Sadly, Kuroda Exits Playing Career Without One Last Chance to Seize the Brass Ring

 If the Hiroshima Carp were able to muster a win over the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in Game 6 on Saturday, Hiroki Kuroda would have been given a chance to write a fairy tale ending to a career that up that day was long, consistent, and steady, if never storybook.  Try as they might, his teammates couldn’t get him the ball just one last time.

   Alas, Kuroda will end his 19th and final season without winning a title as the relentless Fighters lived up to their name thanks in large part to a superior bullpen effort and the outstanding hitting of Japan Series MVP Brandon Laird, who clubbed a grand slam in the 10-4 win that clinched the Japan Series title 4 games to 2 for the visitors at Hiroshima’s Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium.

   It was a disappointing end for the Carp and its legions of enthusiastic supporters who were hoping to see Kuroda, who was a stalwart while winning 203 games combined in the NPB (all of which were with Hiroshima) and the Dodgers and Yankees in the Major Leagues, take the hill.  Kuroda had already pitched well in Game 3.  With a 2-0 Series advantage, the Carp had Kuroda on the mound with a 2-1 lead with two outs in the sixth inning of Game 3 at Hokkaido before the veteran had to leave the game with leg cramps and stiffness. The Hiroshima bullpen coughed up that game, and the three subsequent ones to end the club’s 32nd consecutive season without a Japan Series championship.

   After winning the title on Saturday, Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama simultaneously paid tribute to and expressed relief that they didn’t have to face Kuroda in a winner-take-all match-up, even if he did have his marvel of a hybrid hitting/pitching star Shohei Otani waiting in the wings.

   “We faced Kuroda after we took the consecutive losses (in Games 1 and 2), but I was thinking that our players would’ve gone in the game on pure spirit,” said Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama to Jason Coskrey of the Japan Times. “In a way, we took advantage of Kuroda’s energy. I really respect him. Maybe he wanted to pitch one more game, but if we were to play one more game, I’m not sure we could’ve won, so forgive me for that.”

   Kuroda started his career with Hiroshima in 1997 and played there through 2007 winning 100 games, garnering the 2006 Sawamura Award as the NPB’s best pitcher, while earning a reputation as a (Yomiuri) Giants killer. Wanting to play on a winning team, he jumped to the Major Leagues and signed a three-year $35.3 million free agent contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008.    After a four-season stint that included a one-year extension in 2011, Kuroda ended up with a 41-46 record, with a 3.45 ERA and a 1.187 WHIP in 115 games and 699 innings (second only to Clayton Kershaw) for the Dodgers who went to the NLCS series twice during that time.  After signing a free agent contract with New York prior to the 2012 season, Kuroda went 38-33 for the Yankees over three years, sporting a nearly identical ERA (3.44) as he did with the Dodgers and an even better WHIP (1.155) while pitching in 95 games and averaging over 200 innings (620 total) in each season, tops on the team.

   Despite several substantial offers, Kuroda returned to Hiroshima in 2015, intending to stay for just one final season at age 40.  He finished 11-8 with an impressive 2.55 ERA and 169.2 innings pitched, strong enough that the Osaka native extended his career another season.  It was a good thing for the Carp as 2015 Sawamura Award winner Kenta Maeda agreed to an incentive-laden eight-year contract with Kuroda’s old Major League team, the Dodgers.  This season, Kuroda went 10-8 with a 3.09 ERA over 24 games and 151.2 innings.   He gave up three earned runs in a 3-0 Climax Series Game 3 loss to the Yokohama DeNA Baystars on October 14 before pitching well in his Japan Series 5 2/3 inning stint surrendering one run on four hits while exiting with a lead.  But the Carp bullpen had trouble from there on out-giving up 16 runs in the final four games-all losses.

   “However well you perform, it doesn’t matter if your team doesn’t get a win,” Kuroda told Kaz Nagatsuka of the Japan Times. “It’s all about the team.”

     Described as a calm and humble player, Fighters manager Kuriyama sang his praises to Nagatsuka after that game.

     “He certainly has ability and skills but you can’t describe him in just those terms He has a special quality that’s intangible.”

     In a consolation prize of sorts, the Carp announced that Kuroda's  number 15 jersey will be retired. He is just the third player in team history (Koji Yamamoto (number 8) and Sachio Kinugasa (3) were the first) to have his number retired.

  Carp owner Hajime Matsuda told Kyodo News:

  “I wanted him remembered in 15 and 20 years’ time not just as a pitcher who won 203 games in Japan and the United States but also for the influence he had on people.”

