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.

The Game (and the Interview) Gives Way to Something More Important

MIAMI - Something that was started with promise, ended up being up in the air. But unfortunately, that was not the worst of it....far from it. It sounded so simple, take a redeye across the country, arrive in Miami by 8 a.m. before checking in and asking my baseball idol Ichiro Suzuki a few questions while also possibly telling him he was being inducted into the Wing Luke Museum's Sports Hall of Fame.

However, once on the plane, a fellow passenger fell ill and we diverted to Dallas to get her to the hospital. After a two-hour delay, we finally arrived at 10:10.-The time I was supposed to be at Marlins Park.

Going through the maze of the Miami airport it's more like a labyrinth especially with the rental car. Bu the time I got out of there and drove up to Marlins Park, it was 11:30 a.m.- about 90 minutes before the first pitch wold be thrown. Under the time was "GAME CANCELLED" shined brightly accompanied by another lighted sign "Jose Fernandez 16". Seeing that, this great feeling of dread overcame me.  

I held out hope that was just his name up there for being National League pitcher of the week or something like that. None such look. That's when my friend Nobu, a Japanese journalist, told me what really happened, he and two friends had perished in a boating accident at a nearby jetty late last evening.

I was floored. Here I was going across the country to do something I had been looking forward to doing for quite some time, and then not only realizing that it was not going to happen, but exponentially worse, one of my favorites pitchers, a kid who defected to the U.S at the age of 15. after three previous unsuccessful attempts and then becomes one of the most talented pitchers and entertaining spirits out there...after Tommy John surgery, had died in a boating accident at the still young age of 24.

Even when he's not pitching Jose Fernandez commands attention. (Taking on Jun 14 in San Diego)

I've only met Jose in passing, but I got to see how he acted with his brothers, his teammates. There was no better teammate. At the press conference announcing his death, the entire team of players and coaches were wearing their black jerseys in a show of solidarity for their fallen teammate. There was no game, only tears coming from teammates like Yelich, Prado and Gordon, the Marlins announcing team, coaches like Lenny Harris and yes, his manager Don Mattingly along with team president Michael Hill who were all deeply affected. A few even came from the normally jaded media side. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was in that group.

Outside the media room, instead of fans happily filling the stadium to honor the great Ichiro, a few dozens who bought special tickets that included a commemorative Ichiro 3000-hit baseball bat peacefully queued up to pick up their prize. Some teens quietly played catch. Others came to the team shop to buy Fernandez and Ichiro shirts.

But instead of cheers and banter inside the store, there was a respectful murmur of muted conversations and staring at the television screen tuned into the MLB Channel. It reminded me of the day after September 11 2001, a day in which I was supposed to see Ichiro play for the first time, became a day of mourning. On September 12, wanting to get away from the television, my wife and I just drove and drove, until we ended up at Universal City Walk of all places. It was deserted, save a few zombies like us. I came across a Japanese family, that was supposed to have flown back home that day, but obviously couldn't. The little boy noticed my shirt and yelled "Ichiro!" We had a good laugh over that one, but our smile soon faded as the reality was too close in everyone's memories.

Later tonight, I went back to Marlins Park and the place was teeming with people, old and young, white, black and of course Fernandez's fellow Cubans. Television cameras were still there, the pile of flowers had doubled in size, and people were still bringing bouquets. Kids were playing, but not noisily-it was as if they recognized the gravity of the situation.

While it appeared to be business as usual around the city, there was a large group of people who were deeply affected enough to want to show their respect. It was announced earlier that the day's next game against the Mets, would go on as planned. Not even death can get in the way of a wildcard race New York is in the thick of, and the Marlins are barely holding onto. I continued to make plans for my potential interview, fully realizing that Ichi, anyone would really rather not talk to a reporter. If that reluctance shows on his face tomorrow, I'm not going to push the issue - my longtime desire to have this chance notwithstanding, some things just aren't that important when it comes to loss of life.

Above everyone, the bright orange lettering continued to blare "Game Canceled" hours after the game would have ended, staying up to be more of a metaphorical reminder that the lives of Fernandez and two of his friends were snuffed out. Tomorrow the sign will be gone-which is another reminder to us that life does indeed go on.

