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Japanese baseball comes of age

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The Hot Corner for Sept. 27, 2001

Now that wasn't so painful. On Monday, Sadaharu Oh, king of Japanese baseball, was joined in the home run record book by Tuffy Rhodes of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes.

After the tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth that surrounded Randy Bass' 1985 quest for Oh's home run record, the feeling this year seems to be that Rhodes' effort is a pretty impressive achievement--rather than a disgrace for Japanese baseball.

Should Rhodes go on and hit one more, it will be not only a personal triumph and one for his teammates and fans but a watershed for Japanese baseball as a whole.

After Major League Baseball Incorporated's most disgraceful moment, the labor dispute of 1994-95, one magazine ran a cover story about the great things that the majors had to offer. On the cover was a picture of Hideo Nomo. It would be fitting this year, as Japanese baseball ponders a future of decline, that some Japanese magazine revive that line. They could do little better than put Tuffy on the cover. His efforts, and those of his teammates, remind us of what the Japanese game has to offer.

This is Rhodes' second MVP caliber season. He is the most deserving candidate for the Matsutaro Shoriki Award that is given every year to the person who contributes the most to Japanese baseball. And while such a thought may be sacrilegious to some, anyone who believes that the marquee player in Japan must be Japanese is an idiot--and you can tell him I said so.

When asked on Monday how he felt about achieving the record, Rhodes answered in the fashion we have come to accept as normal.

He said he didn't consider the record to be his because Oh had held it for so long.

"I have to go out and get 56 if I want my own record," he said.

Ever since he became a factor in the home run race, Rhodes has bored us to tears by refusing to show any interest in the title. After all, he remembers what it felt like to win the home run crown and finish last.

Every week, people would ask if he thought he could win his second home run crown and Rhodes would answer that his only priority was winning a pennant. But it was clear from watching him flail at ankle high pitches in recent games that the record was on his mind.

How could it not have been. To most Americans, Oh is the embodiment of the Japanese game. Every American fan knows that Oh was a home run hitter that one mentioned in the same breath with Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. To be linked in the record books with Oh is an impressive achievement, one that only the ignorant would sneer at.

And while Bass was widely appreciated by fans as a tremendous player, many old baseball guys were less than thrilled that a foreigner might break one of Japan's most hallowed records.

But lest one use this as an example of what's wrong with Japan, one should remember that Aaron received death threats as he approached Ruth's career home run record. We should be proud that Aaron's achievement was seen by the vast majority as a tribute to the game. That some found it a threat is evidence that ignorance and small-minded bigotry are hard to eradicate. It is another tribute that Sammy Sosa and Ichiro have won the hearts of most American fans.
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The response to Rhodes, especially should he become the first person with no Japanese blood to win the Shoriki Award, could well mark a turning point in Japanese baseball. It is time to accept that our game's heroes (and if you follow Japanese ball it is your game) need not be Japanese. Oh, a two-time Shoriki winner and the award's first ever honoree, had a Chinese father from Taiwan and a Japanese mother.

It could well be the case that Japanese fans, fewer and fewer of whom remember the horrifying depredations of the postwar occupation era, find less of a need for purely Japanese heroes.

John Dower, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Embracing Defeat" discusses how the postwar occupation of Japan shaped the nation in many diverse ways. Although the occupation technically ended in 1952, when the U.S. turned over civil authority to the Japanese government, Dower prefers 1989--the year the Emperor Showa died--as the year when the occupation truly ended.

Japan had been defeated, stripped of its past and demoted to the status of a fourth-class nation--a term commonly used during the occupation. The need As Japan rose from the ashes, the country needed a hero who symbolized the true and latent power of the nation.

In the 1950s, a former sumo wrestler named Riki Dozan energized the country through his pro wrestling exploits. He defeated much larger foreigners and did it in tremendous fashion, overcoming not only a size disadvantage but endless amount of cheating by his opponents. Sure it was pro wrestling, but Japan ate it up. Riki showed Japanese they could stand on their own two feet, that they could dish it out as well as take it.

Because Japan longed for Japanese heroes, Riki's Korean birth and ancestry were conveniently airbrushed over. Oh, proud of his twin heritage, was never as popular as his Yomiuri Giants' teammate Shigeo Nagashima, but that could have been due to the stoic Oh being less exciting on the field than the dynamic Nagashima.

The Giants won nine Japan Series crowns in a row from 1965 to 1973 and were touted by many as an example of a purely Japanese team. But that "purely" Japanese squad boasted not only Oh, but left-handed pitcher Masaichi Kaneda, Japan's winningest pitcher and a man of Korean descent.

One would like to agree with Dower and believe that Japan's occupation mentality is over and that the country is secure enough to no longer demand its heroes have the proper pedigree. To continue to believe that fans will not identify with a foreign star is an insult not only to the fans but the game itself.
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It would be hard to find anyone more deserving of the fans' admiration than Tuffy Rhodes. Although conscious of his achievements, he is as generous a person as you will ever meet, someone who is always eager to help and share what he has with his teammates.

Rhodes is worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence with players like Bass, Boomer Wells, Bobby Marcano, Wally Yonamine, Darrell Spencer and the Lee brothers, Leron and Leon.

These are all men who came to Japan and left the game here richer than it was before they arrived. The time has come to recognize that. It is time to name a foreign player as the biggest contributor to the game. By honoring Tuffy Rhodes with the Shoriki Award, Japanese baseball will prove it has come of age: when it can recognize its best and brightest regardless of where they came from or the color of their skin.

The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The Daily Yomiuri .
 

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