The Meaning of Ichiro (45 page)

Sasaki had thought about leaving Japan for MLB more than once. He gave the idea serious consideration when Hideki Irabu was
trying to join the Yankees in 1996 and again at the end of his epic ‘98 season, but both times he decided to stay—out of loyalty
to the organization.

“I’ve always dreamed of playing in the major leagues,” he said on each occasion. “But right now, I can’t betray the Yokohama
fans, because they have cheered me in such a great manner.”

He was also having too good a time. At his peak, Sasaki was making $4 million a year, the highest salary in the CL. His slew
of endorsements included Kirin Beer, a beverage he reportedly consumed in copious quantities to complement his two-packs-a-day
cigarette habit. According to the tabloids, which spared few details, he also enjoyed a fully active social life.

Sasaki especially liked playing for his manager, an unconventional soul named Hiroshi Gondo who disdained forced group practices,
meetings, sacrifice bunts and other such accoutrements normally associated with Japanese-style baseball. He had good reason
to.

In 1961, as a whippet-thin pitcher for the Chunichi Dragons, Gondo won 35 games, pitching an astronomical 429 innings and—not
surprisingly—ruining his arm in the process. By the age of 24, he was finished as a top-line hurler. “Many times my fingers
and arm hurt,” he would say of that era, “but I pitched anyway. If I had refused the manager the fans would have said, ‘You’re
not a man.’ The
bushido code
was very strong.”

Now, however, Gondo’s motto was “Think for yourself,” a philosophy that raised many eyebrows.

“Amazing,” said a fan named Takeshi Yokozawa who had followed Yokohama for 40 years. “I always thought that Japanese athletes
were usually treated lower than pigs by the coaches. They are expected to do what they’re told, but nothing else. So Gondo’s
thinking for yourself is a splendid departure, but it [i.e. thinking for himself] must be incredibly hard for the athlete.”

Unfortunately for the BayStars, Gondo’s success was short-lived. Yokohama finished the next season in third place; Sasaki
underwent midyear surgery to remove bone chips from his elbow. Team officials were reportedly so unhappy with the lack of
discipline on the team that they fired Gondo and hired a veteran manager famous for his strictness and his affinity for long,
hard practices. It was at this juncture that Sasaki decided to make his move.

Through a third-party introduction, he hired agent Tony Attanasio, who negotiated a contract with the Seattle Mariners for
the same amount of money Sasaki had been making in Yokohama. In 2000, under the watchful eye of about 80 reporters from Japan,
he broke the Mariners’ team record for most saves in a season with 37 (in 40 opportunities), winning the AL Rookie of the
Year Award. He followed that with 45 saves in ‘01. What made these achievements all the more remarkable, to Americans at least,
was the fact that Sasaki threw 50 warm-up pitches in the bullpen before every appearance, about four times as many as the
other relievers on the team. In a first for a player from Japan, Sasaki also appeared in a Mariners commercial, along with
fellow relievers Jeff Nelson and Arthur Rhodes. Dressed as a Musketeer, replete with cape and sword, he seemed a thoroughly
Westernized version of his old
Daimajin
persona. A favorite of Nintendo owner Yamauchi back in Kyoto, he signed a new two-year contract worth $8 million a year,
much to the shock of others in the organization, thus becoming the first Japanese player in history to earn more than one
billion yen in a season.

In Seattle, Sasaki lived alone in a Mercer Island condominium. His wife, a former TV singer, reportedly remained in Japan
so their two children could attend Japanese schools. He bought himself a silver Porsche, frequented local Seattle watering
holes and was spotted hanging out at the University of Washington student union. On the road, he was often wined and dined
at expensive Japanese-only nightclubs by wealthy Japanese businessmen residing in the United States.

Sasaki found himself the subject of media scrutiny early in the 2002 season when he made a 24-hour
kamikaze
trip back to Japan. “Concern over my wife’s health,” he told reporters at the SeaTac arrival lobby, contradicting what he
had said before his departure, when he denied that illness was involved. There was much speculation in the Japanese press
about what the real reasons could have been. The
Shukan Posuto,
a popular weekly magazine with a nose for scandal, guessed that a divorce might be imminent. The writer cited Sasaki’s past
reputation for womanizing and reminded readers of women who had spent the night with Sasaki and told all in the media afterwards.
As the
Posuto
put it, “His rumored extramarital liaisons are too numerous to count.” Sasaki, for his part, denied a split was imminent
and as of this writing he was still married.

That trip back to Japan, it might be noted, made Sasaki the only Japanese in the major leagues ever to leave his team in midseason
for personal reasons. Although granting leaves for births and deaths and other emergencies in the family is a common practice
in the U.S.—Barry Bonds left the Giants twice in 2003 for several days each, first when his father fell ill and then when
he passed away—in NPB such conduct was extremely rare. Duty always came first.

In 2003 tongues began wagging when Sasaki went on the DL twice. The first time, he said the problem was his back, which caused
the velocity on his fastball to dip to 85 miles per hour. The second time, it was fractured ribs, an injury incurred, he said,
when he slipped and fell while carrying his suitcase up the stairs into his house. It was a story that few people believed.

Tokyo Sup
tsu,
in an article entitled, “This is an $8 million closer? Give me a break,” mused that there were other factors involved; the
subtitle of the piece,
yopparatta ue de no akushidento
(“Inebriated Accident?”) made it clear. A subsequent
MSN-Mainichi
piece described an intoxicated Sasaki as roughhousing with friends when the accident happened.

However, nothing could spoil the legacy that the pitcher had created in Japan. As Fusakazu Hayano, a longtime baseball fan
and resident of Kanagawa Prefecture, in which Yokohama was located, told a reporter, “What he did was amazing and truly inspiring.
I remember the days after World War II, when major league ballplayers who visited Japan like Joe DiMaggio were gods. Now we
are reversing the situation. Who could have ever thought that possible?”

At the end of 2003, Ichiro’s contract came up for renewal and he was naturally due a huge raise. There was also talk in the
Mariners front office of adding a fourth Japanese star to go along with Sasaki, Ichiro and Hasegawa. This reportedly caused
a certain amount of grumbling among the other Mariners that the players from Japan were going to take all the money. There
was a special irony to this turn of events, for it was the sort of complaint that Japanese players in NPB had long been voicing
when their clubs signed high-priced talent from the major leagues. But now, for once, the tables had been turned.

Who could have ever thought
that
possible?

Lost in all of the media attention directed toward Sasaki were the adventures of an obscure farm team player in Yokohama named
Tomokazu Ohka, who, ironically, would beat his more famous teammate to the major leagues.

Born in templed Kyoto—the ancient capital of Japan—Ohka was raised in semi-poverty with his two brothers by his single mother,
who eked out a hardscrabble existence delivering
bent
.
Growing into a sturdy six-foot, 180-pound right-handed pitcher, he was drafted by the BayStars on the basis of a strong curveball
and a 92-mile-per-hour fastball. He sparkled in minor league appearances, but after a series of lackluster performances on
the first team, BayStars management lost interest.

The feeling was mutual. Ohka could not stomach the tight, hierarchical restraints that characterized life on an NPB team where
the
k
hai
or junior players had to kowtow to their senior
senpai
—notwithstanding the liberal policy of manager Gondo.
K
hai
were still expected to pick up the balls at the end of practice, run errands for the
senpai
and generally behave like lackeys. What’s more, Ohka had been dreaming about the major leagues ever since junior high school
when he read a translation of
Nolan Ryan’s Pitcher’s Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Power, Precision and Long Term Performance,
by Tom House.

He appealed to the club’s longtime foreign department director Tadahiro Ushigome for help. Ushigome was a an ex-interpreter,
a man who knew as much as any of his peers about baseball in the United States, knowledge acquired over a lifetime of scouting
and signing players from North America for his team. It was he who had first brought ex-Yankee third baseman Clete Boyer to
Japan back in 1972 when the BayStars were known as the Taiyo Whales. He had regaled people in the organization with many a
story about life in America and young Ohka had been an eager listener. Ushigome arranged a stint in the Florida Instructional
League with the Boston Red Sox entry there. Over a winter of play, Ohka showed enough for the Boston front office to express
some interest in him. He begged Ushigome to arrange a deal.

“Are you sure you can handle a full season of life on a minor league team?” asked Ushigome. “There are no Japanese interpreters
at those levels, you know.”

“I’ll learn English,” replied Ohka.

“What about Japanese food? There are no Japanese restaurants in most minor league towns and you’ve got to eat on $30 a day.”

“I don’t care about that. I’ll eat cheeseburgers every day if I have to.”

One thing led to another and eventually the BayStars granted Ohka free agency so that he could sign with the BoSox. (Yokohama
would later receive cash and a player in return.) Before Ohka left, he came to say goodbye to Ushigome and told him, “Even
if I don’t succeed in America, I’m never coming back to Japan.”

In America, Ohka played in places like Pawtucket and Trenton. Under the tutelage of a pitching coach named Bob Shaeffer, he
learned to throw the two-seam and the four-seam fastball. When the 1999 minor league season was over, he was suddenly called
up to the Red Sox, where he appeared in eight games in relief. He thus became the ninth Japanese to play in the major leagues,
beating
Daimajin
to MLB by a full seven months.