Rhodes Walked Despite

Both the Commissioners' Office and Daiei's front office were flooded with calls yesterday (10/1) from angry fans after Daiei's pitchers failed to challenge Rhodes the night before. The normally mild Kawajima-Commissioner made several strong statements to the effect that pitching around a player to preserve a record is against good sportsmanship and fair play.

If fans can raise their voices loud enough, then perhaps change is possible. Kintetsu goes against Orix this evening for their final game at Osaka Dome, then play their final game of the season agaist the same Blue Wave at Green Stadium Kobe this coming Friday (10/5).

[There was an interesting AP article in the Daily Yomiuri this morning:]

Walks in the park hold back Bonds

At this rate, Barry Bonds will walk his way into history before he ever trots there.

Bonds once again got little to swing at, remaining one short of mark McGwire's home run record as the san Francisco Giants beat the Houston Astros 4-1 Tuesday night.

Bonds went 1-for-2 with two walks, and was hit by a pitch while the Giants further scrambled the NL playoff picture. he stayed at 69 home runs, with five games left to break Big Mac's mark.

"You can't do anything if you're not pitched to," Bonds said. "You take what they give you. We won, that's all that matters."

Bonds has walked 169 times this year, one short of Babe Ruth's record set in 1923.

[Comment: Now why is this sort of thing OK in the majors and not in Japan? Is there a double standard being applied? Apart from the apparent racial overtones in Rhodes' case, I'm not sure what the difference is. Pitchers may simply not want to go down in the history books as the man who gave up that homer. Just curious.]

> [Comment: Now why is this sort of thing OK in the
> majors and not in Japan? Is there a double standard
> being applied? Apart from the apparent racial
> overtones in Rhodes' case, I'm not sure what the
> difference is. Pitchers may simply not want to go
> down in the history books as the man who gave up that
> homer. Just curious.]

The key difference is that Bonds and the Giants are still in a pennant race playing against teams that are still in pennant races. The Dodgers don't want Bonds to beat them because if the Giants continue to lose the Dodgers might pass them in the wild-card or NL West standings. Houston can't afford to lose since they are in a tie with St. Louis in the NL Central. The Padres, pretty much being out of it, challenged Barry, and he responded by hitting homers.

In Rhodes' case, he was playing Daiei after the Buffaloes had already clinched. The Hawks' pitching coach came out and said they were going to walk Rhodes to keep him from getting the record. No one's walking Bonds to keep him from getting the record; they're walking him to keep him from hitting a game-winning homer.

Contrast this with 1998; McGwire's team was way, way, out of the race and the Expos were also out of it. In that last series they challenged McGwire and he responded with five homers in three games. Sammy Sosa, on the other hand, was playing teams still in the race, so he was pitched around and remained stuck on 66.

Naturally, Nikkan Sports caught that little twist of fate and wrote a short blurb on it. The only interesting addition to that was that Celig-Commissioner (sp?) said that he didn't see any issue in the walks to Bonds, that "any pitcher is only out there to win the game" (translation of translation).

Celig did mention that he was aware of Rhodes' bid for the record in Japan, but when asked about Daiei's pitching around him, said that it wasn't his place to comment. Very diplomatic of you, Celic-Commish.

Gambare Bonds and San Francisco!

I suppose my point is that when discussing yakyu, we tend to assume the worst; in this case, that the pitchers don't want Rhodes to break the record because they are racist. Could be they're just trying to protect their own stats/reputation/whatever. Still bad, but not as bad.

I'm not saying they're not racist, mind you - it's just that we are so quick to jump to that conclusion when there might be another explanation.

My personal view is that the Daiei pitchers were doing it out of misplaced loyalty to their boss.

In that case, the BlueWave pitchers won't have any excuses. Go Tuffy!

