Tokyo Junkie

Home of Robert Whiting, best-selling author and journalist

Tag: robert

  • Diamond Diplomacy

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    by Robert Whiting (Apr 13, 2012) — The Wall Street Journal Book review: “Transpacific Field of Dreams” and “Banzai Babe Ruth” Besuboru-or “yakyu” (field ball), as it is also called-is the national sport of Japan, but it is not the game that Americans know and love. Take a trip to a Japanese ballpark such as…

  • Baseball in Japan: Not All Cheers

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    by Robert Whiting (Mar 27, 2008) — Time The Americans swept into Japan and swept out. Two capacity games on two consecutive nights (44,628 on Tuesday and 44,735 on Wednesday) thrilled the baseball-mad locals as the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland A’s split their season openers in Tokyo, the third time Major League Baseball…

  • From the Publisher About Robert Whiting

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    by Donald J. Barr (May 15, 1989) — Sports Illustrated — written about Robert Whiting, not by him Author Robert Whiting has never been exactly conventional when it comes to selecting the locales where he settles in to write. His first book, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat-considered the definitive one on Japanese baseball and also…

  • The Master of Besuboru

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    by Robert Whiting (Aug 21, 1989) — Sports Illustrated Sadaharu Oh leaned across the table in a Tokyo sushi restaurant one recent evening and paid his American guest, Warren Cromartie, the ultimate compliment. “You’ve completely mastered Japanese baseball,” said the man who hit a record 868 home runs, as he hoisted a glass of beer…

  • WBC: Catching On

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    by Robert Whiting (Mar 13, 2006) — Sports Illustrated The World Baseball Classic started slowly in Tokyo, then a Korean squad with something to prove upset the home team. If there were lessons learned in the first World Baseball Classic’s first round-robin series, held in Tokyo last weekend, one had to do with the weather–more…

  • Don’t ‘Throw Until You Die’

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    by The New York Times Editorial Board, quoting Robert Whiting (Jul 15, 1995) — The New York Times Two decades after Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan out of isolation in 1854, the Japanese started playing baseball. This year Hideo Nomo, the 26-year-old imported pitching star of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has emerged to remind Americans…

  • Welcome to Oakland

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    by Robert Whiting (Mar 20, 2013) — Yukan Fuji column, previously unpublished in English Welcome to Oakland, Hiroyuki Nakajima. I am sure you will come to love the Bay Area with its beautiful scenery. Tourists come from all over the world to see the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and the Bay Bridge, which now…

  • The International Pastime

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    by Robert Whiting (Oct 2, 2004) — The New York Times Kamakura, Japan – As the Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki prepares to break one of baseball’s most durable records – George Sisler’s 257 hits in a season, set in 1920 – Americans may ask how this achievement is being viewed in his native Japan.…

  • The Emperor of Swat

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    by Robert Whiting (Aug 9, 2007) — The New York Times SORRY, Barry Bonds. You’re still 112 home runs away from the home run record, the real record, that is. Hitting 756 dingers is certainly quite an achievement, more than anyone else has hit in Major League Baseball history. But it is far behind the…

  • Season Opens as Surely as Day Follows Night

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    by Robert Whiting (Mar 26, 2008) — The New York Times TOKYO – If Britney Spears played baseball, you would have some idea of what the past few days were like for Daisuke Matsuzaka on his first appearance back in Japan in a Boston Red Sox uniform. Everywhere the spiky-haired former star of the Seibu…