much too early, I always had a stairwell or park bench to find and curl up on or under, awaiting the morrow’s first return bus.

This happened three or four times, and would have happened again but for a Chiba Lotte Marines sweep of the Hanshin Tigers. Hiroaki had scored tickets to Game 6, but dumped them after the Marines won the first three games 10-1, 10-0, and 10-1.

We obviously had chemistry and something to talk about, and we texted and called each other frequently. Hiroaki was in his fourth year at a prestigious college in Tokyo, all set to become a ubiquitous salaryman at the Hitachi Company when springtime rolled around. I was finishing up my first year of adult life, and I was disappointed, discouraged, battered, and broke.

The baseball dream was fading as I kept running into brick walls in the States. I had written letters to MLB and all thirty teams once a week for a month and could count the number of meaningful responses on one hand. Almost half the teams hadn’t replied at all.

I was in a foreign country, in an area with no baseball team, with no contacts in the game and no prospects for work; I was farther from baseball than I had ever been. I decided to return to California and beat the pavement from there, hoping that I would be harder to ignore from the States.

I didn’t send anything to the Japanese clubs because I thought they wouldn’t have anything for me to do and because sending letters would be too much trouble. I didn’t think I had anything to offer that would put me over any Japanese job-seeker.

Then, out of the blue, Hiroaki emailed me, excited about getting some responses from Japanese baseball teams. He copied the letter he wrote and the letter the teams wrote back to him and sent them to me.

I thought he may have been having second thoughts about Hitachi and had done this for himself; I didn’t realize that he was writing this letter on my behalf until he explicitly said “my foreign friend” about halfway through.

It never even crossed my mind to have him do that for me, let alone ask him, but he did it. He sent out feeler emails to the twelve Japanese pro baseball companies and received two responses.

I was deeply touched that he would go through great lengths to do something like that. He believed in me when I wouldn’t believe in myself.

I was also surprised that he had actually gotten some feedback; surely those letters would find their way to the circular file with much more ease than would my own letters about me in my native language to organizations in my home country.

I couldn’t ignore the kind gesture or its implications, so I set to work writing a “self-appeal letter,” as they call it, and learning how to fill out a Japanese resume. It was as painful and tedious as I had feared it would be, but I had the inspiration that I had lacked before.

It took a week for me to copy all twelve letters and resumes. I suppose I could’ve printed them, but I wanted to show the companies my “fighting spirit” as well as demonstrate my gnarliness, so I decided to do it all by hand. I’ll remember that as long as I’m in my right mind.

The letters garnered responses from three teams and I got interviews with two of them, the Yokohama Bay Stars and the new Rakuten Golden Eagles! I didn’t get either position, although I now realize that I could have made things work with the Eagles if not for some bad information I got (and believed) about visa laws. I could have done a lot of things better with that short burst of energy toward a job in Japanese baseball, come to think of it.

Nonetheless, Hiroaki had saved my life in Japan with a dozen clicks of his mouse. He restored my confidence and encouraged me to continue the fight. He put rear-view mirrors on the plane to California and made the idea of returning to Japan a possibility in my mind.

He did it all with characteristic humility, and he still seems to have difficulty understanding just how seriously he affected my life. Hiroaki is the type of person who will give you something just fabulous and then stand back, look at you marveling over it, and wonder why you like it so much.

I see Hiroaki a couple times a year, and I attempt to return the favor, but nothing I do can reciprocate what he did for me. On top of that, he finds it difficult to accept help, consideration, gifts, love, encouragement, or anything else, for that matter.

He is the guy I turn to first when I’m having trouble in Japan, and I tell him to call on me in good times and bad, but he says he doesn’t want to bother me with his trifles. I think he means it sincerely. I have to work to get things about himself out of him, though it’s never tough to get him to come out and enjoy a few rounds of beers that I never let him buy.

Once, he told me why he wrote those letters. He thought it was a waste of talent for me not to have a job in Japanese baseball and simply decided to do something about it. I hope that I will be able to understand and feel that level of selflessness someday.

Get it OFF Me!!!

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 27, 2008 in Baseball and Funnies. 0 Comments

A veteran Major League pitcher got up in front of my team’s minor leaguers this spring and gave a very inspired speech about the path to the big leagues.

