The Meaning of Ichiro (37 page)

To Japanese coaches who believed that conservative baseball was gospel and who had lived and died by the sacrifice bunt their
entire careers, it was dismaying to see a lead runner stranded after three routine outs—or worse, erased in a double play!

Valentine was not categorically opposed to the bunt. The sacrifice made more sense to him, though, when there were runners
on first and second in the later innings. Otherwise, if you absolutely had to bunt, then do it for a hit, he said. Lay it
down the third-base line, not toward first, to give yourself a better chance to beat the throw. Unless, as Coach Eto liked
to point out, there was an aging out-of-shape
gaijin
on first, who probably couldn’t make the play.

Valentine compromised on some things. He went along with the off-day practices. He allowed some extra throwing in the bullpen
as the season went along, realizing that the 12-inning limit on games itself acted as a natural restraint on overuse of pitchers.
He also attended, although with reluctance, the didactic pregame meetings, presided over every day by Eto. In MLB, meetings
were usually only held before facing an opponent for the first time to go through an unfamiliar lineup. The daily meetings
to analyze the opposition were presided over by Eto and were supposedly part and parcel of the famed Japanese attention to
detail. However, Valentine took another view of them.

Since there were only five other teams in the league and you faced each one 28 times a year, not counting exhibition games,
you quickly got to a point, he believed, where you did not need to watch any more videos; what else could you hope to learn
from them? So it couldn’t be the information that was important. It had to be the process—time-consuming though it was.

“I think the Japanese like doing what they do because they are used to doing it,” he concluded. “Change is something that
is really a foreign concept.”

The Japanese approach to baseball, as to most things, was slow, cautious and conservative, based as it was on consensus decision-making.
Some Western observers said this behavior pattern was a psychological crutch, one designed to reduce individual, personal
risk and thereby minimize the possibility of failure and embarrassment. To Valentine, especially typical of that thinking
was the pronounced Japanese tendency to extend every count all the way to 3-2. Everyone seemed to work unconsciously toward
that end—the players, the pitchers, the coaches, even the umpires—because then all the strategic decisions would be played
out and everybody would know that a strike was coming. Sometimes, he thought, it was to your advantage to swing away early
in the count, even at a pitch outside the strike zone if you thought you could get a hit, especially if you were on a hot
streak. To the Japanese, however, it was incautious, because you were also surrendering the chance of a walk and that was
too much to gamble. Such dilatory tactics were one reason why their games lasted half an hour to 45 minutes longer than games
in the U.S. “Outdoor Kabuki,” some cynics called the Japanese game.

Perhaps the hardest burden of all for Valentine to bear, to borrow from Ruth Benedict, was the “help” of Hir
ka’s assistant general manager Masuichi Takagi, a man with no professional experience—only a journalistic background. Takagi
often intervened in pregame practices, giving batters advice on how to position the head of the bat and dispensing other tidbits
of wisdom.

“It was embarrassing,” Valentine said, “to have somebody who had never played the game of professional baseball out on the
field teaching.”

The growing strains between Valentine and his coaching staff began to show. In May, Eto went to Valentine’s office armed with
a sheaf of data. He pointed out that Lotte’s record in games where Valentine had failed to use the sacrifice bunt was an embarrassing
3-12, but 5-2 when he did. Did Valentine realize, he was quoted as saying, that players and coaches on the opposing bench
were actually laughing at Lotte’s bad moves? Valentine counseled patience; his tactics would pay off in time, he was convinced.
Eto was not mollified. An argument ensued, which Eto lost, and according to one report, the meeting ended on a fractious note.

There was another disagreement about base stealing. Valentine had given the green light to five players, while Eto had opposed
giving the green light to anyone. It was too reckless. On one occasion, Eto countermanded Valentine’s order outright as to
which base the fielders should throw to on an upcoming play. Another time, upset over some aspect of strategy, he threatened
to quit. There were also reports of secret workouts conducted by Lotte officials, dismayed that Valentine was not working
the players hard enough in practice.

Hir
ka returned from a trip to the United States on June 13, to find the Marines in the midst of a seven-game losing streak and
sinking deeper into the second division. They were a full ten games behind the second-place Seibu Lions. The rainy season
was well under way, and the mold growing everywhere in the ballpark was an apt symbol of the rot that was disintegrating his
little cross-cultural family. His coaches were bad-mouthing Valentine to the press and Valentine was complaining to the same
reporters about his coaches’ interference and the “dual policy” that was infecting the team.

“I want to manage my own way,” he’d said. “I’m tired of all the interference.”

In a meeting with his general manager, held at Hir
ka’s upper floor stadium office, Valentine said he had had his fill of being second guessed by Hir
ka’s crew. After a lengthy discussion, Hir
ka reiterated his belief that they were on the same page as far as baseball philosophy went, with the possible exception of
the bunt—the safety variety of which he thought was too risky because it was too hard to execute, while the sacrifice version
he thought could not be employed enough. (There had been a game in which Valentine, down by three runs in the eighth inning
with runners on first and second and one out, had neglected to bunt. Said Hir
ka, “I would have bunted the two runners over, scored two runs, then got two more in the ninth inning.” A dubious Valentine
had replied, “I’ll try it that way the next time I get a chance.”)

He also complained about the intrusions of Hir
ka’s assistant Takagi. Hir
ka replied that Takagi did know some things and that his position as Marines executive gave him a certain clout, but that
he would see what he could do.