The Impermanence of All Things Teaches Us That Joy Needs to Be Savored

The mood of the room and the field, belied my emotions this morning. Surrounded by NBA players present and future, as well as Olympic hopefuls, the banter was jovial. Players like Frank the Tank of Wisconsin, Oregon's Joseph Young, and Arizona phenom Stanley Johnson, all waiting for yoga class to begin, were easily zinging putdowns, jokes and friendly talk to anyone and everyone. Hours later, on the field of Pershing Park, a place where the mighty Babe Ruth once hit a home run, an exciting baseball playoff game was being played. The home team, the Santa Barbara City College Vaqueros were joyfully playing out an eventual 5-0 win over the Rio Hondo College Roadrunners.
it was great to be a fly on the wall of both atmospheres. Because it helped me to momentarily forget what I experienced the previous two days. Spending both days looking for a young man that would later be found death, was as traumatic an experience as I want to experience for now, was a grueling grind.
t was a frustrating few days prior, especially for his family. Yet there was still hope that Cody could be found alive. We all felt that way. Watching the helicopter fly above me on a trail between East Camino Cielo and Paradise Road on Thursday, I had a belief that somehow there was a chance...albeit slight. When hearing of the news it was like a punch in the gut, and then utter sadness for the family I have never met. Tonight, after it all been cleared away, I went to the spot trying to fathom why a young life full of promise was suddenly over. The only solace I had was to accept the impermanence of all things. And then eventually I smile, remembering the other occurrences of the previous two days.

The Man Who Should Have Gotten Some Credit for Baseball's Integration, But Didn't

By Michael Goro Takeuchi

Lester Rodney, one of the first journalists to call for the end of segregation in baseball.

   "I ain't gonna play with no n---"  

Brooklyn Dodgers player Carl Furillo in 1946  prior to meeting Jackie Robinson

If there is a heaven, I'm hoping that Lester Rodney is sitting next to Jackie Robinson and Wendell Smith eating a hot dog and smiling down upon Dodger Stadium enjoying watching all the 42's run around the field.  Because God knows, he enjoyed it from the press box...and although uncredited, he played a part in it.
  Rodney, who died in 2009, was one of the first journalists to decry the unwritten but very much in existence rule of segregation in baseball starting in 1936, 11 years before Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  He, along with black journalists like Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier, would shout out in print that players like Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige should get there due.  And when Robinson became known,  he became Mr. Rodney's personal crusade.
   However Rodney, a WWII veteran in the South Pacific, was until a few years ago, a mere footnote in the books about Branch Rickey because he was rarely acknowledged due to one factor, the publication that he worked for was the Communist paper, the Daily Worker.  Although it may be difficult to comprehend in this modern age and political climate, but during the Great Depression the Daily Worker was one of most widely read publication in this country.
  Rodney, who was an unemployed college graduate, wrote to the Daily Worker complaining about its lack of sports coverage.   Tiring of this harangue, the editor promptly hired him as the publication's first editor.   The sports page was just like any other, covering sports and writing feature stories.  But it also included commentary about the social impact of sports. His bent caught the attention of one entity, only it wasn't MLB.  It was the FBI.  According to this "Forbes" article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2010/12/23/fbi-kept-tabs-for-decades-on-press-box-red/), Rodney was on the "watch list", even getting the attention of J. Edgar Hoover himself.  In fact, unbeknownst to him, Rodney was mentioned in Hoover's book "Master's of Deceit".   His typewriter was considered lethal by the government.
  It was from behind this typewriter that Rodney began to campaign for the integration of baseball.
  In an interview with him several years ago,  Rodney said this.
  "Blacks were denied the right to compete with and against the 'best Major League players'. Here were these wonderful players like Josh 'Hoot' Gibson, Buck Leonard and later, Satchel Paige.  This was a terrible wrong that needed to be righted." 
  Starting in 1936, Decade began waging a virtually one-man decade-long campaign by getting players and managers to speak out against segregation.  He called out baseball's Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis and many others.  The actions of Rodney, Smith and others were instrumental in Dodger president Branch Rickey's signing of Robinson to a minor league contract in 1946.  A year later, he would be promoted to the Dodgers.
  Rickey, a staunch anti-communist, refused to credit Rodney and the Daily Worker in playing any role.
  "It didn't matter who got the credit, because we just wanted to end the f--- ban," Rodney said.
 As a regular writer covering the Yankees, Dodgers and Giants, Rodney was "privileged" to cover many players like Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.  Rodney was covering the game when Mays made his famous catch off the bat of Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series (http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v3218956/bb-moments-54-ws-gm-1-willie-mays-amazing-catch).
   "I just remember in the press box everyone going 'whoo!" Rodney said with a laugh.  "There was almost a breach of protocol (of no cheering) in the press box."
  Rodney, who was featured in a 2010 ESPN "Outside the Lines" episode,  also was privy to some private moments that were equally memorable.  One occurred in 1947 shortly after it was announced that Robinson was promoted from the Dodgers farm team, the Montreal Royals, to the Big League club.  Some of the members of the Dodgers were none too happy that "a negro" would be joining them.  Among those voicing their displeasure were Dixie Walker, who was particularly against Robinson joining him.  Others expressed themselves as well, including outfielder Carl Furillo who uttered something within Rodney's earshot.
   "I ain't going to play with no niggers," Furillo said.
  "Carl wasn't as vocal as some of the others, especially some of the players from the South.  He was just a kid from a coal mining town in Pennsylvania who didn't know any better." 
 Eight years later, after the Dodgers finally defeated the Yankees in the 1955 World Series, was Furillo, joyfully dancing cheek-to-cheek with Robinson at the team's victory party.
  "That one moment spoke more to be about the change of a man's attitudes more than any words could."
  Another memorable time came during a game against the St. Louis Cardinals.  Rodney decided to walk around the concourse of Sportsman's Park when he came across an exchange between a Black fan and a white fan.  Robinson had just gotten a hit, when the Black fan stood up and started cheering.
  "The white fan said 'Hey pal, what's the big deal rooting against the Cardinals?  They're the home team.'  The Black guy rolls his sleeve up and points to his arm and says "Once the Cardinals gets one of these, I'll root for them.  But today I'm cheering for the Dodgers." 
  For an afternoon in Walnut Creek, Lester Rodney delighted my wife and I with story after story about the golden age of baseball.  It was something that I won't soon forget.   And he is someone I won't ever forget.

