Category: Articles
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Valentine’s philosophy brought Marines glory, money
by Robert Whiting (Jan 24, 2010) Second in a four-part series Bobby Valentine was born and raised in Connecticut and was chosen one of the most outstanding high school athletes in the history of the state, in a survey by Sports Illustrated. He was recruited by the University of Southern California, whose football coach expected…
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Clandestine campaign led to Valentine’s demise
by Robert Whiting (Jan 17, 2010) [Part 1 of 4] It was just about the time that Chiba Lotte Marines acting owner Akio Shigemitsu declared that Bobby Valentine could run his team “for life” that things began to go sour. Until then, the former Texas Rangers and New York Mets manager had been riding a…
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Nomo’s legacy should land him in Hall of Fame
by Robert Whiting (Oct 24, 2010) It is doubtful that Hideo Nomo and Don Nomura realized the full significance of what they were doing back in 1995 when they defied Nippon Professional Baseball and migrated to the United States. But many of the changes that followed in the wake of their actions may never have…
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Tireless work ethic earned Nomo respect in majors
by Robert Whiting (Oct 17, 2010) Hideo Nomo’s most significant accomplishment may have been making the Japanese game respectable in the eyes of the rest of the world. Few Major League Baseball executives were interested when agent Don Nomura began to shop him to teams in North America. Most of them thought Japanese baseball Triple-A…
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Nomo blazed trail, helped mend fences with move
by Robert Whiting (Oct 3, 2010) The history of the Japan-America baseball relationship can be divided into two eras: Pre-Nomo and Post-Nomo. Younger readers may find it difficult to believe but before Hideo Nomo went to the United States to become a star for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995, most Americans did not even…
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Resentment of Valentine’s power factored in downfall
by Robert Whiting (Jan 31, 2010) There are many reasons why Bobby Valentine lost favor with the Chiba Lotte Marines organization. It wasn’t just his prohibitive salary ($5 million per year). In contrast to the foreign media covering Valentine in Japan, who liked to portray Valentine as a victim of heartless corporate executives, Japanese reporters…
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Contract loophole opened door for Nomo’s jump
by Robert Whiting (Oct 10, 2010) Hideo Nomo was born to a working-class family in Osaka in 1969 – his father, Shizuo, was a big, broad-shouldered fisherman turned postal worker and his mother, Kayoko, a part-time supermarket employee. He was a naturally shy, taciturn youth who hid his emotions, even from his own parents. Said…
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Kawakami’s players impressed MLB counterparts
by Robert Whiting (Nov 29, 2013) The V-9 Yomiuri Giants were arguably the best team in the history of the game. Giants stars Sadaharu Oh and Shigeo Nagashima had been openly coveted by MLB general managers back in the United States. So had pitcher Tsuneo Horiuchi at his peak. Legendary manager Tetsuharu Kawakami had wanted…
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Godzilla and Donald Trump – Yukan Fuji
By Robert Whiting The first movie I ever saw that had Japan or Japanese people in it was Godzilla, in 1957. I was 14 years old and I saw it at the local Eureka Theater, a cinema in the small coastal fishing and logging town of Eureka, California, population 29,000. It was a science fiction…
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Data File: Height, Weight and Peeing in the Shower – Yukan Fuji
By Robert Whiting (2017) How tall are you? If Americans don’t seem to be as tall as they used to be, there is good reason for that. According to a study by the journal eLife last year, Americans haven’t actually grown very much during the past half century—only about 2 inches. The average height for…