One point that stayed with me was that it didn’t matter what the path was; spending six years in rookie ball and getting called up is just as good as climbing up step by step and making it. The goal is to get to the top, and there are many ways to do it.

This fellow went on to have the best season of his career to date, and I’m glad that I got to see him give this talk in March. His media interviews mean a lot more to me because I saw how focused he was out of the gate, before he won more games and worked more efficiently than ever.

This is the kind of stuff he does with his free time.

Fire Up the Cannons!

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 18, 2008 in Baseball. 0 Comments

Forgive me if this story is out there already, or if you’ve heard one just like it. Something new happens in baseball every day, but I’m surprised at how similar some stories are; there seem to be a finite number of situations and punchlines.

Or, it could be that baseball people have a characteristic wit about them, a way of dealing with the failure that doesn’t stop at the old three-for-ten line. Call it cynicism, fatalism, dry humor, or Nancy, it runs common in our blood such that we hear a story and know how it’s going to end, but still end up in the aisles when the zinger finally escapes the storyteller’s wry lips.

I have two bosses who are magnificent teachers and outstanding baseball men. I had the privilege of watching a ball game with both of them in Nagoya (why does so much good stuff happen in one of my least favorite places?).

The workers scurried out to the infield cutouts to tidy them up between the fifth and sixth innings. One of the bosses, a former left-handed pitcher in the Major Leagues, took the opportunity to unwind a yarn* from his playing days:

Okay, so Rick Sutcliffe is out there pitching against the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium, where they used to have these cannons out behind the outfield fence that would shoot off rounds if a guy went yard.

He gave up a two-run homer to Andy VanSlyke -BOOM!!!- just clobbered! The cannons did their thing and Sutty prepared to face the next guy, Mike LaValliere.

First pitch -WHAM!!!- thirty rows up into the right field seats. -POW, POW!!!- go the cannons, and Rick’s pissed, y’know?

His eyes twinkled, his eyebows peaked mischeviously, and his mouth opened wider and wider as the story reached its climax.

Well, Bill Connors [[the pitching coach, we had just been talking about him]] goes out there to have a chat with Sutty, and Sutty’s not havin’ it.

He says, “What the hell are you doin’ out here, Bill? I’m fine, I know what went wrong!”

Bill said, “Oh, I don’t have anything to say to you.”

Sutty stared back, he didn’t know what was going on.

Bill pointed to the outfield fence and said, “I’m just giving ‘em time to warm up those cannons!”

I had an especially good laugh at that, and looking back it’s not all that funny, but I had gone through an especially painful and confusing week leading up to that game. I realized while I was clutching my sides that I hadn’t honestly laughed or even smiled all week.

Baseball stories and relationships have a way of cleaning out life’s wounds with laughter and bonding of a very pure form. The business part aside, we are brothers in the lifelong quest to grasp the game, and there seems to be an understanding between baseball people that transcends the logo on our paychecks.

An older scout told me a story about ditching his prom date to try out for the expansion Los Angeles Angels and making a minor league team from that tryout.

I related about the hours I spent in my backyard, pitching the entire 1995 Dodgers schedule against a stone wall, over and over, imitating each pitcher’s windup except Kevin Tapani’s but including that of the man whose influence would eventually lead me to Japan.

Somehow, we were both there, though forty years of age separate us.

When I say I love baseball, I’m usually referring to the game itself, its complex nature, its frustrations, and its secrets which reveal themselves to me one by one. But I love the people in the game every bit as much.

*It’s unfortunate that the events in this story may not have actually taken place. I’ve searched box scores for everyone involved and haven’t found anything similar to it yet. Either way, I was suffering and that sweet laughter got me over the hump and looking downhill, and for that I am very thankful.

Kicking Kids

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 17, 2008 in Baseball. 0 Comments

High school baseball in Japan is like college football in the United States - relentless recruiting, relentless media coverage, and a relentless fan base. Its biggest event is a yearly summer tournament called Koshien, which takes place in the relentless mid-August Osaka heat under the relentless lenses of a relentless number of TV cameras.

So, if you’re a coach and you want to smack a player in the head or kick him in the shins, Koshien is not a very good place to do it. Unfortunately for one of the most famous high school baseball coaches in Japan, he couldn’t even get away with it during a practice game a couple of weekends ago.