      Having covered Dodgers games during Kuroda’s entire career in Los Angeles, I would describe him with one word, “ballplayer”.   While it is a generic term by those of us in the outside world, being called a ballplayer by a teammate or an opponent means earning their ultimate respect. The term is not often bandied about like clicking the “Like” button on social media. Such-named players are often the ones who who are as tough as nails, don’t speak much and “compete” (another popular term in player vocabulary) entirely for their team.

    My brother Dave taught me to believe that no player “deserves” to win a championship, no matter how good or how nice of a guy they are.  Championships have to be earned. While Hiroki Kuroda may not have deserved to win his first championship in his 19-year career, I really wished that he had been given the chance.  But instead, he was left waiting in the wings for the last time as yet another team celebrated on the field at the end of the baseball season.

   

    And that’s a damn shame.

Hiroshima Will Rely on A California (and Missouri) Kid to Give Them a Leg up on Series.

 Carp pitcher Kris Johnson hopes to help his team return to Hiroshima with a one game lead.

With his Hiroshima Carp tied with Hokkaido’s Nippon Ham Fighters at two wins apiece, starting pitcher Kris Johnson will take the ball on Thursday for Game 5 to hopefully help his team get a leg up on the best-of-seven Japan Series.    The left-hander has already had a busy week starting with a Game 1 win in which he outdueled pitching/batting sensation Shoehei Otani in a 5-1 win on October 23.  The next day, he was announced as the Sawamura Award winner given to the NPB’s most outstanding pitcher.

  After winning the ERA title in his first year in Japan in 2015, Johnson was 15-7 while sporting a 2.15 ERA and striking out 141 batters in 180 1/3 innings.  Johnson became the second foreign born Sawamura Award winner in the history of Japanese baseball and the first since Gen Bacque won the Cy Young equivalent in 1964 with a stellar 29-9 record and 1.89 ERA in 353 1/3 (gasp!) innings.

“It’s a huge honor just to win the award,” Johnson told Japan Times reporter Jason Coskrey in an interview on Monday. “To be the second foreign player, that’s just a whole other level. I looked up (Bacque’s) stats, and mine are nowhere near what he accomplished. Just to be included in that, with his name, is an honor.”

 It is the second consecutive year the Carp at one of their pitcher’s win the Sawamura.  Last year, the honoree was none other than current Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda.

  This writer had the fortune to chat with Johnson last summer in Hiroshima.  It was a few weeks after he signed a three-year contract extension and four days after my wife and I saw Johnson pitch masterfully in an 8-2 win over the host Hanshin Tigers inside Osaka’s hallowed Koshien Stadium on July 8.   Getting batters to swing and miss seemingly at will, Johnson kept the Tigers hitters off-balance the entire game en route to a seven-inning, seven strikeouts, zero earned runs allowed effort before an appreciative visiting crowd that included a raucous and choreographed group of Carp fans in the left field upper deck.   He smiled when I told him that it was our first Japanese baseball game.

  “You were at the game?”  Johnson said in his team’s spotless dugout prior to Hiroshima’s game against the Yomiuri Giants that the Carp would win 13-3 behind Takahiro Arai’s two-homer, four hit, five RBI game. “That’s great, glad you got to see it. You’re really going to like watching a game here. It’s definitely another level (of enthusiasm here) maybe more because of the fans.”

 “The cities are bigger in the States, but you find out that all the stadiums are sold out here almost everyday.  Not only that, but your team might be up or even down by 10, and they’re still cheering like you’re in a close game.  When you’re up to bat, it’s a non-stop music and cheering, dancing for whoever is at bat.”

  “I’m still amazed that if a pitcher gives up 10 runs, our drums will start banging, and then the crowd chants to try and pick you back up.  There’s no negative attitude, you don’t get the negative hecklers.   I think my wife heard one heckler in Yokohama, and that’s the only time in a year and half that we heard it.”

  After a few years in the minors in the U.S. and a three-game MLB stint with Pittsburgh (2013) and Minnesota (2014) in MLB, Johnson is in no hurry to come back home just yet – hence the three-year deal he signed in the middle of his second season in Hiroshima.  After expressing gratitude towards team officials, coaches and teammates, he spoke of the country itself.

  “The Japanese culture itself is a peaceful culture,” Johnson said. “It’s always positive and that’s what I think that my wife (Carly) and I love about it.  You can go anywhere and meet anybody and they just shake your hand or want a picture with you. They just want to connect.”

  “Whenever we go around town, kids, people will come up for a photo to shake my hand or just say ‘ganbatte’ (do your best or fight!)  They’re very respectful.  If you’re doing something, I just say I’m sorry I’m with my wife doing stuff and instead of complaining, they apologize for bothering us, which they aren’t.  I love the interactions, things like taking selfies with kids.”  

