Tag: baseball
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The 100 pitch limit mistake – Yukan Fuji
By Robert Whiting (2019) It’s been 44 years since the first so-called Tommy John surgical procedure, which occurred September 25, 1974, and, according to the popular website 538, half of the recorded surgeries have occurred in the nearly six and a half years since April 1, 2012. Why is that? Some American commentators say that the…
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Valentine’s Way: book review – Yukan Fuji
By Robert Whiting (2021) Bobby Valentine, the former manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, has published a memoir, with some interesting observations about Japan in it, among other things. The memoir covers Valentine’s covers his entire career as player, manager and media personality that started in 1969 when Valentine was a star high school athlete…
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Spaceman Shinju Kantoku – Yukan Fuji
By Robert Whiting (2021) I have seen a lot of strange appointments to the post of manager of an MLB club in my long career as a journalist, but perhaps none so strange as the Nippon Ham Fighters front office decision to hire Tsuyoshi Shinjo as their field manager for the 2022 season. Shinjo, a…
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150th Anniversary of Baseball in Japan – Yukan Fuji
by Robert Whiting (2022) The coming year will mark the 150th Anniversary of Baseball in Japan. The game was introduced to the Japanese in 1872 by an American professor named Horace Wilson, who had been invited to come to Tokyo and teach at Kaisei Gakko. He was one of many foreign teachers and technical advisors recruited by the…
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Shohei, Boog and Big Mac
By Robert Whiting YUKAN FUJI (2018) ESPN analytics whiz Sam Miller did an extensive evaluation of Shohei Ohtani, 2018 Rookie of the Year, as a batter and came to the conclusion that the MLB player most like is former Baltimore Orioles slugger Boog Powell, Powell, 6’3” 235 pounds in the prime of his playing days, was a line drive hitting first baseman who averaged 30…
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Wall-to-wall coverage of Shohei Ohtani is more than justified
By Robert Whiting – October 28, 2024 It’s impossible to live in Japan and not know who Shohei Ohtani is. The baseball star of the Los Angeles Dodgers dominates the media. His in-game exploits usually occupy the front page of Japan’s ubiquitous sports dailies, whose combined circulation runs in the millions. Most of the time…
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The Chrysanthemum and the Bat review
by Library Journal (Aug 15, 1977) Japanese baseball, even more than its American counterpart, is a game of custom and tradition, a sport which has acquired staggering appeal. Children play baseball 12 months a year; major league players are treated with deference reserved for royalty and clergymen. Whiting touches upon these topics in this definitive…
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Review: The Chrysanthemum and the Bat
by L. Vington, Fort Worth Star Telegram (Jul 17, 1977) Although baseball is a business affair in America, in Japan, despite its vast popularity, a ball club is often merely a tax write off for its sponsoring firm. Which is but one of the numerous differences in the game that seem to be the same…
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In Japan, umpires even get hits – in the head
by Abe C. Ravitz, The Plain Dealer (Jul 14, 1977) An easy ground ball is booted by the shortstop as the winning run scores. The offending player looks at the crowd and smiles. An error doesn’t bother him, it’s perfectly human. That’s baseball Samurai style. A popular .350 hitter speaks disrespectfully to his manager and…
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Sideline Slants: Eureka-reared writer scores with new book
by Don Terbush (Jul 10, 1977), Eureka Times Robert Whiting, Eureka High School class of ’61, has written an interesting and widely acclaimed book “Chrysanthemum and the Bat.” In it he describes the Japanese character through the common game of baseball. “The very different way the Japanese approach the game mirrors their fundamentally different approach…
