In Seattle Kazuhiro Sasaki became a pitching sensation; in Japan he is a hero
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FOR A MOMENT, let's dismiss the notion that fame is truly measured in numbers: how many tens, hundreds or millions of dollars for a contract; how many magazine covers; how many endorsements; GeoCities Web sites; Saturday Night Live appearances; Letterman or Leno monologue mentions.
Sometimes, the best proof of someone's celebrity is merely the expression made by the throat, tongue, teeth and vocal chords.
The amiable Mike Sweeney, first baseman for the Kansas City Royals, explains the illustriousness of native son Kazuhiro Sasaki in the Land of the Rising Sun. It is November and Major League Baseball has sent a team of players to Japan for a series of eight exhibition games against the Japanese. The Seattle Mariners' Sasaki is playing for the visitors. For their seventh game, Sweeney and his teammates are in Seibu stadium, an unglamorous facility with seats the color of green tea.
"So I get introduced," Sweeney says, recalling the series' inaugural game in Tokyo several days prior. Sweeney feigns a PA system and bellows, "Mike Sweeney!"
"The crowd goes, `Woo.'
"They introduce (Barry) Bonds and (Randy) Johnson.
"The crowd: Woo! Woo!
"Then comes Sasaki," he says, raising both hands, flailing them and then cupping them so what he says next is amplified.
"YAHHRRAAAAARRRR!"
Japan is the perfect country to disappear in. Even if you do challenge conformity and you sport the grooviest type of attire - women wearing red fishnet stockings under rolled-up jeans (fashionistas, you have been warned); men with goldfish-orange hair replete with headband - you do not trigger a gawk or even much of a glimpse. You can be a gum-smacking, baseball-cap-wearing gaijin (foreigner), sitting elbow-to-elbow and knee-to-knee with hip Tokyoites at a ramen house, and eyes will not stray from the steaming bowls of noodles being slurped.
The orderly, staid, polite Japanese - some carry miniature ashtrays on their keychains, which is probably more of a statement of their value for etiquette than of their fondness for the cigarette - pay no mind equally to other Japanese and non-Japanese.
Except if you're the pitcher known as Daimajin.
In Japan, champions do not lead the prosaic existence of all those white-shirted, navy-suited "salarymen" thumbing their Nikkan Sports newspapers, punching their Web-access cellphones, smoking their Mild Sevens.
Champs sleep in hotels separately from the team, they eat in private rooms in restaurants with back entrances, they leave public events by pulling James Bond getaways to avoid a hungry paparazzi prodded by a public obsessed with a champ's every move.
And why not? In a country with a population about half that of the United States in an area roughly the size of California, champs who embody the values and likings of an entire populace are as treasured as the rare black pearl.
In November, hardworking, gracious, down-to-Earth, American-baseball playing Kazuhiro Sasaki had come home to Japan. The country was atwitter.
PRETTY MIYAGI PREFECTURE, some 300 kilometers north of Tokyo, is flush with rice paddies, strawberry fields, gorges cradling hot springs and pine-clad islands scattered in Matsushima Bay. The area is the birthplace of the kokeshi doll, the painted wooden figures with the tubular, limbless bodies and large heads. Its capital city, Sendai, once had sole distinction as the place where grilled gyutan, or beef tongue, originated. In the last decade, though, the city has also earned some prominence as the birthplace of Kazuhiro Sasaki.
Unlike Tokyo, where neon winks and swims and dribbles and cascades and jigs just about everywhere you look, Sendai is outfitted with zelkova and gingko trees, so many of them that the city's nickname is Mori-no-Miyako, or Capital of the Trees.
Nobuko Sasaki, Sasaki's mother, lives in northern Sendai, in a nice, no-frills house with a fluffy, butterscotch Pomeranian named Pu and a tatami-matted living room devoted to her second child and only son, Kazuhiro. Here he is, in full color, grinning, cap turned backwards, stretching in his blue-and-white Yokohama Bay Stars uniform. He played with the Bay Stars for 10 years. Here is his jersey from 1998, the year he helped lead the team to the national championship. Here is a bottle of sake, one of his favorite beverages. This particular brand happens to be named after him. And over here, beside tiny bowls holding incense sticks in a corner altar honoring the person who was arguably Sasaki's No. 1 fan - his father, her late husband Tadao - Nobuko Sasaki has placed a little stand made out of miniature baseball bats upon which are stacked three Sasaki baseballs.
Tadao Sasaki worked at a milk company. He was mad about baseball and he used to umpire games and manage recreational teams. When Kazuhiro was a young child, frail and prone to frequent high fevers and spending more time in the hospital than a youngster his age ought to, the couple worried constantly about his health. They fed him milk every day (and rice, of course), and Tadao Sasaki would take his skinny son outside on sunny days and play catch.
