The Meaning of Ichiro (52 page)

The prize catch of the 2004 season was a New Age paragon named Kazuo Matsui, who played for the Seibu Lions and had been voted
the best shortstop in the history of NPB when he was only 24 years old. Favorably compared by the high priests of
yaky
to Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaperra and even Alex Rodriquez, the 5′10′′, 183-pound Matsui, who could hit from either side of
the plate, was pursued by no less than nine different MLB teams. All were dazzled by his industrial-strength numbers: seven
straight seasons of .300, with a high of .332 in 2002; four straight seasons with more than 20 home runs; five years of stealing
more than 30 bases, with a high of 62 in 1997, a season in which he was voted MVP of the Pacific League. He also had four
Gold Gloves. In his best year, 2002, he became the first switch-hitter in the history of Japan to hit .300 with 30 home runs
and 30 stolen bases in the same season. His career-high 36 homers that campaign, playing in the drafty, semi-domed Seibu Stadium,
was the most ever for a switch-hitter, while his 88 extra-base hits broke a 52-year-old Japan record. Equally notable, perhaps,
was his sturdiness: He played in 1,143 games straight, the fifth longest streak in NPB history and the longest ever in the
Pacific League.

On the basepaths he was a blur, half a step faster than Ichiro, and he possessed a rocket-propelled throwing arm from short
that was unparalleled in Japan. He was also more versatile and more dynamic than steadfast Hideki Matsui. Said one scouting
report, “If he wanted to bunt, he could hit .350 every year. If he wanted to concentrate on stealing, he could swipe 100 in
a year.”

Matsui was born in 1975 and started playing baseball in the third grade. He became a star in junior high school and at P.
L. Gakuen, Japan’s premier baseball factory, where, aping players in MLB, he started lifting weights to build upper-body strength
and a stronger arm. Despite a subsequent spate of injuries—to back, shoulder and elbow, the last requiring surgery—he continued
to build his body, converting himself from a short, frail pitcher into a muscled mounds-man with a V-shaped physique. His
goals as a youth were twofold: One was to turn professional, and the other was to buy a Benz. By 1994 he had accomplished
the first, when the Seibu Lions drafted him at age 18 and turned him into an infielder; and by 1998 he had achieved the second.

A self-described “baseball brat,” he called his mother, Sachiko, the most influential person in his life. A strong, determined
woman, she had raised him alone from the age of 12 after Kazuo’s father had deserted the family and had given him three rules
of life to follow: (1) Don’t boast. (2) Don’t be arrogant. (3) Don’t forget to express gratitude to others who have helped you. She was not averse
to slapping her son if he neglected to follow these rules.

Matsui, a natural right-handed hitter who unfortunately could not hit right-handed pitchers very well, undertook the highly
unusual step of converting himself to a switch-hitter in 1996, his second year in the pros. He had seen the advantages fellow
Pacific League player Ichiro Suzuki enjoyed by hitting from the left side of the plate, and had made it his habit to come
out on the field in pregame practice to study Suzuki’s form. It was as a switch-hitter, in 1996, that Matsui batted above
.300 for the first time. He also sparkled in the postseason exhibition series that fall between All-Stars from the NPB and
MLB, manufacturing 10 hits and five stolen bases. It was then that the manager of the MLB team, Dusty Baker, whose mastery
of Japanese had not yet attained to the finer points of pronouncing “Kazuo” and “Hideki,” dubbed him “Little Matsui” to distinguish
him from “Big Matsui,” Hideki standing four inches taller than Kazuo and outweighing him by 30 pounds. Kazuo did not much
care for the nickname, given the pride he took in his chiseled tree-trunk torso, which to some invited comparisons with Bruce
Lee, a kung-fu star whom Kazuo idolized so much he had the team play the theme song from Lee’s signature film,
Enter the Dragon,
whenever he came to bat. It was around this time that he also began to display the leadership qualities that made him the
rock of the Seibu infield. Said one observer, “You could watch him play without knowing who he was and you automatically knew
that this guy was the team leader.”

In the first game of the 2002 seven-game series with the MLB All-Stars, while “Big Matsui” was flailing helplessly away, “Little
Matsui” hit screeching home runs from both sides of the plate and went on to finish with a batting average of .423, capturing
the “Fighting Spirit” award.

