But being in last place, as the Buffaloes have done three times in Rhodes' last five seasons?
"I hate it," said Rhodes. "I can't accept losing."
Everybody loves a winner, so what do you do when you lose a lot, as the Buffaloes used to?
"I love to hit," said Rhodes at Tokyo Dome on Monday. "I can get by because every day I get a chance to hit. But it's hard losing."
It is indeed. Although the Buffaloes have found tough going on the trail to greener pennant pastures, they are in the race. In the home dugout at Tokyo Dome the spikes are on the other foot.
The Nippon Ham Fighters, who came into the season with the most explosive lineup in the country, are favorites to finish last. Without the pressure of a pennant race, it requires a little imagination to maintain some interest in the final months of a forgettable season.
Michihiro Ogasawara, easily the Fighters most valuable player, subscribes to the Rhodes approach. Go to the park, and play the game at its simplest level and hit.
"I want to put some numbers up before the season ends," said Ogasawara on Monday. He set the team record for reaching base in 40 straight games on Tuesday, a night when his two homers gave him 25 on the season and his three hits brought him within a breath of the lead in the batting race.
Early in the season, injuries swept through the Fighters clubhouse like a a brush fire, leaving the team punchless at the plate and often ineffective on the mound.
Players have returned to everyday duty one by one for brief periods of time. The only movement the club sustained was an unsteady tumble into the basement.
"I was getting all worked up about it," said Ogasawara. "We had a lot of guys hurt and I wasn't hitting.
"Now, it's pretty calm. If you're near the top, there's so much you have to do. There's little we can do but show up. So I guess people (in last place) get to be themselves more.
"On the other hand the road in front of you is pitch black. You have to work to stay up. I have some goals I still want to accomplish this year so I can shoot for those.
"And who knows, perhaps we will be more motivated in the offseason."
So will there be less PR activity, such as the long boat trip he took in the winter to Ogasawara Island last winter after setting a Japan record for runs scored in a season?
"I don't want to say that," he said. "But you have to take care of business first."
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Hiroshi Narahara, the Fighters' veteran ball of fire in the middle infield who can't remember ever finishing last, is taking care of business now.
"It's definitely different," said Narahara when asked to explain his new situation.
"When you're in a pennant race, your purpose is winning games for the team. But now, all we can do is make things hard for the contenders."
The Fighters certainly accomplished that task as they put they whipped the Buffaloes 7-3 thumping on Monday, a mere foreshadowing of a 17-3 branding two nights ago.
With the pennant race a moot point, Narahara still finds something to do.
"Today's game is important only because you're a professional and you have a job to do. So I spend more time watching the other teams," said Narahara. "Sometimes I learn something new.
"For example, this year we lost the middle of our order. With the cleanup guys out, we tried different things but nothing worked. So I studied the good teams in the league to see the little things they did to score runs without their top hitters."
And can the veteran, whom Hanshin Tigers manager Katsuya Nomura once called "the Ozzie Smith of Japan," still pick up something new in his 11th PL season?
"Of course," he answered.
Don't say old dogs can't learn new tricks.
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Buffaloes manager Masataka Nashida and his pitching coach Shigeru Kobayashi can teach a few lessons about how to keep your cool in a pennant race. While the Buffaloes batters have the kind of swagger that would make any oversized critter in a Japanese monster movie green with envy, the team ERA is bloated enough to block out the sun.
So what's going on here? Is the good visibility for hitters at Osaka Dome inflating their pitchers' stats?
"No that's not it," said Kobayashi. "It's our approach this year."
No, the Buffaloes weren't planning to to lure the rest of the league into a false sense of security. This year's strategy was to focus on getting to the bullpen and take the pressure off a starting rotation that, in Kobayashi's opinion, is still immature.
"We have the worst ERA in Japan because when a game gets out of hand, I don't worry about it," said Kobayashi. "We just let it go."
Nor does losing one-sided games get to Nashida. After Tuesday's cave in, Nashida told reporters, "Whether you lose by 14 runs or lose by one, a loss is the same."
One would think that as the pennant race tightens it must get more and more difficult to abandon a game in the early innings.
"No. It's easier than ever now," said Kobayashi. "We use our main group of relievers so much, those games give us a chance to rest them.
"The starters still don't know how to work a game," said the pitching coach. "All of them have great pitches and throw well, but they don't know how to use what each game gives them.
"Every pitcher (Greg Maddux excepted) is going to walk batters. A pitcher has to know who to walk--you walk the guys who hit you and you go after the others."
Easier said than done.
And while his charges continue to struggle with the learning curve, Kobayashi claims to have a tactic for every situation his individual relievers will encounter. And he believes he has the relievers he needs to get the job done when the games are within reach.
"Let's say Ken Suzuki of the Lions comes up with a chance to drive in a runner with a single. The relievers know what the plan is. The center fielder knows we want him to shade him over toward right. We are very confident."
Nashida, a former catcher in his second year as the Osaka trail boss, said his first goal when he became manager was to build a pitching staff that he could count on and know how many runs he would need to win each day.
And while he meant counting on his starters rather than the relievers, he isn't complaining. After all, the hitters in his dugout can bail out a lot of poor outings on the mound.
"The fans seem to like it this way with all the offense," said Nashida.
"And it's working, so I guess we can live with it."
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .