I was thinking a lot about Daisuke Matsuzaka while reading this book on Japanese baseball. Whiting wrote this profile of Japanese baseball in 1989, but there's so much in here that makes me understand the debacle that has been the Dice-K signing for the Red Sox. (I know he was good in September, and I know he could be better next year, but he hasn't exactly ridden the gyroball to the promise land, as we were led to expect.)This year, it was learned that both sides are unhappy. Matsusaka doesn't like how the Red Sox like him to train, and the Red Sox don't like his incessant throwing between starts. After reading this book, though, it makes sense that Matsuzaka would want to throw often between games. In here, Whiting describes the history of Japanese baseball, in which practice has always been almost as important as the game. One manager's system "came to be known as shi no renshu (death training)."
At the turn of the century, the training regimen for one university baseball team "was nicknamed Bloody Urine, for it was said that the players practiced so hard they urinated blood at the end of the day." Trust me, it sounds a lot better in Japanese.
According to Suishu Tobita, a legendary manager through much of the 20th century who was known to some as the God of Japanese baseball: "A manager has to love his players, but on the practice field he must treat them as cruelly as possible, even though he may be crying about it inside. . . . If the players do not try so hard as to vomit blood in practice, then they cannot hope to win games." It's really sort of the anti-Manny approach to the game.
I also was reminded that the strike zone in Japan is an inch wider on each side, which would explain Daisuke's frustrating nibbling around the corners of the strike zone. Then again, the fact that he keeps reporting to spring training out of shape cannot be explained at all by this book.
Moving beyond my Boston-centric reading , this is a great book, a fascinating look into another culture. Baseball in Japan and the U.S. may seem like the same game, but it really isn't. The Japanese game is so cautious and slow. Americans who played there often complained about how the fear of making mistakes seemed to be the driving force behind every decision. Practice and hard work were emphasized so much that players were often exhausted by the last weeks of the season.
The Americans who played there mostly seemed frustrated. A few openly challenged managers which caused serious cultural problems. Well, it did, if they didn't have a savvy translator. I love this account from one of the translators: "If a gaijin says something like 'I don't give a fuck!' well, I'll say, 'I'll try harder' instead. It avoids trouble."
Finally, the Japanese were ahead of us in some respects. For example, this 1989 book contains this quaint quote about Japanese television:
Graphics during televised games show the inning, score, number of outs, and the ball-strike count on each batter after every pitch. Some stations even indicate the speed of every pitched ball as well as its location on a superimposed strike zone.
Back then, they probably had announcers who never stopped talking too.
