And while baseball people love to talk about competition being the most important thing in baseball, Nagashima's managerial career was proof that success is not always what counts. Nagashima was an unbelievably popular superstar and as generous and likable a guy as you'll ever find. Anybody who tells you that Nagashima was in the dugout for his managing prowess needs his head examined.
Players respected Nagashima, and the fans loved him, but the most you can say for his managerial skill is that no manager of comparable talent managed for nearly as long as he did or remained as popular.
"Japanese people like to remember the good times and forget about the bad," one of my wife's uncles said the other day, and that goes a long way toward explaining Nagashima's long managerial career.
As a player, Nagashima was an unparalleled showman who combined dramatic on-the-field efforts with an uncanny knack for saying the strangest things.
Although Nagashima was part of the great Giants teams, he was the antithesis of kanri yakyu, or controlled baseball, that the Giants' greatest manager, Tetsuharu Kawakami espoused. Nagashima played the game with an unmatched instinct and flair that made him the wild card on Kawakami's teams.
Nagashima honed his talent and always played on the edge, never holding back for a second. He made great things happen, and seemed as often as not to be improvising, writing the improbable scripts he acted out as he went along.
But while Nagashima played his own stylish game, Japanese baseball, largely as a result of Kawakami's efforts, was changing--adopting the mantra of quality control that had helped Japan's industry reinvent itself following World War II.
Kawakami turned the Giants from one of the better teams to the best ever. With the extensive reach of the Yomiuri's media empire, fans across the country became accustomed to watching the Giants and watching them win.
The combination of a strong tradition, overwhelming success and extreme visibility lifted the Giants to new heights of popularity. And the front man was the uncontrollable Nagashima, who provided Kawakami's well-oiled machine with a human face. In an era of excessive corporate demands on one's private time, Nagashima was living proof that one could be human and a star at the same time.
Unlike the rest of the baseball establishment, where talk of challenge and confrontation is sometimes just lip service, to Nagashima, it is everything.
When Toshihisa Nishi, the Giants all-star second baseman, first joined the team in 1996, he was asked what he hoped to learn from the coaches and older players.
"I don't know if they have anything to teach me," said Nishi, who was a star third baseman in the corporate leagues.
While that kind of talk might earn a rookie on some teams an extended stay in the minors, Nagashima loved Nishi's attitude and stood behind him, instead of having the coaches punish him for his insolence.
But while Nagashima reveled in competition on the field, he is always a gentleman in a world that is dominated by gamesmanship. Nagashima always acted as if arguing with umpires was the least dignified and least important part of his job.
As many of Kawakami's disciples have become managers, the game has become more controlled and predictable than ever. People love a winner, but predictable baseball is boring. That's why there's always a place in the game for people like Nagashima and Ichiro Suzuki.
There will never be another like No. 3 and he will be missed.
!!!
Fukuoka Hawks Daiei battery coach Yoshiharu Wakana took credit for pitching around Tuffy Rhodes to prevent Rhodes from surpassing Sadaharu Oh's home run record on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome.
Wakana said that Oh, currently the Hawks manager, had no part in the decision to avoid Rhodes, who has tied Oh's single-season record of 55.
While you can argue with what Wakana and the Hawks battery did in avoiding the strike zone, give credit to the coach for stating his viewpoint. In this politically correct world we are supposed to avoid sensitive topics and pretend we don't hold beliefs that are unpopular. There are those who will crucify Wakana, not for what he did, but for the temerity of suggesting that a foreigner was not worthy of carrying his manager's jock strap.
Fortunately, people in Japan are free to say what they like. And Wakana's admission allows us to discuss the issue in the open and in a rational manner.
Further credit is due to commissioner Hiromori Kawashima. On Monday, the commissioner stated that teams going out of their way to deny an opponent a record endanger the game by inviting the displeasure of the fans.
Certainly there was some opposition from the home crowd, which booed as Rhodes saw only a couple of balls close enough to be generously called strikes.
Wakana argued he owed it to his manager to protect the record. In pitching around Rhodes, pitcher Keizaburo Tanoue and catcher Kenji Jojima were declaring their loyalty to their manager and indirectly to the team. In a nation where the rules of one's work group take precedence over most laws of the land, this behavior is completely understandable.
People join companies with the understanding that they are adopting the rules of that company and its norms. That is why company executives routinely face criminal prosecution for breaking laws in the effort to protect the good names of their companies.
To the Hawks, their first duty was to their manager not the fans who would be turned off by their boorish and unsportsmanlike acts--despite the fact that the fans support the game and provide for the players' and coaches' livelihood. That connection is too indirect and too abstract.
The greater good of the game means nothing when compared to loyalty to one's team.
There are certainly fans who would not like to see Oh's record broken for sentimental reasons. They are free to cheer when Rhodes fails because that is the nature of the game. But it is dangerous when people like Wakana, Tanoue and Jojima, who are in a position to influence events, skew the results intentionally. It takes away from the game and from Oh's record. Should Rhodes fall short, some might say that Oh no longer deserves the record, because the acts of his players denied an opponent a fair shot.
Whether Rhodes achieves his quest for 56 or not, Oh's record is, and always will be, meaningful because Oh accomplished it in fair competition. But after the events of last Sunday, you have to wonder whether it deserves to stand any longer and that is a shame.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .