Tag: article
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The Umpire Strikes Out
Robert Whiting (Jun 23, 1997) In these days of “borderless” nations, few Americans blink at the idea of a Japanese baseball player like Hideki Irabu crossing the Pacific to pitch for the New York Yankees. But another transoceanic story is a reminder that globalization of the baseball diamond hasn’t ended national antics in the game.…
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Equaling Oh’s HR record proved difficult (part 3 of 3)
Robert Whiting (Oct 31, 2008) The one big black mark on Sadaharu Oh’s reputation was, of course, the unsportsmanlike behavior of the pitchers on his team whenever foreign batsmen threatened his single season home run record of 55. The phenomenon had first surfaced in 1985, when American Randy Bass playing for the Hanshin Tigers, who…
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Oh’s career sparkled with achievements as player, manager (part 2 of 3)
Robert Whiting (Oct 30, 2008) I watched Sadaharu Oh through much of his career with the Yomiuri Giants, living as I did in Tokyo, first as a student, then as an employee in a Japanese company and after that as a journalist. During that time it was impossible to miss what was going on with…
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Whiting pays tribute to Boyer, Halberstam
Robert Whiting (Jan 20, 2008) This is a tribute, long overdue, to Clete Boyer and David Halberstam, two class individuals who died last year. The former was an All-Star baseball player, one of the greatest fielding third basemen of all time. The latter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who was perhaps the greatest reporter of…
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Coronavirus and the Olympics
Robert Whiting (April 2008) – Yukan Fuji When I arrived in Tokyo in 1962, working for the CIA as a 19-year-old member of the U.S. military, the city was an unsightly sprawl of ramshackle wooden houses, rickety shanties and cheaply constructed stucco-covered buildings that had mushroomed from the wartime detritus left by American B-29 Superfortress bombers. Living conditions…
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How Japan Stacks Up – Los Angeles Times on You Gotta Have Wa
1 October 1989 The image below can be expanded by clicking it.
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Japanese Put a Spin on Baseball – New York Times, Books of The Times review
15 July 1989 The image below can be enlarged by clicking it.
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East meets West in the Japanese game of bēsubōru – Smithsonian original magazine scan
September 1986 You can enlarge the images below by clicking on them.
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Tokyo Mafioso – Interview with the San Francisco Chronicle
14 August 1999 You can enlarge the images below by clicking them.
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Billion Dollar Blueprint
by Robert Whiting (May 8, 2012) – Yukan Fuji Money. Money. Money. MLB is rolling in it, as indicated by the recent sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers for an astonishing $2 billion, an all time record for a major league team. The $2 billion figure is more than double the previous record for an…
Tokyo Junkie 