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| Mixed Emotions |
By Mike Takeuchi
*Please note that while there are no curse words in this
story, there are self-censored substitutes that are liberally sprinkled
throughout this piece.
What happens when
your all-time favorite ballplayer is traded to your least favorite team? That's exactly the dilemma I faced on Monday
when the Seattle Mariners sent right fielder Ichiro Suzuki across the hallway
and from the bottom to the top of the standings to play for the New York
Yankees.
It began innocuously
that afternoon after I filed my story on Oakland A's (and former Santa Barbara
Foresters) pitchers Ryan Cook and A.J. Griffin.
Taking a break for lunch, I plopped down in a chair to watch the fifth
episode of "The Newsroom" for the third time.
It seemed like a
normal day, but for some reason, I felt a great disturbance in the Force. I should have known something was up when I
turned to a channel I never watch- the MLB Channel. Baseball is a great sport, but listening to
poor imitations of Vin Scully or worse yet, Bob Costas (there is actually a
Mini-Me or in this case of Costas' diminutive stature, a Maxi-Me version that
sounds just like the verbose NBC commentator) is something that is never
appealing. Thank Buddha for MLB online
where one can watch highlights without a buildup from announcers who act like
they are in the middle of the SALT talks.
As the channel
changed to 282, sure enough, there it was in plain letters.
"Ichiro Suzuki traded to the Yankees for two heretofore
and future unknown pitchers."
"What. The. Eff?"
While sometimes
forgetting what day it was due to reaching 40-something, I at least knew that
it was not April 1. As Maxi-Me, a few
others and a drunk sounding Harold Reynolds (okay, he always sounds drunk)
sounded off about the trade, I numbly stared at the screen.
"How the f---
could this have happened?"
A million thoughts
went from my mind, including blaming Griffin, the right-hander who struck out
Raul Ibanez on Thursday night with a nasty curve ball in the sixth inning of
the first of four games the A's would take from the Pinstripes (yay! btw). Then
I blamed the nice-guy Ibanez, because if he wouldn't have looked so foolish
maybe they wouldn't have made the trade.
Of course these were
all so ridiculous, but when one's favorite player is traded to a team I hate
worse than brussels sprouts or Japanese nato#, rational thought goes out the
window. My favorite singularly named
singles hitter was heading to a place I was essentially taught to hate in the
womb-Effing Yankees.
In the summer of
1965, while my poor mother, was pregnant with me and holed up in my uncle's central Los Angeles
home during the Watt's Riots, my dad drove through darkened and scary city
streets on the way back from watching the great Sandy Koufax throw a
complete-game shutout. While mom wasn't
exactly thrilled with the idea, she gave dad permission because it was her Man
Sandy that was pitching after all.
When I finally
arrived to the outside world, my Uncle Caesar Uyesaka, who was some big shot
with the Santa Barbara Dodgers, LA's single A farm team, had the connections
within Chavez Ravine. In addition to
introducing me to the likes of Tommy Lasorda, Peter O'Malley and the infamous
Al Campanis (who as far as I know was the nicest man April 6, 1987 controversy
notwithstanding), we would get seats closer to the field than the ones my dad,
a service station owner, got for Union Oil Night which were high in the
reserved section near the left field fair pole. It was here where I learned about bourgeoise
and proletariat at a young age, but that is a story for another time.
I loved going to the
games and even though they were far past their primes, I was able to see an
over-the-hill Hank Aaron and a fast-fading Willie Mays play, albeit with them
looking like tiny ants in gray uniforms.
Maybe that was better, because I couldn't see the slowing of Aaron's bat
speed or the stumbling of Mays in the outfield.
Distance helped them remain legends forevermore in the history books and
in my eyes.
As a kid growing up
in the Seventies, I never had a favorite ballplayer. Oh there were plenty of
wondrous players that I rooted for, but I had just missed the last golden era
of the game. Instead I rooted for Dusty
Baker or the Dodgers infield of Garvey,
Lopes, Russell, and Cey simply because they were the good guys because they
played close to home. But as good as
they were, they never really instilled a passion within me.
The one thing that
did get my blood boiling was the Cincinnati Reds and their future Hall of
Famers Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and Pete Rose...err, forget the last one. And because of the 1975 World Series this
hatred had me rooting hard for the Red Sox as my number two team, which in turn
had me despising the Yankees as my number two (get it?) team.
New York supplanted
the Reds at the top of the list on October 15, 1977 when Lou Effing Piniella
robbed Ron Cey of a game-tying home run and me a souvenir in Game Four of the
World Series that the Yankees would eventually win. The Yanks followed that up of course with
another world championship the next year while earlier beating the Red Sox in a
heartbreaking one-game playoff thanks to another player with a similarly unique
middle name, Bucky Equally Effing Dent.
A win over New York in 1981 tempered the hate, but only a bit.