*Note Although he was never an official member of the Communist Party, Rodney had leftist leanings.  His attitude changed around the time of the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956 when he became aware of Stalin's methods,  After leaving the paper, he moved West to become the religion editor for the Long Beach Press Telegram. Ironic, considering he was an atheist in his previous job.


For more information I recommend reading Irwin Silber's book, "Press Box Red".

Below is an article I wrote on Jackie Robinson Day in 2007.

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A Tribute to Jackie Robinson  MIKE TAKEUCHI,  Locally and afar, Jackie Robinson's impact on baseball and beyond is remembered. Today's commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Robinson's debut in the Major Leagues will be celebrated across the country. Dodger Stadium will be the focal point of all of the festivities. Led by Robinson's widow, Rachel, and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, the Los Angeles event will include Hall of Famers Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson throwing out the first pitch, Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Hudson singing the National Anthem, and several distinguished guest speakers. About 275 miles and one level away, a former resident will honor his legacy in his own way. Las Vegas 51s (the Dodger Triple-A affiliate) and former SBCC outfielder Delwyn Young played as a September call-up for the parent club. The holder of numerous school and Santa Barbara Foresters records, Young grew up in Los Angeles and is "extremely pleased" that someone he heard so much about is getting his due. "A player of his caliber, and more importantly a man of his caliber should at be able to get at least one day in his honor," Young said by telephone. "If it wasn't for him, a lot of us African Americans wouldn't be playing today." Jeff Idleson, the vice president of communications for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, said that his legacy extends beyond the field. "Nobody has had a greater impact on changing the face of baseball than Jackie Robinson," Idleson said. "He single-handedly helped to destroy the building blocks of segregation, not only in baseball but in American society. Robinson's strong character, energizing style of play and ability to stand tall in the face of adversity benefited baseball, which with inclusion was a much stronger sport with better athletes, and benefited America, which in many ways, learned from baseball how to integrate society." Retired journalist and former Santa Barbara Open age group tennis champion Lester Rodney, once the sports editor for the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker, said that this was no understatement. At the time, Rodney was a regular Dodgers beat writer for the first paper to decry its segregation 10 years prior to Robinson's debut. "Campy (Dodger catcher Roy Campanella) used to tell me all of the time that they were the first -- the first to eat at restaurants, the first in certain hotels, the first to swim pools -- and he was right," Rodney said. "They began to turn the whole country. I remember the Dodgers were playing the Cardinals in St. Louis and this fan was being chided for rooting for the Dodgers. The guy pointed to his black skin and said once the Cardinals had one of these on the team, he would root for them again." According to UCSB Black Studies professor Clyde Woods, the impact was felt beyond the diamond. Woods, who grew up rooting for Frank Robinson and the Baltimore Orioles, specializes in urban history and popular culture. He said that Robinson responded incredibly despite knowing the risks for his race in baseball and beyond. "At the time there were three views in this country: those who wanted the barriers maintained, those who wanted them to come down, and still those who didn't believe they existed," Woods explained. "Baseball was a national sport with a tremendous profile during this era. And because of this, he was thrust into the fulcrum where his role was as much political figure and leader as baseball player, and became someone that all audiences could identify with, trust, and ultimately admire." Today Robinson is paid tribute by a generation that never saw him play. Sparked by Ken Griffey Jr.'s request, several individuals and six entire teams, including the Dodgers, will wear the number 42. Young has also expressed a desire to wear it. He says it is not only for Robinson, but for his family -- particularly his grandfather Fate. "Growing up in Los Angeles, my clearest memories growing up are going to the stadium and seeing my grandfather listening to the game on the radio," Young said. "I want to honor that family memory while paying tribute to a man I owe a lot to, Jackie Robinson."

