Major League Besuboru

Back when I was in junior high, I stumbled onto a book called The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, in which Robert Whiting revealed to American readers how the sport of baseball had flourished in Japan, and how Japanese players had adopted a bushido-like code of play. Twenty years later, The Meaning of Ichiro considers the impact players raised in the Japanese system are having as they come over to play on American teams. Obviously, as you can guess from the title, Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki is a major center of attention, but Whiting also takes a close look at other success stories, like Hideo Nomo and Hideki Matsui, as well as some players like Hideki Irabu and Tsuyoshi Shinjo whose performance was somewhat mixed. But he's just as effective on the backstory, discussing the turbulent relationship between the Japanese and American leagues, or the continuing disdain among many Japanese for the American style of play; the chapter on Bobby Valentine's first stint managing a Japanese team is fantastic journalism. But really the whole book is highly readable, the sort of thing you could probably polish off on a weekend afternoon but end up talking about with other baseball fans for at least a few hours afterwards.

I recently saw Whiting speak about the book at the Japan Society, but unfortunately I had to duck out just as questions were starting--I probably should have pressed him for any hot tips for players to add to my first ever rotisserie league team, since I've already got both Matsuis, Ichiro, Seattle closer Shigetoshi Hasegawa, and Cardinals outfielder So Taguchi. (I have to confess I'm a pretty casual fan these days, after being a huge sabermetrical obsessive in junior high and high school, to the point of developing my own homemade version of Strat-O-Matic, before eventually switching to comic books.)