In that whole time,
there were plenty of players that I liked like Willie Stargell and later, Ozzie
Smith, but none for an Asian American kid to identify with. Even as a young child, I noticed this. The
only known athlete we had was Bruce Lee, and he wasn't really a team sport
guy. Besides, he was dead, passing when
I was seven before I even heard of him.
One can only cheer a dead guy in "Enter the Dragon" and
"Game of Death" so many times.
Baseball had a hero
that looked like me. Only in America,
hardly anyone had ever heard of him. With 868 home runs, Japanese slugger,
Sadaharu Oh was and remains the most prolific home run hitter in all of
baseball. But since the competition in
Japan didn't approach Major League levels and the outfield fences were closer
to the plate than they were in America, he wasn't given much credit here
stateside. (While agreeing with the facts of this, I always felt that there was
a tinge of arrogance at best, racism at worst whenever someone brought this up
when I was younger.) Besides, I never
even saw him play other than a "Wide World of Sports" clip here and
there.
The single Asian
American guy in pro sports was the Baltimore Orioles Lenn Sakata-a decent
middle infielder who played 11 seasons from 1977 to '87 mostly with Baltimore
before becoming a coach. Sakata is best known for being the last guy who
started at shortstop before Cal Ripken (whose consecutive games streak began a
month earlier) took over for seemingly
forever.
Sakata, who is now
the manager of the Modesto Nuts, the Rockies Single A team in the California
League,was also known for being behind the plate (because Baltimore
over-manager Earl Weaver ran out of catchers) when Tippy Martinez picked off
three Toronto runners in one inning.
Sakata hit a walk-off three-run home run in the bottom of that inning.
But while I had
heard of him, Sakata wasn't a star and in pre-cable television games and no
internet nor national newspapers in circulation, he was largely unknown on the
West Coast. While everyone at the annual
JACL (Japanese American Citizen League) picnics were wearing Dodgers gear,
there was one kid who wore a Baltimore Orioles cap. When we teased him he said something to the
effect of they're the only team with one of us on it. Despite snickering, deep down I knew he was
right.
Thirty one years
after the first Japanese player, Masanori Murakami threw his first pitch for
the San Francisco Giants, Hideo Nomo and his corkscrew delivery came to L.A. in
1995. Nomo did pretty well winning 123 games (after winning 78 in Japan) while
being the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter at Coors Field (1996 with the
Dodgers) and Oriole Park at Camden Yards (2001 while playing for the Red
Sox). After that, there were failures
(Mac Suzuki-no relation to Ichiro *Suzuki is the number two name behind Sato as
the most common in Japan), tragedies (Hideki Irabu) and semi-successes (Shigetoshi
Hasagawa). For position players, the
failures of Tsuyoshi Shinjo (Mets, Giants) mixed in with moderate success (So
Taguchi won WS titles with St. Louis and Philly).
Ichiro finally came
onto the scene in 2001. And when I first
saw him, I finally understood what that kid in the Orioles cap was talking
about. To paraphrase a line from a
movie starring a recently divorced Scientologist, Ichiro had me at hello.
While pitcher Hideo
Nomo opened the door for Japanese pitchers, Ichiro busted it down for Japanese
position players.
While usually
comparisons of Asians to samurai warriors caused me to roll my eyes, just like
racist stereotypes of bad driving and Charlie Chan or Long Duk Dong accents do,
this time it was actually close to the mark.
Watching him extend the upright bat towards center field before circling
it over his head conjures up that image of a
daimyo wielding his
blade.
In the field,
highlight after ESPN highlight was shown him making a catch or throw or steal
and I would relish each one. Heck, I was proud.
While I enjoyed
watching him on television that year as he made his debut with the eventual West
Division winning Mariners, it wasn't
until I saw him personally did I fully appreciate his mystique. It was a game in Anaheim that was scheduled
for September 12 but was changed for obvious reasons to October 3-one week
before Munch and I were scheduled to be married in Maui.
Knowing my love for
the game, she wanted to share that with me while I felt the same way. The only problem was, she had only been to
one game prior "a zero-zero tie" in the nosebleed or Union Oil
section of Dodger Stadium with some disabled clients she worked with at the
time. Baseball to her, was one long snooze-fest. And to be quite honest, who could blame her
for thinking that? Sometimes it is.
So I was determined
to make the experience better for her by buying tickets close to the
field. But because of the tension of
the times, the game had a playoff atmosphere in a packed stadium despite the
Mariners heading towards the playoffs and Anaheim heading towards their
off-season eventually finishing a whopping 41 games down in the standings
(*Note that year, Oakland won 102 games and still finished 14 games behind the
M's!). But much to manager Mike Scioscia
and the team's credit, they didn't play that way on this day and showed it
when Angels right fielder Orlando
Palmeiro made a diving catch while eating dirt right in front of our seats
along the right field line, my future wife turned to me with a smile.
