Tag: whiting
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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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Book Review: Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies: The outsiders who shaped modern Japan
by Henry Hilton, Japan Today – April 27 2024 TOKYO Foreigners behaving badly goes down well with audiences in Japan. Stories of Yankee misfits, British conmen and Korean upstarts are guaranteed to find eager readers. Throw in shady espionage rings, guys who started out by sleeping on park benches, plus stories of massive transfers of dollars bills in…
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Reading “Gamblers, Fraudsters, Dreamers & Spies” by Robert Whiting
by DC Palter, Japonica – June 18 2024 Robert Whiting is always fun to read. The author of You Gotta Have Wa and Tokyo Junkie, Whiting has been writing about Japan since arriving in the country in 1962. Whiting is the preeminent English-language writer and commentator on Japanese baseball, and has also written extensively about the yakuza in Tokyo…
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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…
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The Chrysanthemum and the – what? And The making of ‘The Chrysanthemum and the Bat’
by Tom Chapman (Jul 10, 1977), Tokyo Weekender Early Fall – and the excitement and tension of baseball pennant races occupy the thoughts of fans of the ancient and honorable sport wherever it’s played. And especially in Japan with the almost fanatical adventure of Yomiuri Giants’ slugging hero Sadaharu Oh approaching, tying and finally last…
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Books for the Beach
by Time (Jul 4, 1977) THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE BAT by ROBERT WHITING 247 pages. Dodd, Mead. $10. Roger Kahn’s Season in the Sun is proof that, pace Thomas Wolfe, you can go home again-when home is a five-sided white plate. Kahn, a sportswriter whose columns appear in TIME, returned to baseball during the summer…
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Here Comes the Summer Special Section
by Time (Jul 4, 1977) Robert Whiting’s book orients the baseball enthusiast in a different manner. Some 20 years after Admiral Perry revealed Japan to the world, an American university professor taught some of his students how to play baseball. Since then, the nation has been hooked. Each year, some 12 million fans jam its…
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A fascinating book: The Chrysanthemum and the Bat
by Dan McGuire (Jun 26, 1977), Honolulu Advertiser At hand is a fascinating book by Robert Whiting, an American who attended school in Japan and has lived there for many years. It’s titled “The Chrysanthemum and the Bat” or “Baseball Samurai Style.” Intending to read a few chapters, I stuck my nose in it and…
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You Gotta Have Wa
by Orel Hershiser, James Fallows, and David Halberstam (Apr 15, 1989) “The Japanese certainly have the same kind of enthusiasm for baseball as Americans…they just play the game a little differently, and Bob Whiting captures those differences perfectly.” Orel Hershiser Bob Whiting has done it again! THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE BAT was a comic masterpiece,…
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The Enigma of Japanese Baseball-whacky
by Alan Booth (Sep 22, 1989) – Asahi Evening News When major league batting star Bob Horner arrived in Japan in 1987 to play a season for the Yakult Swallows he said: “This place is great.” Twenty-nine games later he said: “I’ve got to get out of here; I can’t believe this shit.” The story…
Tokyo Junkie 