And His Mountains Echoed-Writer Khaled Hosseini on Story

By Mike Takeuchi

Previously published article. (Book Review Below) 

  In his 48 years on this earth, writer Khaled Hosseini has already lived a life worthy of the novels he has penned.  And from the time he was a young child in Kabul Afghanistan, through a family move to Paris, subsequent political asylum and citizenship in the U.S. a year after the Soviet invasion of his country, and eventually a successful medical practice before a prolific literary career, the two constants in his life have been family and the stories that have accompanied it.

   And now, following his publishing of the 2003 novel “The Kite Runner” an international bestseller that was adapted into a feature film as well as another bestseller 2007’s  “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Riverhead Publishing has recently released his third piece of fiction “And the Mountains Echoed”-a multi-generational family saga that spans generations of people whose locations parallel his own path. The story begins in Afghanistan, the same place he learned the wonders of story as a child as Mr. Hosseini fondly recalled. 

AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED BY KHALED HOSSEINI

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

    “There were a number of really good storytellers from my childhood, but my grandmother was the most consistent one,” Mr. Hosseini said. “She was very good at telling them whether they were completely made up with creatures like the div in the opening chapter of this novel or (they were) us experiences from her childhood like the time she went to Mecca with her mother when she was a little girl.  Maybe it was my personal bias and I am blinded by nostalgia, but I thought they were the best because she was a ready storyteller and I had a willing ear to take in those stories.”

   From those tales, a young storyteller developed his own craft.

“When I was a kid I remember very distinctly the parties we would have two or three times a week,” he said. “Our families socialized a great deal and we always had no fewer than 10 kids around.  One of the games we used to play was to sit around the room and each person would have to get up and tell a story.  And either it was good and people would ask them to continue, or it was bad and they would stop.”

  “I guess I was good because I remember when it was my turn I always felt a kind of hush descended on the room and it seemed like people were really tuned in,” Mr. Hosseini said. “That was sort of one of the first times I noticed that I really enjoyed that effect of telling a story and have somebody pay attention. So I started writing them down when I was 9 or 10-years-old.”

  Years later, the author inserted one of his childhood stories it into his first novel “The Kite Runner” .In the novel, Amir, a young Afghan boy tells his best friend Hassan a story of a poor, but happy man who found a magic cup that makes him rich provided he could produce tears.   Greed eventually overcomes the man and he eventually tragically loses all that is important to him.

  Throughout his young life while attending high school and Santa Clara University  in Northern California, the author continued to write up until he attended medical school at the UC San Diego where the demands of his training forced him to stop.  It wasn’t until he started practicing internal medicine in 1996 that he resumed writing.

  A year-and-a-half after the release of “The Kite Runner”, which by then was in the midst of spending 101 weeks on the bestseller list (four weeks at the top spot), the physician left his  practice to write full time.  In 2007, Riverhead published “A Thousand Splendid Suns” a novel that came from a female perspective that also spent weeks on the bestseller lists and has been adapted into a film scheduled to be released in 2015.

  While on that tour as well as acting as a Goodwill Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) through his own foundation, Mr. Hosseini traveled to Afghanistan and was struck by a scene of a father towing two young children in a Radio Flyer red wagon.

  “I was waiting for an idea that just kind of hit me and this thing happened with the man in the desert,” he said.  

  What followed was a six-year process of trial and error that initially didn’t produce the results he desired.  On top of this, his father Nasser had fallen seriously ill in 2007 and his writing stopped when Mr. Hosseini and his wife Roya assisted his mother Maimoona as Nasser Hosseini’s caregiver.

  “I just wasn’t in the mood to write,” Mr. Hosseini explained.

  Toward the end of his father’s life in November 2009, Khaled Hosseini began to complete “And the Mountains Echoed” in earnest taking two and a half years from that point to finish.

   While the book’s central themes evolve around the lives of a brother by the name of Abdullah and his sister named Pari, it expands beyond an even extended family that endures life and death and the realization of their fates through their actions.  It is a book that is partially influenced by his own experiences, including his father’s passing.