"Well, this
game seems different," she said.
And it was.
Ichiro banged out
four hits that day while exceeding the already high expectations I set for
him. He managed to top it on one play in
the field that secured my fandom.
With runners on first
and third with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, the Angels were down 4-3
when Darin Erstad came to bat . It had already been a crazy inning because Adam
Kennedy appeared to have beaten the tag in a fielder's choice play at the plate
that would have tied the game, but was not only called out-but kicked out of
the game for going ballistic after the call.
Erstad came up and
fouled off pitch after pitch from Mariners reliever Kaz Sasaki. When Kaz threw
a forkball that caught too much of the plate, Erstad blasted a sizzling line
drive towards the right field corner that caused the 40 thousand or so Angels fans to scream with
delight.
While the trajectory
of the ball was too low for a home run, the ball seemed destined to be a
game-winning, two-run double as a fast runner, Jeff DaVannon was motoring
around the basepaths from first. But
before the ball could get there, a blur of gray and blue streaked by like those
old Batman comics-Ichiro
"He's gonna
catch it" I inadvertently screamed.
Just as the crowd
reached a fever-pitch, Ichiro reached out as far as he could and snagged the
ball in the heel of his glove in full stride in front of the image of Angels
manager Mike Scioscia plastered on the right field wall. To slow himself down, the right fielder
bounced playfully off the wall as the crowd, save a few Japanese fans, let out
a groan like they were punched in the gut.
Game over-Batman had saved the day.
 |
| October 3, 2011 Batman Saves the Day |
Instead of
celebrating, the "rookie" put his head down and ran back towards the
dugout like it was the middle, not the end of a game trying hard not to smile.
While Munch's eyes were wide, I held my hands on top of my head wondering if
that really happened.
In my 40-something
years of going to countless games as a fan and reporter, it remains the
greatest play I have ever seen. And that's saying something. I was in that very stadium on October 15,
1986 for the Dave Henderson or Donnie Moore "one strike away" game
and I've seen Piniella, or at least his glove, rob Cey (and me) of that homer
in the World Series, I was there during Orel Hershiser's streak. But this play was absolutely magnificent.
Since then I have
seen Ichi make other great plays, including the game winning hit in the 2009
World Baseball Classic finals in a fierce rivalry with Korea that harkened to
Real Madrid/Barcelona or India/Pakistan in cricket. I've seen him hit an
inside-the-park home run in the 2007 All-Star game-well okay I saw it in the
bowels of the A T & T Park auxiliary press room. I even spent a few days at the Mariners camp
watching him do drills in the outfield-not that I'm obsessed or anything. But there is something about him that I
and many others find fascinating. The
Asian factor is part of it sure. But
there is a deeper reason to it that will be revealed soon enough.
And despite him becoming human due to age, I have
never been disappointed, until now in the conundrum of-favorite all-time player
joins least favorite all-time team. What
to do?
In one of his
"Seinfeld" monologues@,
comedian Jerry Seinfeld said that because teams move to different cities and
players go to different teams, essentially all we are rooting for is
laundry. While funny, my rooting
interest has become decidedly more complicated thanks to Yankees first base
coach Mick Kelleher.
Last year, after
hearing my story about Piniella stealing my ball, Mick introduced me to Derek
Jeter, Robinson Cano and a few others. Later, he sent me an autographed ball
with not only his signature, but that of manager Joe Girardi and half of the
team. He later emailed and said "Maybe this will change your mind".
Yet I still
resisted. Even during a conversation in
Oakland last week prior to the trade, I
told him I couldn't "pull the trigger" just yet. It's become a running joke between us.
But now, the Yankees
got the only guy I have ever rooted for through thick and thin. What to do?
Yesterday, I emailed Mick and joked that I may have to
get that Yankees cap after all. I tried to justify to myself that if the cap
was not to wear, but to put on my bookshelf along with my other Ichiro
memorabilia, it doesn't that make me
root for the Microsoft or GM of sports. Surely my friends who are Red Sox fans
would definitely have some advice for me-yet I'm not ready to go there just
yet.
As I contemplated
this late Monday night, an email came through.
It was Mick responding.
"It's about time
Mike!" he emailed.
After going to bed
late, I woke up early Tuesday morning to
contemplate this dilemma further over
coffee, before having an action filled day full of errands. But among all the
stops, not one of them was to the sports store.
At least not yet.
* In the same vein
of the kid with the Orioles cap. A few
years ago, the late journalist Lester Rodney, the first white journalist to
call for the end of segregation in baseball, told me the story of an African
American fan in St. Louis explain to a white fan that he rooted for the Dodgers
to beat the Cardinals for the same reason.
#Natto is fermented soy beans that somehow Japanese people
love. Frankly I think it smells and
tastes like shit.
@ Here is the link to the "Seinfeld" monologue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WSD6Y2YWj4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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