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Ichiro! Baseball's Global All-Star

Seattle is in love with its Japanese import, a new kind of American sports hero. Ted Williams would be amazed.

Brian Schecter 13 Jul 2004TheTyee.ca
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The globalization of America's national pastime has meant a lot more than nachos and sushi at the ballpark. Tonight's Major League Baseball All Star game will be studded with Canadians, Latin Americans and Asians. Centre stage: a slap-hitting road runner in cool shades, Ichiro Suzuki.

Ichiro has done nothing less than reinvent the American baseball hero, explains Robert Whiting in The Meaning of Ichiro: The New wave from Japan and the Transformation of our National Pastime. This is Whiting's third book on Japanese baseball. This time he looks at the game through the eyes of Japanese stars who have migrated to America, and he ruminates on how their arrival has affected the relationship between two diverse baseball cultures.

Much of the book focuses on career snapshots and mini biographies of Hideo Nomo, Hideki Matsui and the few other Japanese players who have taken the American baseball plunge.  Whiting finds commonality between the baseballs east and west, but sharp contrasts as well. Japanese baseball echoes the values of its society. The individual is sacrificed for the greater good of the group, and all his efforts are geared to improving that larger entity - be it family, school, workplace or baseball team. In America where the glorification of self reigns supreme, the national pastime reflects those attitudes. Individuality is not only tolerated on the diamond, but encouraged and calibrated stat by stat.

Fusion flavour

Which makes Ichiro a fusion superstar. Arriving in the Seattle Mariners' right field in 2001, Ichiro Suzuki took the sport by storm. He not only reshaped how the game is played but more importantly, in Whiting's view, he radically altered the way most Americans view "foreign" stars. Ichiro has become the symbol of the new Japan, giving it a human face that many Americans could now identify with. In the Pacific Northwest, a region where Japanese-Americans have faced discrimination and were rounded into camps during the Second World War, "The Ichiro factor has gone a long way to make Japan 'cool'," Whiting asserts. "People love his swagger, his flash and his Oakley shades".

Fashion aside, Ichiro's unique and often balance defying hitting style, his pre-game preparation and attention to ritual, the cult-like status he engenders among Japanese media who capture his every move, all combine to make him the first Japanese sports icon to cross over and grip the American imagination.

Splendid Splinter

In stark contrast to the hip and methodical Suzuki stands Ted Williams, the subject of a new book by Leigh Montville, a former senior writer with Sport Illustrated.

In Ted Williams, the Biography of an American Hero, Montville meticulously documents the life of the Splendid Splinter, tracing his rise from the sandlots of San Diego through his brilliant and star-studded 21-year career with the Boston Red Sox. Montville looks hard, too, at Williams after death, his sordid post-mortem journey into the bizarre world of cryonics. This may be the most complete picture yet drawn of "Teddy Ballgame", and it's needed. Ted Williams was arguably the game's greatest hitter. But the latest generation of readers may only know him by the lurid headlines surrounding his death, and the ensuing family-feud that fueled the tabloids and late night TV wise cracks.

Many wars ago

For many, Williams was John Wayne in cleats.  He lived, breathed, ate and slept baseball oblivious to any distraction might impede his quest for excellence. Three failed marriages, a detached relationship with his children and countless public battles with the Boston media - none of this seem to affect the way he led his life. He was a larger than life figure that dominated the game throughout the 1940s and 50s.

His career was twice interrupted for military service, cutting about five years out of his professional baseball life. The same superb eyesight that allowed Williams to develop into one of the game's most feared hitters helped him excel as a Marine fighter pilot. Williams survived a crash landing and other close scrapes while serving in Korea from 1951 to 1953. That was his second stint in wartime uniform. Had the Second World War dragged on a bit longer, Williams would have found himself flying combat mission in the South Pacific against a Japanese enemy.

Japan's rising son of the diamond arrived in the American majors in time for Williams to witness Ichiro's emergence. But a series of strokes reduced Williams' last years to a dementia-like existence. It's too bad the Splendid Splinter and Ichiro never got the chance to sit down and have a conversation about the art of hitting, the weirdness of celebrity, and what it means to be an American baseball hero.

Vancouver-based television producer and consultant Brian Schecter writes about media and baseball for The Tyee.  [Tyee]

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