For those who may not be able to read the other end of the link:

During a practice game on school grounds, the coach kicked two players on the bench several times. There was no injury to either player. The school received an anonymous phone call about the incident . . .

I’ve mentioned before that I think some parts of Japanese society are about the same as those of the United States in the seventies, and the attitude toward corporal punishment is one of them.

I don’t know what goes on in the home, but on the baseball field, the manager is a fearful general and the players do what he says. When he opens his mouth, caps come off, heads are lowered, and “SIR YES SIR” is said.

I still find that awkward and even a little shocking, and when I offer my rare bits of quiet advice, I quickly tell the kids to put their hats back on and look at me when I’m talking to them. I’m a student of the game just like they are, only a few years ahead.

Today’s leaders on the ball field were beaten and bruised as youngsters, and nobody thought a thing of it. The aggressors then were members of that Great Generation of men who knew desperation, destitution, and nothingness in postwar Japan. Egos, feelings, and hides were not spared to drill respect, fear, and obedience into young players.

A fabulous professional pitcher who may play in the United States very soon has an older brother who is an official in the Shikoku League. I’ve been out to dinner with the older brother a few times, and he has told me about being his younger brother’s catcher growing up.

When the younger boy would get hit hard in a game, the father would often seek to pile on the pain and demanded to know who was responsible for the fat pitches.

“My kid brother had horrible control and didn’t always get my signs,” the older brother laughed. “I lied to my father and took the blame every time.”

He is deaf in one ear as a result.

In an effort to better understand the baseball culture here, I’ve tried watching baseball cartoons from past eras, and there is no escape from the abuse even in a few of these animated shows.

One was so bad that I had to stop watching after three episodes. Kyojin no Hoshi (Star of the Giants) features a young kid who is not very good at baseball. His father, a former baseball player, war veteran, and single, alcoholic construction worker, straps a springed device across the boys back, chest, and arms and forces him to wear it all day every day in hopes that the boy will fulfill the father’s broken dream.

The boy endures ridicule at school because he can’t throw a ball or turn handsprings, but keeps the hobbling, torturous device a secret at his father’s behest. Inside the home, however, the two go at it violently, usually ending with the boy taking off the shackles and saying that he has quit baseball, and with the father beating him senseless while his sister screams and cries.

And this cartoon was highly recommended to me by many forty-something baseball men, who recalled it fondly. I’ve seen the characters in ads for vitamins and energy drinks, the boy standing there with tan lines across his body from that hideous contraption and the father gleaming with pride.

If the situation seems right, I reference that cartoon in front of older baseball guys to see what they have to say about it, and eventually it comes out that just about everybody was beaten up as a young ballplayer.

“That’s just the way things were,” they say, the look in their eyes growing more and more distant.

In Kyoto last weekend, I visited a college practice game on a lead from a player agent and had a wonderful conversation with one of the coaches from the relatively rural school. When we got to the latest high school kicking scandal, he shook his head and sighed.

“We’re in a difficult spot now,” he said sadly. “None of these kids are hungry, they don’t know hunger. I think it’s our fault. We don’t want to see them experience what we did, and we take it easy on them.”

He lamented that there didn’t seem to be a way to toughen them up; they’ve had everything they needed for as long as they can remember. It sounded as if maintaining that fearful relationship through corporal punishment was taken away from them and they hadn’t found a way to fill the hole.

This particular coach could never bring himself to rough up players, but had watched many a partner do the dirty deed. I, too, stand by while the coaches at my school make physical contact with the players in a way that is inappropriate by American standards.

For that reason, I do nothing. Things are different here. Abuse is where I will draw the line, and I haven’t seen abuse. I’ve seen a different, old-fashioned way of handling children. I was kicked a few times as a young ballplayer, but never without my catcher’s gear on and never to the extent that I would consider it abuse.

I don’t like watching it and as long as there are incidents like the one we’ve been hearing about for the past week, there is a problem that needs to change. I need more information and I need to figure out what I can do about it.

Ichiro Must Bow to His Superiors

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 11, 2008 in Baseball. 3 Comments

So I’m in Nagoya, home of the Chunichi Dragons and Ichiro Suzuki’s stomping grounds. My boss and two scouts from another organization were at the ballgame that night, and the four of us crammed into a cab to return to Nagoya Station.

We may have gotten the best cab driver in the whole gloomy city of Nagoya. He was an older man, in his late fifties or early sixties, skinny as a beanpole with a toothy, gold-flecked smile. His eyes widened at the sight of four foreign fellows piling into his modest cab, and he beamed and offered his best Engrish salute:

“Goo-do eee-buningu!!! Weru-kaaaamu!”

The smallest of the four hopped into the front seat and thought he had won, but that just meant that he was sitting closest to a Japanese guy who wanted to practice his English - usually a pretty awkward situation.

To the driver’s credit, he was fearless despite having indecipherable English and kept trying to make connections. Single words and baseball names did the trick, and sooner or later the conversation got to ICHIRO.

I have yet to meet one person in Nagoya who doesn’t like talking about ICHIRO and I can’t blame them. The guy is pretty amazing.

Yet, for me, he’s like Tommy Lasorda or Bruce Springsteen or Stephen Hawking (but only ICHIRO gets to be bold). All of the information is out there. What in the world could you say to those guys that they hadn’t heard before? That would make you any different from the hundred thousand other slobs they met last week? That would earn you their trust and maybe a piece of secret, valuable information not afforded anyone else?

In short, I believe there’s such a thing as too famous and that it’s near impossible to have any kind of real relationship with a person who has reached those heights. Maybe I take handshakes too seriously, but I am out looking for real relationships and don’t want to waste time with chatter that will go nowhere.

Anyway, the subject in the cab had turned to ICHIRO. The driver flicked his hand to the right and mentioned that ICHIRO had gone to high school over there, at Nagoya High School for Electronics. Just think, if baseball hadn’t worked out, ICHIRO could have put together your car stereo or Tamagotchi pet.

The cab driver then proudly announced that he was Ichiro’s superior, an alumnus of the same baseball club at Nagoya Electric. I interpreted that for the other guys in the cab, and they wanted to know exactly what that meant. So did I!

The cab driver explained that, even though over twenty school years separated them, if they ever met and he mentioned the school that Ichiro would have to refer to him as “sir,” for lack of a better translation.

In Japanese baseball and many other facets of life here, those that come before you are automatically respected in speech and action, though not necessarily in heart and mind, as I explained to the scouts.

I guessed that if Ichiro were sitting in the taxi with us that he might turn to us and say, “This guy is *$&# nuts,” in English and bow and say “sir” in Japanese. And then proceed to listen to the driver tell us his batting average and running time to first base as we did.

I thought the driver was great fun, if a little strange for the ICHIRO claim to fame. We stopped at a light and he pointed down a crowded, dimly-lit street and said that there were many beautiful women down that street.

He was pointing at one of the many “pink towns” that Nagoya is famous for, and when I told the other scouts, the guy in the front seat put his hand on the steering wheel and began inching it to the right. We all appreciated the physical humor, and heck, who doesn’t when words fail?

That opened things up a bit and we talked about other things all the way back to the station, and I got some great practice for interpreting just in case that comes up someday.

My boss wanted me to ask the driver to hit some pedestrians and get some points, and he started to say “just kidding” but the question was already out of my mouth. The cabbie started howling with laughter, and it wasn’t long before all five of us were shaking like bowlfuls of jelly.

He gave us a discount, to top it all off, and I took his business card. Now I have a personal driver in one of the most boring cities in the world.

And if ICHIRO were to come along for a ride, he’d have to bow and call him “sir.”

Out of Left Field

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 11, 2008 in Baseball and Funnies. 0 Comments

On Thursdays and Fridays, I suit up in a baseball uni and run out to the communal ground to hit fungoes to the players in the baseball club. The students like to see me dressed up and don’t hesitate to ask for my hat or my pants. Not sure what they have in mind with the latter request.

I enjoy helping out, and I don’t do much actual coaching as I am not the manager or even an official coach. I offer encouragement, and I see the players doing things I don’t like or agree with, but I only speak up if something is truly awful or wrong.

They have to run anywhere from one to five miles before practice, and the coaches typically run with them. I say that I’m grading papers or helping students to duck out of that, but I go home and change clothes and then jog to school (almost a mile) so that I show up sweaty like everyone else.

