Honor and Baseball
I'll tell you the big difference between Japan and the U.S. In the U.S. we believe that a player has a certain amount of natural ability and with practice he reaches a certain peak point, but after that no amount of practice will make him better -- because after a certain point your ability reaches its limits. But the Japanese believe there is no peak point. They don't recognize limits.
Chris Arnold,
Former San Francisco Giant and Kintetsu Buffalo
"You Gotta Have Wa" is filled with anecdotes like that. I don't think that all of them are necessarily as intense as they used to be, like the Carp have lighted up a bit on spring training, but there is a lot of supporthing opinion.
The biggest "dishonor" that I'm sure many will want to point out is the protectionism of titles. And I'm not just referring to Cabrera this year. Once Chunichi's Fukudome got ahead of Hideki Matsui in the batting title race, he was benched (except for two innings of defense per game to keep his consecutive game streak alive) to protect the title. A number of years ago Chunichi pitched around Matsui in the Giants' last game of the season to prevent him from taking the home run title away from their Takeshi Yamasaki. The BayStars benched Suzuki-kun to win the batting title for him a few years back. And there are many more examples, all pretty recent, of teams benching or pitching around batters to preserve and/or prevent players from winning titles. Is this behavior more "honorable" than in North American baseball?
I haven't really paid attention to MLB for a while, does this sort of thing go on there? The Japanese press seems to think not, stating that in the Majors it's "shobu tai shobu" (strength vs. strength). In Japan, it's more stategy vs. double think. Is there honor in trying to get the upper hand by stealing the opposing team's signs? This kind of "strategy" caused a big controversy a couple of years back.
Finally, every off season, the "greedy" side of baseball pops up. Players want more money (naturally), and the owners want to cut costs (equally natural). No matter how well negotiations go, it's pretty easy to make either side look evil (and unhonorable).
I'm sure that more people can point out more honorable aspects (like a majority of players sticking with the same team for one's entire career) and dishonorable aspects. And from both sides of the Pacific. I'm not really ready to say that one (of NPB and MLB) is any more honorable than the other. They're both honorable in their own ways, and they both have their black sheep.
As for players being more about money than baseball itself, well, that's a laugh, in'nit? Pro baseball has always been about the money. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be professional, now would it? I know that if some idiot from Texas wanted to pay me $20 million a year to hit and throw a little white ball for half a year, I would be on that so fast it would make your head swim. The thing I don't like about sports in the U.S. right now is the increasing gangster punk ethos that has been creeping into it (or completely taken it over as with the NBA). That is refreshingly absent from Japanese pro ball (well, except for the Yakuza who are in cahoots with Tokyo Dome, its hotel, and the sokaiya each of those teams parents no doubt call on to deal with difficult stockholders).
Players on both sides of the ocean sleeping with women who aren't their wives and drinking themselves into a stupor and/or getting into fights either with each other or in bars has always been par for the course. So the concept of "honor" in baseball is rather a different animal from what one would normally believe that term is supposed to connote. The difference is that the sports press in Japan is still largely a lapdog for the players and teams while that isn't as true in the U.S., so you don't hear as much about player misbehavior there as you do in MLB.
> still largely a lapdog for the players and teams
Haha
[Darn] right they are! Often amusingly so. It must be hard being a hack for a sports tabloid, having to come up with stories about "wild Tigers" and "fierce Dragons" after a night of woefully abject failure all round.The regular season's only just finished, Hanshin are on the brink of signing Hiroshima's Kanemoto to a 3-year 12 billion yen contract, and SanSpo runs a riveting story headlined: "Trainer Maeda commutes to work on a mountain bike!" Edge-of-the-seat stuff, obviously.
Mind you, who am I to poke fun at them? I read it everyday!
Do you not remember the 1990 AL batting race when George Brett was trying to become the first player to win a batting title in 3 different decades? He barely beat Rickey Henderson for the title at .329 but not before he sat out a good portion of his team's games towards the end of the season. Henderson was naturally livid with Brett's actions and it had people talking about how it cheapened the title.
I'm one of the biggest George Brett fans in the world, but he also sat out the last game of the 1980 season in order to "preserve" his pristine average of .390. Since Rod Carew had won the title in '77 at .377 (I think) and since no one had hit .390 or better in almost 40 years, he sat.
It's not just Brett either -- it happens in MLB all the time. What about that Blue Jay player (I can't remember his name now) in '01 who held up at 1st base rather than go into 2nd base with a stand-up double in order to hit for the cycle? Hideki Matsui once had the same opportunity, yet he didn't hesitate in going for 2nd base for the double instead of getting a cheap cycle.
I think that the Japanese media stirs up the title races too much sometimes and that leads to things like Fukudome's behavior, but let's not get carried away and say that this kind of thing only happens in Japan.
I ask this question for a reason. From what I understand the whole arbitration game in Japan is basically non-existant (or not as previlant as it is in the States). Should a Japanese player in America file for arbitration? Would that be disrespectful to his family or to the honor of baseball, being from Japan?
The underlying question is, do you think that they will file for arbitration after the 3 years is up, or will they just play for the honor of playing and not become the money-hungry player that most American players are?
This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
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My subject to consider is a thought pertaining to two varieties of the great game: Japanese and American versions of baseball. Having been a fan for many years, I have always thought that the Japanese players, of today and this particular time, have a better grasp of the fundamentals of the game than their American counterparts. I feel that the Japanese player has a much better grasp of the "honor" it is to just be able to participate in the "game" and to contribute in a meaningful way. Maybe it is the Bushido code or the basic differences in the two societies, but American players just don't seem to understand the deeper meanings of the "honor" it is to participate in such a wonderful sport. There is no other sport on this planet that can be decided with a 500th homer or by a 10th inning swinging bunt. You don't have to be the biggest or the strongest, but one must always have a strong mind and will to succeed. The Japanese players appear to be much more stoic and care more for the game. Am I wrong?