In person, he was an engaging, energetic, self-effacing young man with a resplendent mane of hair streaked with colors like
metallic silver, electric mustard, sea-urchin blue and reddish-orange, as well as a taste for modish dress (black velvet vests,
shiny silk shirts, and six-button suits), who still believed in the old-school work ethic that ineluded six hours of workouts
a day during the off-season. Matsui was also known for being superstitious. He always put his socks on starting with his left
foot, and if his team lost, then he would take a different route to the ballpark the next day. In 2000, before embarking on
road trips, he initiated a purification ritual,
kiribi,
introduced to him at a Japanese restaurant, in which he would strike iron and stone pieces together to create sparks as a
way of praying for a safe and successful trip. The formula seemed to work. In 2004, coming off a season in which he hit .305,
with 33 homers and 84 RBIs, he stood as the finest all-around player in Japan.

Subjects Matsui did not like to discuss were his ancestry and his estranged relationship with his father, a former
yakiniku
restaurant proprietor, who had remarried a woman 20 years his junior and who had been borrowing money recklessly, according
to the
Shukan Shincho,
using his son’s income as collateral.

Matsui’s decision to declare free agency and play in the States came in November 2003, after much agonizing over whether to
remain in Japan in 2004 in order to play for the Japanese entry in the Athens Olympics. He eventually made up his mind after
listening to former Seibu star outfielder Koji Akiyama, one of the finest all-time NPB players, confess that he had deeply
regretted not challenging the majors and that Kazuo should not make the same mistake. Matsui turned down reported three-year
offers from both Seibu and the Yomiuri Giants in the $27 million range, and signed with the New York Mets, accepting a three-year
pact for slightly more than $20 million. In regard to the lower salary figure, he told
Sports Illustrated’s
Franz Lidz, in a nod to the pressure that NPB stars now felt to prove themselves in America, “It’s more important for me
to see how much I can improve as a player.”

In the wake of the “Metsui” signing, there was the predictable level of excitement among fans and the press in Japan, for
now the nation had stars playing in what, one could argue, were the two most famous baseball teams in the United States, located,
of course, in the most famous city in the world, hailed in song by the great
Furanku Shinatora.
If that wasn’t cachet, what was?

The story dominated the sports dailies for a while and fans basked in the glow of all the coverage of Matsui #2 by the New
York media, which bordered on worshipful. It included major pieces in all the important sports publications, as well as the
cover of
ESPN Magazine,
which gushed that Matsui was one of the “top five shortstops on the planet,” that he might be “the best pure athlete the
Japanese game has produced” and that, as the first infielder from Japan, he had the “talent and the temperament to assume
a big league leadership role,” despite linguistic and cultural barriers that might stop ordinary shortstops. Sound bites of
New York’s mayor welcoming Matsui to the Big Apple in slightly fractured Japanese were rerun on every major news show.

However, after the all-out media assault on Japanese senses that had accompanied the migrations of Ichiro and Matsui, one
sensed a slight trace of “been there, done that” in the popular reaction. How long could you keep up the euphoria before it
started to get old? The Americans had even wearied of moon landings after a while. And besides, no one really expected the
Osaka Flash to surpass Ichiro in batting average or hits, or even belt more home runs than Godzilla. In fact, Matsui’s former
Seibu manager Haruki Ihara, who had moved to Orix at the end of the 2003 season, publicly criticized Matsui for losing his
hunger and letting minor injuries get the better of him, noting that Kazuo had let his batting average drop to .305, and that
84 RBIs
was
a comedown from previous years. It was a prescient critique.

The NPB had now lost another one of its jewels. This meant that, along with Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki, three active
players from the NPB All-Millennium team were now in major league uniforms. And there were others lining up behind them to
board the love train to MLB. Former Chunichi Dragon Akinori Otsuka, a late-inning sinker-ball specialist of some note (17
saves in 2003), signed a modest two-year deal with the San Diego Padres for the 2004 season, while closer Shingo Takatsu,
who racked up 34 saves for the 2003 Yakult Swallows, joined the Chicago White Sox. Kazuhito Tadano, a former college star
blackballed in Japan for starring in a porno film, found a home with the Cleveland Indians.