Kazuhiro was a spunky boy who'd bring stray animals home to be nursed. And like so many boys everywhere, he named "baseball player" as his designated career, writing that when he was in the fourth grade. He went to Tohoku High School, a private school celebrated for its athletics, particularly baseball, where his prowess and his stature stood out and where he epitomized the virtues educators in Japan so often stress: Be honest, be kind, be patient, work hard and don't give up.
When they talk about the young Sasaki, school and baseball team officials don't rattle off earned-run averages, number of strikeouts or legendary pitches delivered off the mound at dusty Hyojogawara Field hugging the Hirose-gawa River. Rather, locals remember a good-natured, uncomplaining kid with a buzzcut who practiced four and five hours a day and who made his teammates laugh.
The thing about Japanese baseball, as Robert Whiting points out in his legendary book on the subject, "You Gotta Have Wa," is that it's as much about morality, education and social comportment as it is about athleticism. Amateur baseball is so popular in Japan, in part, because it teaches discipline and sincerity. Players grow up learning to think constantly about what is good for the team, instead of always focusing on what is good for themselves.
The irony, though, points out Sasaki's high-school coach, Toshiaki Takeda, is that polite, diligent Sasaki excelled in part by doing what he wasn't supposed to do. He broke the rules: He nurtured a pitch called the forkball behind his coach's back.
With that forkball and the ability to befuddle enemy batters at the end of a game, the 6-foot-4 relief pitcher ended up holding the Japanese records for career saves, saves in a season and consecutive saves. The press christened him Daimajin, the name of a mythical warrior. He became the first Japanese player to earn a salary of 500 million yen. (The newest Seattle Mariner, Ichiro Suzuki, later had the highest all-time salary with 530 million yen). He became one of the most recognized people in the country, a fact no doubt helped by his promotions for noodles, a vitamin beverage, insurance, the city of Yokohama and Kirin beer.
So when Japan's greatest relief pitcher of all time signed with the Mariners he was, in the words of one Japanese sportswriter, "everybody's exciting story."
During last year's Mariners season, in which Sasaki saved 37 games and the team got within two wins of hurtling itself into the World Series, an average of 3,500 people logged onto the Mariners' Web site each week for Sasaski news written in Japanese. In his hometown newspaper, Sasaki appeared on the front page 50 times. The paper has a half-million circulation daily. Said one newspaper manager: No reader ever complained about too much Sasaki news.
A week into the Major League Baseball exhibition tour of Japan, the news again focused on Sasaki: He had just won the American League Rookie of the Year title. At his alma mater, Tohoku Fukushi University, administrators passed out newspapers, understandably proud that their student, the one with the chronic back problems, who had surgery twice for a slipped disc and who had spent three years there without playing ball, had not only summited repeatedly to all-star status in tiny Japan, but had now conquered the mighty North American major leagues.
"After World War II, we tried very hard to catch up with America," says Katsuo Ooe, a Sendai businessman and one of the organizers of the local Sasaki fan club.
"America is home of baseball. For Japanese players to play major league baseball is a very honorable thing. We are very proud of him. It inspires us a lot," says Ooe, who can recall being a boy watching an American sit-com about a farmer who discovers oil and gets rich.
"We didn't know we could become like your country."
TAKAHASHI SATOSHI, 35, rode a train from Tokyo to nearby Seibu on his way to one of the last MLB exhibition games. Dressed in a Yankees sweatshirt, insisting Cleveland's Roberto Alomar is his favorite player in the world, he had already spent several hours queued up outside a Tokyo hotel in hopes of securing an autograph.
Various signs held up by assorted like-minded fans read: Mr. Barry! Mr. Randy! Autograph, please!
On the train, Satoshi chatted about Sasaki's celebrity and that other subject that was dominating the minds of Japanese baseball fans everywhere: Ichiro Suzuki's decision to play for the M's. (The other big baseball story - that slugger Tsuyoshi Shinjo had signed with the New York Mets - hadn't yet occurred.)
Yes, Satoshi said, it is hard to watch Sasaki and Ichiro, as he is singularly known here, leave Japan for the U.S. "But it's a challenge for them to play in the major leagues." And then, as so many other Japanese responded when asked about Japanese ballplayers heading to the U.S., Satoshi replied: "It is very good for them that they can catch their dream."
Because Sasaki didn't burst on the scene with a lot of hype, because he wasn't some spoiled kid from the big city, Sasaki is special in the hearts of the Japanese. They know he's a fighter: how he played 10 years for the Bay Stars, took them to the Japan series championship, had elbow surgery and then took on the marvelous challenge of playing in the U.S. They know he isn't a traitor to the Japanese game or its fans because, they say, Sasaki was only ambitious to prove himself against the world's best. His departure wasn't motivated by greed, a characterization radically different than those carried in some media reports a few years earlier about Japanese pitcher Hideki Irabu's signing with the New York Yankees.
At the exhibition series' final game in the Tokyo Dome, otherwise known as the Big Egg because that's what it looks like, young women roved the aisles dispensing Sapporo from containers strapped to their backs. Ushers in crisp purple suits seated fans. Fans in Mariner hats and L.A. Dodger jackets and orange-and-black Yomiuri Giants jerseys ate yakitori and bento.