They do some very strange drills, like fielding ground balls with a rubber tire strapped to each infielder’s back, pushing said tires back and forth across the ground after fielding, playing leap frog, and carrying each other on piggyback across the ground. The point is to get exhausted, and they succeed at that every day.

The players are out there until 7:30 or 8:00 every night, and I have never stayed that late, but I have passed by on my bike and observed them in the fourth hour of practice. About half of all that time is spent doing nothing, screwing around, or “preparing” for the next activity. “Preparing” consists of pushing dirt around with a wooden stick and playing grab-ass until the coach yells at them to get back to work.

The other half of the time, they are swinging bats and fielding balls, but it’s done without much energy or enthusiasm. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to move if I had to run three miles and do a hundred sit-ups before practice, either.

Certainly not how I would use practice time, but I don’t think many high school kids would like my idea of good use of practice time. I just show up, hit fungoes, and run back home in time to catch the pro games on TV.

Today, we couldn’t use the deeper reaches of the outfield because some seniors were practicing their cheers for Sports Day coming up in a few weeks. Batting practice offered a familiar scene - ten outfielders clumped together in three groups, standing back on their heels and arguing over whose turn it was to chase the ball that just went by.

I decided to walk out there and teach them what I think position players should be doing during BP. It’s not a difficult concept and very easy to employ if you decide you want to become a better player.

If you stand at your position every day and watch a couple hundred balls coming off the bat, you begin to build a library of batted balls in your mind. If you’re a smart bear, you’re paying attention and acting like it’s a game situation on every swing, expecting the ball to come to you and moving to the ball when it is hit.

Do this ten thousand times over the course of a season, and you are bound to have sharper instincts. You begin to recognize which swings produce which kinds of batted balls to the point that you know where it’s going to be hit before it’s hit. We’re talking millionths of a second before the ball is struck, but that’s all the time you need to turn a double into an out in the outfield.

It’s conceivable that this instinct could come about after enough time observing passively in the field, but putting yourself in game situations over and over again builds good habits and you’ll get that instinct more quickly.

I suggest that kids focus for five consecutive pitches and take two pitches off, just like a work week. I still think it’s possible to concentrate more, but 5-2 is better than pounding on your cup, staring at the sky, picking dandelions, or talking about who you’re taking to the Prom.

I told all of this to each group and felt that two players understood it. When those seniors stopped their cheering practice, the outfield opened up and I got those same two players for fungoes. Reading a fly ball off a fungo bat is much different than studying BP, but excuses aside, I hit them a whole bucket of balls and they couldn’t have caught a cold.

I walked out there to help them collect the balls when some seniors rode by on their mamacharis. The outfielders snapped to attention, doffed their caps, and bowed to the boys. I recognized them as former baseball club members who, according to custom, “retired” from the club after the summer to focus on getting a job or getting into college.

How long do you have to call them ’superior’ and take off your hat for them?” I asked the outfielders.

“They will always be our superiors,” they said, almost in unison.

“So you’re at a party in 50 years, and you’re still going to call him ’superior’?”

“That’s right, ’superior.’ Say, Mac, do you like boobs?”

I should interject here and explain that the end of the word “superior” and the end of one of the words for “breasts” is the same. So this wasn’t as weird a segway as it seems.

The manager (a sophomore girl) is standing right here, you shouldn’t say stuff like that in front of girls,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Well, do you like boobs?” the boy persisted.

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“OK. Mac, why isn’t there polygamy in Japan?”

Now things were getting weird. First of all, I didn’t understand what the kid was saying the first time he said it. When I asked him to break down the word for me, I got it: one-husband-many-wife-system. Technically polygyny, but I wasn’t prepared to split hairs with this guy.

Sheesh, kid, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I wanted to know. I heard that polygamy is OK in Africa and wondered why it isn’t anywhere else.”

“…”

That’s me scratchin’ my melon.

Where did you hear that?”

“Junior high world history, I think.”

“Well, what makes you think I would know the answer to that?”

“I don’t know. I just think about this kind of stuff when I’m out here in the outfield.”

So much for my message getting through. I told him that I thought the courage to ask questions was a great trait as a person, but that letting the mind wander in the outfield was not a characteristic becoming a good outfielder.

This is why I keep going to school.