By Robert Whiting (2011)
On a recent visit to the Oakland Coliseum, to see the Athletics host the Seattle Mariners, I had a long conversation with a security guard there who has worked at the ballpark for many years and has watched many MLB games. He offered me these insights about Ichiro and Seattle: “I have been watching Ichiro play with the Seattle Mariners ever since he arrived in the States 11 years ago and I have noticed big changes. One is in the way he interacts with his teammates and vice versa. Ichiro used to be more connected to his teammates. They seemed to genuinely like him. But not the players on the Mariners these days. For example, I saw Ichiro make a terrific grab of a long fly ball to right field, near the Mariners bullpen. It was a great play, but nobody in the bullpen cheered him. In the past, they’d be yelling and high-fiving him. By contrast, when the Mariners shortstop made a great play, they all stood up and erupted in cheers. After the game, the Mariners team bus stood outside the visitor’s clubhouse. All of the players, except Ichiro, were on the bus. They were ready to go, but Ichiro had not yet boarded. He was standing near the exit texting messages on his phone. It took an hour before he was finally finished and got on the bus. Quite often, Ichiro had his own driver. I remember seeing him in a white SUV after one game, with six Japanese women in high heels running after him. But not this day. The Mariners players were not at all happy about this—really angry, you could tell by the expression on their faces. The Mariners’ estrangement with Ichiro dated back to when Ken Griffey Jr. joined the team. Griffey Jr. eventually grew to dislike Ichiro for his aloof, arrogant and selfish ways. He teased Ichiro, yes, but there was an element of hostility in his horseplay. You could see it if you watched. Of course, it doesn’t help now that Ichiro is not the same player he was. That’s another big change. He has lost a step on his foot speed. He doesn’t get the infield hits to second base like he used to. Now he looks to me like just an ordinary hitter. There is nothing special about an outfielder who hits .260 with few home runs, especially one who plays for a last place team—in fact, the worst team in the major leagues. Mind you, Ichiro will make the Hall of Fame. But right now, this season, he is just another overpaid, aging major league player on the downhill side of his career. Hanging around the Mariners as much as I do, I pick up bits and pieces of conversation, gossip, players talking, coaches talking. And the message I am getting is this: if Ichiro left the Mariners, it would probably be a good thing. They made a big mistake by signing him to such a long contract. Even Eric Wedge, I am hearing, wants him to go.”
* * * * *
Then there is this from Steven Eigenberg, an Oakland supporter who sends out periodic newsletters about the A’s: “One big reason that former manager Bob Geren was fired and replaced by Bob Melvin is that Hideki Matsui’s agent put pressure on the team to do so. Matsui was really angry about the way Geren was treating him, benching him frequently. It was screwing up Matsui’s rhythm. He wanted to play for a manager who had faith in his abilities. In fact, according to Eigenberg, Matsui was so unhappy with his treatment that he had threatened to go back to Japan if Geren was not given the axe. After watching Geren run the team for three months, he had come to the conclusion that Geren was an idiot. Of course there were other reasons—Geren was a terrible manager who never should have been hired in the first place. But complaints from Matsui’s agent helped to seal his doom.”
* * * * *
Finally, it is necessary to note the sad end of the Kosuke Fukudome era in Chicago, and Cubs fans were happy to see him go. Fukudome had been brought to Chicago from Chunichi in 2008 on a 4-year, $44 million contract and was expected to do great things—hailed as the cure to the Cubs’ 100-year inability to win a World Series title. He went 3-3 with a game-ending 3-run home run on Opening Day in 2008 and hit so well in April that he was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated in his very first month in MLB. He was picked to play in the All-Star Game that year. But, unfortunately for him and Cubs fans, he had become more of a bench player by post-season time, with mediocre statistics not remotely worthy of the huge salary he was getting.
Fukudome started out well every year he was in the big leagues, only to fade away by mid-season. He never produced more than 13 homers or 58 RBIs in a single season. As MLB pitchers hit their stride and reached their peak fastball speeds from May and June on, he found himself unable to handle MLB pitching. His reflexes were simply not fast enough.
He was dubbed “Mr. April” for his hot starts and second-half fades—a title Fukudome did not appreciate, but one he deserved. By 2011, the Japanese outfielder who had once attracted a huge amount of international media attention was down to just one Japanese beat writer covering him exclusively. With the Cubs needing playing room in their lineup for young talent to develop, it was decided that Fukudome had to go.
Said Jim Hendry, the recently fired GM of the Cubs, “There were some good times, but there were some tough times too, and some bad endings in the first couple of years. He is a nice guy and a good teammate, but he just didn’t play as well as we thought he would in the second halves.”
Cubs manager Mike Quade loved Fukudome’s professionalism and appreciated his grace in right field. Quade thought Fukudome could be an effective situational leadoff hitter on a team like Cleveland, which was contending for the A.L. Central Division title, because of his plate discipline. “I’m going to miss him and I’m going to be a big Cleveland fan,” Quade said. “Even when things were going bad and he wasn’t playing that well, you could count on him to do his work.” But no one disputed that it was time to move on.
Cleveland fans, for their part, seemed surprisingly happy with the addition of Fukudome, who, if nothing else, is a quality defensive outfielder. Said the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s baseball correspondent Paul Hoynes, “He is not the big mid-season addition we hoped for, but he is a good small-scale addition—an improvement over the players we had before, and I believe he will help the team, which is in a tight pennant race in the A.L. Central Division, in some way.”
Fukudome, hitting .271 with 3 home runs (on a salary of $14 million for 2011), actually won a game for the Indians in the 14th inning shortly after joining the team by getting hit in the forearm by a pitched ball with the bases loaded. It is not something players brag about, but given Fukudome’s four-year record with Chicago, it was one of the brighter spots in his MLB career.
Moreover, the Indians got a pretty good deal on the financial side as well—they only have to cough up $770,000 for the rest of the season. The Cubs will pay the rest.
Fukudome says he wants to stay in the MLB. But even if he catches fire over the rest of the season and plays well in the playoffs (and that is a big IF, considering that the A.L. is a much tougher league than the N.L.), he will have to accept a much, much lower salary—assuming, that is, any team wants to keep him.
Kosuke Fukudome, good luck. You are certainly going to need it.
NOTES: Fukudome’s masseuse and translator—perks given to him to entice him from Chunichi—also headed to Cleveland in the deal. Fukudome got along well with teammates and has a sly sense of humor. (When asked what he knew about Cleveland, he said, “I know there is a lake there.”) This was a bad year for Japanese players overall. Ichiro stayed in MLB purely on the strength of what he did the first 10 years and because he had two years left on his contract. Kuroda pitched well enough to stay. Matsui, growing older and slower with each year, wound up back in Japan not long after.
Tokyo Junkie 