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Baseball in Japan is similar to U.S. game, only with dancing girls
SAPPORO, Japan | Well, I’m a few thousand miles away, but from what I can tell in my jet-lagged state, the World Series back home looks like a real stink bomb.
The Boston Red Sox are already up two games to none, the Colorado Rockies look as if they lost all their pixie dust during their long layoff, and unless something changes, that series mercifully will be over by the end of the weekend.
So, come join me here in Sapporo (home of the world’s largest ice statue festival), where the Japan Series is about to begin. This promises to be one wild ride.
On one side, you have the Nippon Ham Fighters, a team named after a meat-packing company, carried by an Iranian-Japanese pitcher with the spectacular name Yu Darvish, and managed by newly hired Royals manager Trey Hillman. You may know that Hillman, born and raised in Texas, is trying to become the first non-Japanese manager to win consecutive Japan Series titles.
“I want people to learn to say ‘Yee-haw,’ ” he told everyone on a television morning show a couple of weeks ago. “That’s a Texas word. It means ‘spectacular joy.’ ”
Yee-haw. Spectacular joy. President Bush would be proud of that Texas export.
On the other side, you have the Chunichi Dragons, a team that has not won a Japanese Series in 54 years — they are sort of the Cleveland Indians of Japan. The Dragons are managed by Hiromitsu Ochiai, maybe the greatest player in the history of the country.
Most people in America know about Sadaharu Oh (who holds the Japan and professional record with 868 home runs), and of course everyone knows about more recent great players like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui. Who is Hiromitsu Ochiai?
Well, Ochiai was so good in the 1980s, he won three Japan Triple Crowns (highest average, most home runs and most RBIs in his league). More to the point, he predicted he would do it twice. One year, though, he predicted a Triple Crown and fell just short. He felt so ashamed that he asked for a 30-percent pay cut.
In other words, Hillman is facing off against the Willie Mays of Japan. He also is attempting to win the Japan Series again with a team that lost three of its biggest stars from a year ago (including reliever Hideki Okajima, who now pitches for the Red Sox) and finished dead last in every major offensive category, with the exception of stolen bases.
The success of the Fighters has so baffled the country that during a Friday news conference, with about 200 reporters crowded into a cramped and hot room, Hillman on three occasions was asked a variation of the same question: “What the heck are you guys doing here?”
Hillman did not look insulted. He knows that his team is overachieving.
“Hey,” he says, “I hope we can bring some of this team’s spirit to Kansas City.”
The Japan Series begins today, and one thing I can promise is that you will be getting exclusive coverage right here in The Kansas City Star. I know it will be exclusive because from what I can tell, only seven other people in Japan actually speak English. This would not include my cab driver, unless you consider the phrase of “That will be 13,283 yen” to be English.
A few pointers as we get ready to begin the Japan Series:
•You probably already know that there’s a significant time difference here — I’m so far ahead right now that I already know who wins next year’s Super Bowl (get ready for a real Priest Holmes surprise, people). The time difference is actually 14 hours — I’m 14 hours ahead — which means no matter what time it is there, I am trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep here.
•The rules of baseball are almost identical in America and Japan (with a few minor differences such as the number of times a catcher is allowed to visit in the mound), but the games look very different. In Japan, they are constantly bunting and sacrificing in an effort to get one run. Hillman says that it is part of the Japanese psyche — players here want to sacrifice for the good of the team.
Also, they have a halftime in the middle of the fifth inning, featuring dancing girls. Once, early in his time in Japan (this is his fifth season), Hillman was at a managers’ meeting, and a heated discussion began about how to speed up games. Hillman listened to the various ideas and then finally said: “You know, if we really want to shorten games, how about we get rid of halftime?”
The looks on the faces of the other managers told him immediately that he was tromping on sacred ground.
“We’ve been doing halftime here for a very long time,” he was told coldly.
“And that,” Hillman says now, “was the last time I spoke at a managers’ meeting.”
•Another difference between baseball here and there is the intensity the Japanese players put into their practice and workouts. Friday, the Fighters had a light workout to prepare for the start of the Japan Series. However, a “light workout” means something different in Japan.
A “light workout” is actually a grueling two-hour steel cage match with two batting cages going at once (the pitchers throw close to full speed — no batting-practice fastballs for these guys), numerous drills going simultaneously around those cages, everybody running full speed and one intense Nippon Ham coach whacking ground balls at infielders. I’ve watched major-league workouts for almost 20 years, and I can tell you that I have never in my life seen a coach hit ground balls that hard.
Here’s Japan for you: After the players did this for two hours — mind you, guys don’t work this hard during spring training in the majors — they walked off the field to stunned looks of Japanese reporters.
“Are you coming back out?” one asked. The player shook his head.
“It’s like a vacation,” the reporter said as he shook his head.
Yeah, it’s different here.