  “I love how everyone from players to managers and the fans respect the game. In Japan, baseball is huge, it’s the national support so everyone recognizes you. Football you can’t see their faces, but in baseball we’re always up on scoreboards and billboards, so they know what we look like.  Some players will wear face masks when they go out, but I don’t because it doesn’t bug me at all.”

  At the time of this interview, the Carp had a 10-game lead that eventually grew to a whopping 17.5 gap over the second place Giants by regular season’s end to claim its first Central League title since 1991.  In the Climax Series (the equivalent of the LCS in MLB), Hiroshima took advantage of the one game-lead given to them by virtue of winning the Central League and dispatched the DeNa Baystars with relative ease 3-1.    No matter what happens in the Japan Series, this season’s result will surpass last year when the Carp missed out on the playoffs by one game.

  “Last year we had a lot of fun,” he said. “We lost a lot of one-run games that we were just on the cusp of winning. A few things go the other way and we win those things.  But we still ended up only one game out, which made it exciting towards the end.”

    “This year has been different because we have this lead, we’re playing loose and scoring a lot of runs while the pitchers are doing what they need to do on the mound.”

  In addition to his contributions during games, he added that he is trying to help his fellow pitchers, especially the younger ones.    

 I was told I am one of the top guys between pitches,” Johnson said. “I like to keep the time between pitches really short.  It’s something I brought from the States and I try to help the younger kids who are used to the traditional slow style of Japanese baseball.”

   He also is trying to help his teammates with his mind set.

  “I learned to take the good and bad together and use a positive attitude to figure out a way to make them both good,” Johnson said.

  For him and his teammates, he hopes that the power of positive thinking will help lead to a Hiroshima’s first Japan Series championship in 32 years.

  

Remembering Vin Scully Through Stories Not Heard On the Air and Saying Adios to Jose Fernandez in Miami

(Photos by Michael Takeuchi for 5Bamboohouse)

  Through my stint as a sportswriter and production worker, I’ve been fortunate to run into and even speak with Vin Scully on a number of occasions.   Yes, I confess that some of these “run-ins” were often of my design, especially the ones that occurred during the seventh inning at Dodger Stadium.  Not unlike a teenager would to get a glimpse of the object of a crush, I strategically took my place during the singing of “God Bless America” and subsequently “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” near the hallway of the Vin Scully Press Box just so I could shake the hand of the strolling and singing man who the building was named after.  

  Can you really blame me?

  Other times, it was pure dumb luck to interact with “Ol’ Vinny”.  Once while sitting in what is now called “Dave's Diner” (named after  Dave Pearson the ever-smiling
 friendly chef who sadly passed away in 2015), Vin’s lunch partner excused himself to go to the restroom leaving the man sitting by himself and me one table over.   Catching his eye, he smiled and we introduced ourselves.  I told him about the time my Uncle Caesar Uyesaka, nicknamed “Mr. Santa Barbara Dodger” because he was the president of the Dodgers local Single A farm team, introduced us when I was in high school. 

  From there a brief conversation about Santa Barbara ensued as well as a story about Jackie Robinson challenging him to an ice skating race.  “Now Jack, he was a real competitor…”  

 From time-to-time, proximity and fortune were my friends-such as the moment when I was there not as as sportswriter, but a production crew member for a friend.  The friend, told me to stand outside the broadcast booth and keep an eye on Vin Scully to grab him before he went to lunch.

  It just so happened that day, someone gave Mr. Scully an extremely large sombrero and he good naturedly put it on!  I was dying to pull my phone out, but used all of my self control not to capture the image of a legend wearing a sombrero three times the size of his head with a huge smile on his face. 

  “You know where the word gringo comes from?  Some say it comes from that old Robert Burns song “Green Grow the Rashes”. 

   My favorite personal Vin moment came on the blistering Sunday of August 28 2005.  In a completely empty Dodger Stadium hours before a game with the Houston Astros, Scully was at the public address microphone practicing a few announcements before a pre-game celebration to honor the 1955 World Series championship team.  There would be 13 living Dodgers in attendance, including Duke Snider, a harmonica-playing Carl “Oisk” Erskine, and Sandy Koufax, who was a wild young pitcher in that time.

  Amidst a few “check one-twos” by the sound guy, the Astros filed down through the Field Level seats instead of the usual entrance where the bus drops the players off in the right field bullpen.  Scully took the microphone with a mischievous grin. 

  “Bounding down the steps are the wildcard hopeful Houston Astros (the Astros were already13.5 games behind St. Louis at that point and weren’t going to catch the Cardinals), poised to make a deep run into the playoffs.”
  Just like that, 25 guys, Biggio, Berkman,  Pettitte, Oswalt…looked up to the press box in unison.  Only they weren’t the grizzled veterans that would go 21-11 the rest of the regular season and reach the World Series that year.  They were eight-year-olds hearing their name for the first time.   Every member looked up smiling and waved like little kids to Scully, who returned the gesture-right before the own little boy came out.

