The Meaning of Ichiro (41 page)

In November, Valentine returned to Japan to “seek some answers,” as he put it, to give interviews and to hold court at the
Tokyo Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan. But Hir
ka refused to let him monopolize the spotlight. Hir
ka went on the popular Japanese television program
Puro-yaky
Ny
su
and intensified his criticism of his former charge.

He claimed that Valentine’s “inept managing” had cost the team at least 15 wins during the course of the season. He said that
Valentine was the primary reason the team had finished last in the first three months of the season and that the Japanese
coaches were the primary reason that Lotte was able to wind up in second place.

“We could have beaten third-place Seibu more often if Valentine had realized that they were stealing our signs,” he insisted.
Adding what in some circles in Japan is the ultimate insult, he said, “Valentine is a man who cannot keep a schedule.

“There was no compromise between U.S. and Japanese styles of baseball,” he continued. “The manager cannot be everything. It
should be the role of the coaches to train and bring the players along, but under Valentine’s way there is no room for them.
The coaches and I felt the same, but we did not want to shame our new manager. If we continued this way, there’d be a problem
winning the championship. Valentine’s philosophy simply doesn’t fit Japan.”

In Valentine’s own press conference, held in front of 150 ink-stained wretches, assembled on the 20th floor of the Yurakucho
Denki Building, overlooking the Imperial Palace Grounds, he reiterated his complaints about interference from the coaches
and the front office, although he couched them in somewhat more diplomatic terms than Hir
ka had. He said that while he really believed everyone was trying to do his best for the team, the gap between America’s aggressive
style of play and that of the older Japanese baseball traditionalists was just too big to overcome. He held out special criticism
for the assistant GM Takagi, saying, “We were embarrassed to an extent to have a person who never played pro ball on the field
teaching the players and sometimes teaching things that were opposed to what we the coaching staff were teaching. I had complaints
from my players and I had ridicule from the opposition. I spoke to Hir
ka about it, but nothing changed.

“To me,” said Valentine, “winning is the best training you can give a player. I trained my players. I pushed them hard, but
I also gave them time off to enjoy themselves and take it easy. Hir
ka’s idea was just to train. It was not related to winning. It was related to what they also do—the process—which to him,
and the others, was as important as the result. More perhaps. Hir
ka refused my request to send the young players to Hawaii over the winter where they could play in the league there and get
invaluable experience. You cannot teach or practice experience. The only way is to play—to hit, bat, pitch and win games.
Then you’ll improve.”

Valentine claimed that cultural differences were not a factor and stressed to the very end that Hir
ka’s way was extreme, even for Japan. “I talked to at least one American player from every team in Japan this year,” he said,
“and I can tell you, without a doubt, we practiced more days while I was manager than any other team in Japan.” That may have
been true, although it might be pointed out that not many people in Japan shared Valentine’s philosophy on abbreviated spring
camp schedules. Three hours a day in camp was just too short for almost all managers in Japan; it showed a lack of sincerity.

* * *

His attempt to keep things on the plane of civility did not last. Hearing of Hir
ka’s televised assault, Valentine declared in a subsequent interview that Hir
ka was being “untruthful” when he claimed that Seibu was stealing his signs. He angrily refuted another report that by the
second half of the season, he had so lost confidence in managing the team that his coaches had taken over issuing the signs
(“Is that some kind of joke?” he said in response. “What do they think I did to earn my pay? Sit and watch?”) and he reacted
with vehemence to a pejorative magazine article published in the off-season in
Number
magazine by a prize-winning writer close to Hir
ka that described “alarming” lacunae in his “baseball sense.” Among other things, the article said that Valentine had an automatic
hit-and-run called on all 2-2 counts, a “reckless” strategy that had appalled Hir
ka when it was reported to him by his coaches. Because, as the article put it, “Japanese pitchers are so good that they could
throw a forkball or a slider just outside the strike zone which would be very difficult for the batter to hit. The result
was, all too often, a double play.”