You say Sin Joe I say Shinjo
But some of the things that are mispronounced, well, I just don't understand. Shinjo's name is one of them. All of the sounds are in the English phonetic range of sounds. Traxler, on the other hand, doesn't have a much luck in Japan. (I've found that most Spanish and/or Portugues names are pretty well done in Japanese - Jose [Ho-se] and Petagine [Pe-ta-ji-ni] come to mind.)
Having lived in Japan for 14 years, there are still some words that I get all tongue twisted with. But I know Japanese phonetics, and can generally get the word if I'm looking at it in Hiragana. (I can't say the same for many of the foreigners who come to Japan by their spelling alone. That's when it's nice to have Katakana in the box score.)
I can forgive Americans for putting a hard "r" at the end of Ichiro's name. It isn't evident how the Japanese "r" is really a combination of "r," "l," and "d." And I can understand "Shin (lower leg) Joe" as well. But "sh" is a perfectly pronouncable sound in English. In don't understand.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, a number of reporters wrote that Ichiro was pronounced "ee-she-row", so you still have a few announcers and sports journalists saying "Ishiro". I've heard the "sin-joe", and it blows my mind, too. Jeez, what would happen of Ogasawara went to the majors??? Some get it right, though. A number announcers enjoy saying "Shigetoshi Hasegawa", and the vast majority of them also get "Tsuyoshi Shinjo" right.
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As I watched SportsCenter last night on ESPN, I noticed that the announcers still insist on mispronouncing Shinjo's (Shinjyo as spelled on that Tigers uniform) name so that it sounds like "Sin Joe." His given name Tsuyoshi is harder to pronounce by the American standards because of the "Ts" at the beginning, so you'd think they'd butcher that. I had the urge to just slap some of those guys and say "If you're having trouble, say SHEEN JOE, that's it!" I guess after hearing stuff like Carry Okee (karaoke) and Kerradee (karate) I just cringe.
But then hey, the Japanese language automatically distorts foreign names. I remember Brian Traxler for the Hawks in 1994. His name is two syllables but in Japanese it's 6, To-ra-kku-su-ra-a. And Bryant (2 syllables) transformed to Bu-ra-i-a-n-to (6 syllables)."