“Your pitcher Roger Clemens and your catcher Brad Ausmus have been here for hours already.  My question to you is what….took…you…so….long?”

  With that, every player laughed and gave him a “go on” wave before disappearing into the visitors’ dugout and down the steps to the clubhouse. 

    It was a moment very few seen or heard, much like the ones in the hallway or Dave’s Diner.  But they’re the ones that I’ll always remember.  Because they were mine. 

 

Imagining Jose Fernandez standing between Giancarlo Stanton and Dee Gordon.  

  MIAMI -   It had already been an inconceivably long 36 hours for Miami Marlins players Dee Gordon and Giancarlo Stanton, yet on Monday evening inside the press conference room at Marlins Park, and there was still one more task to complete – face the media for the first time since their beloved teammate Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident - before retiring to the comfort and support of their teammates. As they listened to their manager Don Mattingly address the media after a game in which the Marlins 7-3 win over the fighting-for-a-playoff-spot New York Mets was only the backdrop to the main story, the players stood stoically side by side less than a foot apart from each other. 

  As I watched them listen to Mattingly, for several seconds this writer got a sense that something static was standing between the powerful Stanton and the fleet Gordon, two players with contrasting physiques.  It was almost as if I could see the goofy middle brother draping an arm around each siblings’ neck, wearing a Cheshire Catlike grin, and a twinkle in his eye. Jose?  When Mattingly finished his conference and turned to exit and Stanton and Gordon moved to take his place at the table, I did a double take.  Did I see Fernandez slapped his teammates on the upper back and laughed?

  If only. 

 Wishful thinking can create a pretty freaking vivid image sometimes.  Or was it what they call that third eye thing (which shows that I have virtually no knowledge of what it really is)?  Whatever it was, it did make me numb enough where I don’t remember anything that was said said at that press conference, and was thankful that I had recorded it. 

 With not for the grace of technology, the whole day, batting practice, the emotional pre-game, Dee’s electricity producing big fly, and everything that happened after would have been forgotten in an absinthe-filled haze.  Only in this reality, the only liquid present came from my tear ducts.   I knew I wasn’t alone there as Marlins players, coaches, staffers, fans, and even some reporters, produced a virtual Florida rainstorm of waterworks since the word got out that the beloved 24-year-old pitcher was killed early Sunday morning with friends Emilio Macias and Eduardo Rivero as Fernandez’s boat crashed into a jetty sometime before 3 a.m. on Sunday, September 25.

  After a numbing day that included the press conference (see previous post) as well as a bizarre emergency diversion to Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport to take an ailing passenger to the hospital on my American Airlines redeye, I entered a virtually empty Marlins Park in a haze that lasted until a day after returning to California on Tuesday. 

Marlins Manager Don Mattingly's first pre-game press conference since Jose Fernandez's death. 

  I don’t remember much (the photos help bring back some memories), but I do remember standing near the path of the Marlins players as they walked onto the field.   Catching the eye of Miami’s mercurial outfielder Christian Yelich I didn’t want to say something like “sorry for your loss” because that sounds…I don’t know…energy sapping.  What does one say to an athlete in this situation?

“Stay strong brother.”

“Thanks. Yeah I will.” 

Followed by a half-hug.  Seeing this, while some filed past, a few other players followed suit towards me as if needing the same kind of validation that I gladly gave.  They were big, strong athletes, more powerful than I had ever hoped to be at any point in my life, yet with red eyes, they were proving to be just like the rest of us.  Infielder Martin Prado, someone I confess is one of my favorite players because he always grabs the ball at the end of the inning and seeks out a child to give it to, said on Sunday that they weren’t robots.  And this was the proof. 

  Like with Yelich, each current player, Prado, Marcell Ozuna, Gio Stanton, as well as Hall of Fame players from the past like Andre Dawson and Tony Perez, all expressed great appreciation for just a brief few words of support.  It was a strange but touching series of human moments when athletes that are treated like the gods that came down from Mt. Olympus, show their humanity.

 

 After all the tributes by the team, the classy gesture by the Marlins opponent that day the New York Mets, Dee Gordon’s dramatic home run and then the final tribute, Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s’s song “See You Again” the one that was made in honor of the late actor Paul Walker Jr. played for the third and last time of the evening-eliciting the same tears the writer felt the first two times it played.

 

“We've come a long way from where we began

Oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again

When I see you again.” Wiz Khalifa

Later that night, I went back to my room to listen to the recording of the press conference.  I sat down, popped open a Hatuey beer and thought of the press conference scene over and over and over.  After my umpteenth cry of the previous two days, I took out my voice recorder and pushed play, and smiled. There was absolutely nothing on the recording.