  “Certainly that last year of my dad’s life was very vivid in my mind and some of the passages were quite a conscious annotation to my own experience because part of this book is about people who have become the victims of time,” Mr. Hosseini said.  “But ultimately, this story is about the pull of the family. It's about how we want to belong to something bigger than ourselves and how no matter how far apart we are, we have this longing for reunion and finding each other. While we may be separated by time or by physical space to stretch the fibers of our being, the strength is so that they won't snap. They just bring you back.”

  While there are similar central things of family and memory, “And the Mountains Echoed” is entirely different from Mr. Hosseini’s first two books in the sense of voice as well as its nonlinear pattern, which spans nearly eight decades.

 “I wanted each chapter to reveal something to advance the story from something the reader already read. But I wanted each chapter to more or less stand on its own to some extent and be a part of something bigger that collectively can tell one big story. And that meant each chapter had to come to some dramatically satisfying resolution.  It couldn't be a straightforward narrative novel where you can kind of bleed one chapter to the next and go onto the next thing and it just jumps forward.”

  After joking that his biggest thrill about writing the book was completing it, Mr. Hosseini said that he felt an enormous sense of relief that after going down several blind alleys into dead ends, the different paths joined together in a satisfying conclusion.

   “It was more challenging to write and to some extent it is more challenging for readers to read because it does require a more active engagement with the story,” Mr. Hosseini said. “You do have to connect dots and you do have to pay attention and remember things.  You will have moments where you will be ‘Oh now I get why this happens and what this character meant’.   I have really loved books like that-ones that make me re-read earlier parts to understand what I'm reading now so I am actively engaged with the story.  Hopefully, the readers feel the same.”

Review "And the Mountains Echoed"

By Mike Takeuchi

  A few weeks ago at a local restaurant, a local woman named Diane spotted this writer with a preview copy of Khaled Hosseini's "And the Mountains Echoed"  and expressed that she had long anticipated the latest work of a writer that penned both the 2003 bestseller "The Kite Runner" and successful 2007 follow-up "A Thousand Splendid Suns"-two books that sold a combined 38-million copies.   Well, Diane and many others will discover that "And the Mountains Echoed" is a work that is well-worth the wait.

  It is fitting in more ways than one that Mr. Hosseini's latest book title is derived from a line (“And the hills echoed”) from William Blake's poem "The Nurse's Song"  and altered it to reflect his native Afghanistan's mountainous topography. Because "And the Mountains Echoed" combines the love the author has for family, memories and his place of birth with the lyrical flow of the Rumi poem that precedes a story that beautifully interweaves the multi-generational saga of an Afghani family and the people who they affect and, in turn, affect them.

   The nonlinear story, in which the writer got the idea while observing a man pull two children in a red wagon during a 2007 trip to Afghanistan with the UN Refugee Agency, begins simply enough by examining the close relationship between a young boy Abdullah and his even younger sister Pari who live together in a remote Afghani village with their father and stepmother.

    The two are as happy as can be until the impoverished family’s father gives up three-year-old Pari for adoption to a well-to-do couple who live in Kabul via an uncle while 10-year-old Abdullah sadly stays to live with his family.  While Abdullah's thoughts are about the lament of losing his sister, Pari and her adoptive mother Nila, an accomplished poet, leave Afghanistan due to unforeseen circumstances and move to Paris, it further tears the siblings apart.

 From there the story expands into something akin to a complex literary labyrinth whose pathways are ultimately revealed in each of the next eight chapters-each coming from a different person's perspective over a period of eight decades. For the first time in Mr. Hosseini's literary body of work, extends beyond the boundaries of his native Afghanistan, into Greece, Northern California as well as the aforementioned Paris.

  In his most ambitious work to date in terms of story structure and perspective shift, Mr. Hosseini successfully challenges active readers to not only navigate through the story but to understand and empathize with the complexities of the decisions the book's characters face.  In this sense, much like bringing a scorecard to a ballgame, perhaps having a pen and notebook nearby would be helpful to see the connections the characters have with their emotions and actions as well as with each other.

   Because of Mr. Hosseini’s style, "And the Mountains Echoed" is a work that's not necessarily a page-turner rushing headlong toward a conclusion, but rather a book that is to be savored before it is ultimately ingested-especially during its satisfying climax.  In this book more than the others, Mr. Hosseini has proven to be a master craftsman who can cull together the tale of the fates of his characters without having to state it obviously.

  But most importantly in "And the Mountains Echoed", the former physician has once again proven to be adept at not just ripping out one's heartstrings but rather precisely removing them with surgical precision before gently repairing them through his superlative storytelling ability -leaving the reader sighing or perhaps shedding a tear or two after the last word is read.  This writer's only disappointment is that readers may have to wait another half-decade before Khaled Hosseini's next book.