> I suppose my point is that when discussing yakyu, we
> tend to assume the worst; in this case, that the
> pitchers don't want Rhodes to break the record
> because they are racist. Could be they're just
> trying to protect their own
> stats/reputation/whatever. Still bad, but not as
> bad.
>
> I'm not saying they're not racist, mind you - it's
> just that we are so quick to jump to that conclusion
> when there might be another explanation.
>
> My personal view is that the Daiei pitchers were
> doing it out of misplaced loyalty to their boss.
>
> In that case, the BlueWave pitchers won't have any
> excuses. Go Tuffy!

I agree that this had more to do with loyalty to the boss than racism. After all, the Seibu and Orix pitchers have been pitching to him, challenging him. I've always been of the opinion that the fact that Bass played for Hanshin was as much a factor, in not more, in the Giants' decision to walk him. But I do think that race played some small factor in Rhodes case. If there was no gaijin-limit, I might not assume that, but there is a sense of protectionism built into the system. I'm not entirely sure the Daiei pitchers would have walked Nakamura if it had been him with 55 dingers.

But when all is said and done, I hope years from now people remember that Matsuzaka challenged Rhodes, as have the Orix pitchers. Too many people seem to have forgotten that in the second to last game Bass played against the Giants that year, Egawa challenged him. I think it would be too bad if the actions of a few reflected badly on Japanese baseball on the whole.

Egawa challenged Bass in the second last game that year? Could you elaborate on that? It's before my time but that had to be some confrontation!

It was before I got into Pro Yakyu, too. But I think it was in Cromartie's Slugging it out in Japan that I had read that Egawa did that. Nonetheless, I can confirm having heard that rumor from other sources. (Hosono-san, any input here?)

For those of you who don't know, Egawa is the man responsible for the gyaku-shimei (reverse designation) rule where collage and industrial league players may chose the team they want to be drafted by. He did this by first refusing to sign with the team that drafted him, opting to go to collage ball. Then when he was drafted by Hanshin, he refused to sign unless they traded him to the Giants right away. Hanshin did this, and the Commissioners' Office had a fit, writing into law a new rule which forbid the immediate trade of a drafteee. But the Commish also came up with a way that he thought would prevent this problem from happening again, giving top collage and industrial league players a choice. (The pitfall was that it only benifitted rich and/or popular teams.)

Egawa was always contraversial. Like Ochiai, he would do his thing at camp, not the group thing. Also, after retiring, he went to work for NTV (Yomiuri's nation wide TV network) as a sports anchor and says things as he sees them, not necessarily as Yomiuri wants to present them.

When Hara was given the job of manager next season, it was believed that Egawa would take the head coach job. However, Watanabe-owner has apparently vetoed that, agreeing to have Egawa as the main pitching coach, interchanging with Kattori who goes from being appointed main pitching coach to head coach. I think this is a mistake and that Egawa would make a better head coach. But I'm equally sure that there's no love lost between him and Nabetsu as Egawa has been one of the Giants' only critics in the mainstream press.

> Egawa challenged Bass in the second last game that
> year? Could you elaborate on that? It's before my
> time but that had to be some confrontation!

It was written about in Whiting's "You Gotta Have Wa" (currently ubiquitously being referenced in American articles). My copy is in Japan, so I don't remember for sure what the results of the at-bats were, but I believe Egawa struck Bass out once, got him on a pop fly, and then walked him. But he tipped his cap to show that it wasn't intentional. Later in the game he had to come out for a reliever, who threw well wide of the strike zone.

The story doesn't surprise me at all. At a time when the pitching coach was threatening to fine his pitchers for throwing a strike to Bass, it'd be just like Egawa to actually try and strike Bass out!

Tuffy Rhodes failed to break the home run record tonight, but what impressed me was the attitude of the Orix pitching staff. Gave him lots to hit, but Rhodes' timing seemed to be shot - he popped up twice and with his last chance in the top of the 8th, flied out to shallow center. He didn't look comfortable at all out there.

Perhaps my previous post was unfair to Tuffy. What he did this season was amazing, and nobody can take that away from him.