In the sixth inning, Bonds hit a homer and the crowd yelled "Whooah," which sounded a lot like "Aloha."
In the seventh, Shinjo, an outfielder with the Hanshin Tigers, thwacked the ball but it fouled out and the fans slapped their thighs, groaning and growling.
In the eighth inning, Sasaki appeared from the stadium's bowels and headed to the bullpen to warm up, which triggered a flurry of spectators to hurriedly put down their Kirin Ichiban and scamper down to the third-base line with cameras.
In Japan, seeing Sasaki throw a pitch remains a curious sight, not so much because of his skill but because in Yokohama, the Bay Stars bullpen was hidden underneath the orange bleachers out in right field. Playing at home, Sasaki remained a mystery until the bottom of the eighth, when 30,000 fans would chant - Sa-Sa-Ki! Sa-Sa-Ki! - and he would finally emerge, not on his own two feet, but chauffered in a car.
So in the Big Egg, as "Wild Thing" swamped the sound system, Sasaki walked to the mound and the stadium seats spangled as one flashbulb blinked after another.
He gave up two hits but no runs. He earned his second save of the series. He brought his playing season officially to an end.
At a post-game interview, Sasaki, hatless some of the time so it was easier to see his newly dyed red hair (popular among the Japanese), said he now planned to relax. He likes playing golf and fishing.
But when he was asked what it was like being in his homeland now, Sasaki, having experienced celebrity in a new country, diplomatically said he had enjoyed playing the exhibition series but, no, he had never really missed Japan.
"I get to live my own life in Seattle. People are respectful. When I came back to Japan, I had to face the paparazzi. I don't like that."
INDEED, AS MUCH as Sasaki came to Seattle bearing the weight of a nation's baseball reputation, he had the advantage of arriving in a place that knew little about him.
Only the well-informed baseball fan had heard about the relief pitcher. The rest of us really held him in no particular regard.
But as it turned out, reeling from Ken Griffey Jr.'s exit, tortured for many seasons by a pathetic Mariners bullpen, we were oh so ready for Daimajin.
He became - dare we say it? - our rebound relationship. That TV commercial of him speaking Niehaus; the way he bowed as he slapped high-fives; the way he let his emotions completely consume his face - even the finickiest of fans were utterly charmed.
It became fathomable to us that an indefatigable Japanese press corps detailed his every U.S. move. We acted like the Japanese: Will Sasaki pitch today? We started calling him Kazu; sporting headbands; eating edamame; talking forkball vs. split-fingered fastball; yowling words like Sanshin! (Strikeout, in case you missed it.)
Sasaki faltered in May, losing his confidence, blowing saves against Texas and Oakland. But then he wooed us back and not only just fixed things, he surprised us with an October excursion to Yankee Stadium to play for the American League championship.
"I'm having a lot of fun playing baseball" was Sasaki's customary answer to reporters asking about his new life here. He said it at the beginning of last season. He said it again at season's end.
Amicable, a bit shy, reportedly outgoing enough to engage in karaoke (although those close to him swear he would never allow a reporter to see that), Sasaki adjusted well.
He adapted to a Mercer Island condo and rice cooker (instead of a home with wife Kaori, daughter Reina and son Shogo, who are expected to move to Seattle later this year). He adapted to a 162-game season versus Japan's 135. He adjusted to sitting in a bullpen every bit visible to the fans, especially to the lively, drinking crowd that frequents the area just beside it.
He picked up some English and some Spanish, the latter critical so he could banter with the very spirited Jose Paniagua, or "Paniagua-san" as the closer likes to call him. And above all, Sasaki luxuriated away from the field in the anonymity of being unrecognized: unwinding with cigarettes and Bud Lights at the Fort St. George tavern and with a pool cue at Jillian's; acting like any other shopper downtown one Saturday afternoon, scrutinizing pocket T's at Banana Republic, Prada shoes at Barney's and Vestimenta and Hugo Boss at Mario's.
At home, in Sendai or Yokohama, even Tokyo, these things would have been impossible for Sasaki. They may not be so easy this season at home here, for he is no longer a stranger to Seattle. It is not just the Japanese tourists who can recognize him pulling up to Uwajimaya and Thriftway in his silver Porsche.
If there is more U.S. celebrity now for Sasaki, there is at least one consolation for him: The Japanese press horde that trailed him last year has a new attraction. For that matter, so do we.
Ichiro, the goateed outfielder who is an even bigger star in Japan, has arrived in Seattle with dreams of his own.
Sasaki, no longer encumbered with expectations yet to be realized, has a chance to slip out of the limelight, an opportunity he no doubt will prefer. He can sit in the bullpen and from that vantage point, he can watch his compatriot working to prove himself, as he already has.
Florangela Davila is a Seattle Times staff reporter.