Also eager to go was an insouciant 28-year-old Yomiuri Giants right-hander named Koji Uehara, who struck out Barry Bonds three
times in a 2002 postseason exhibition game between the NPB and MLB All-Stars in Tokyo with an assortment of
shooto
balls, sliders, forkballs and fastballs, and also nailed Jason Giambi twice. Another potential candidate was phenom Daisuke
Matsuzaka, a 23-year-old workhorse for the Seibu Lions who could throw the ball at 96 mph. Matsuzaka once threw 250 pitches
in a nationally televised high-school game that went 17 innings. Also waiting in the wings was left-handed pitching artist
Kei Igawa, who led the Central League in wins (20) and ERA (2.80) in 2003; and outfielder Kosuke Fukudome, a line-drive hitter
who denied Hideki Matsui his triple crown in 2002 by hitting .343 to cop the Central League batting title. As of this writing,
however, all of them were four or more years away from free agency.

In the face of the latest Matsui defection and the public avowals of other stars like Uehara and Matsuzaka to follow suit,
NPB fans remained remarkably nonplussed. The Rubicon had, after all, already been crossed when Hideki Matsui defied the shoguns
of Yomiuri and purchased his one-way ticket to the big leagues. That was the Last Taboo, and it symbolically ended any remaining
pretensions Japanese owners had of claiming parity with the U.S. Kazuo Matsui had not played for Yomiuri and had therefore
not been a nightly fixture on nationwide TV. It was less painful to let him go.

Ardent baseball fan Machiko Kawamura, a grandmotherly resident of Hodogaya (outside Yokohama), who watched Yankee games religiously
(she had memorized the entire Yankee roster) and tuned in the Mariners as well, was thrilled at the prospect of adding the
Mets to her viewing schedule. “Kazuo should go,” she said. “It’s exciting for us to think that he will be a valuable player
in the U.S. Of course, some people are worried about the future of Japanese baseball, but after we see the quality of the
games of the MLB, which are faster, stronger and more dynamic, we want to see more and more Japanese succeed over there. It’s
the fault of the NPB for not keeping pace. Besides, it’s not the end of the world. Americans watch the NFL on Sunday, but
they also watch high-school football on Friday and college football on Saturday. Japanese watch professional European and
Latin American football and their own J.League. There’s room for all.”

Unlike the NPB stars cited previously, among those not eager to depart were Alex Cabrera, Tuffy Rhodes and Roberto Petagine,
all of whom won home run titles in Japan. Advancing in years as they were, none, it was said, was certain to hit the 96-mph
fastballs so common in the U.S. but so rare in Japan. And no one in MLB was willing to pay them the millions they were making
in Japan—Rhodes had a two-year deal worth $10 million with Yomiuri for the 2004 season—to find out.

There were a variety of reasons why the seepage of players to the U.S. seemed certain to continue. In addition to the challenge,
there was the looseness of the MLB system: For the first time in their lives, Japanese players who went to the States had
a real say in dictating their own salaries and their own practice routines. Said Hideo Nomo, who played for eight different
comparatively laid-back Amerian managers, “It’s a great feeling to be responsible for yourself and to be free to be yourself.
In Japan, you’re treated like a child.”

But there were other factors as well, if somewhat less significant. Money, of course was one. Although many players did accept
less money to play in the U.S., they stood to pocket more lucre in the long run given the higher MLB salary structure and
the potential for increased commercial endorsements back home. Another was the preference for natural grass in American parks,
which allows outfielders to dive for balls they might not go after as enthusiastically in Japan, where artificial grass is
so prevalent and is such a potential cause of injury to players sliding or diving to make a catch. Japanese imports even professed
to like the unequivocal expressiveness of American fans, even those in New York. As Hideki Matsui put it, “In the U.S., they
are easy to understand. When you play well, they give you a big round of applause. When you do bad, they boo you. In Tokyo,
it’s always the same. Trumpets, whistles and chanting in the
endan.
Silence in the rest of the stands.” Ichiro Suzuki agreed: “They’re fun to watch. They’re every bit as individualistic as
the players. In Japan, without the cheering section, it’s deathly quiet.”