Welcome to the Professional Baseball Masters League, where old ballplayers get a second shot at their field of dreams and where age discrimination is the norm.
Toshio Naka, who was born in 1936, is an outfielder for the Nagoya Club and the oldest of the old stars. Where would he if the league were flooded with players in their 30s who had just been released by their Pacific or Central league teams?
Playing kusa yakyu, that's where.
Sports are ordered by a simple rule: The best competitors thrive and push out those who are unable to keep up. That is their beauty. This is of course not to be confused with survival of the fittest. The beauty of that rule is Anna Kournikova, who maintains superstar status on the women's tennis circuit despite her inability to win even the most insignificant tournaments.
While no one was optically challenged enough to confuse one of these
golden oldies with Kournikova, the old guys who created the Masters League
have opted to give jobs to their less able buddies instead of to the best
players available.
Each team is allowed to have five players in their 30s, three of which
are allowed to be on the diamond at one time. The brouhaha erupted when
former Seibu Lions right-hander Hisanobu Watanabe took the mound for the
Dreams in the eighth inning, while three other 30 somethings were in the
field.
"Young whipper snappers!," shouted one of the (Old boys be) Ambitious coaches. The cry was followed by shouts from other elderly Sapporo bench jockeys.
"Somebody get those babies off the field before they get hurt," yelled someone from the third base side, while another added that this was "a man's game."
Despite the heated atmosphere, the benches did not empty and the matter was resolved by having right fielder Osamu Abe, who will be 39 next month, leave the game in the top of the ninth.
After the game, Ambitious manager Yamauchi was asked who blew the whistle on the Dream's effort to win by trickery.
"(Shozo) Doi spotted it and told me," said the distinguished looking Sapporo skipper. "We were losing and that's the kind of thing you look for when you're losing."
Doi, a former second baseman for the Yomiuri Giants and later manager of the Orix BlueWave, had a pretty good night. Known as an advocate of the sacrifice bunt, Doi practiced what he preached and laid down a beauty in the first inning. He also turned in a couple of nifty plays at second base in addition to showing his perception has improved since leaving the BlueWave.
On Thursday, Doi demonstrated his ability to ferret out the the birth dates of Watanabe, Abe, left fielder Tomohiro Jo and second baseman Yoshifumi Ayukawa. But Nine years ago, Doi saw Ichiro Suzuki play for two years and said, "Can't hit."
The man has found his niche.
!!!
Without the age restrictions, the league would be taken over by players just a step away from a job in the existing pro structure. What fun would it be if the teams were loaded with players who could still really play?
Sure, we'd miss out on a few players like TV personality Eiji Bando, a former Dragons reliever who pitches for Nagoya, and pro golfer Masashi "Jumbo" Ozaki, a former ballplayer who will spend some time in the Fukuoka outfield.
Despite the fact that the game gives the fans a chance to see a lot of former greats in action once more, most of the cheers at the opener were for the most recently active stars--whose exploits were still fresh in our minds.
"Sunday" Choji Murata took the mound for the Dreams and threw some stuff that would make a lot of current CL and PL pitchers envious.
One of the high-kicking former Lotte star's strikeout victims was Kiyoshi Nakahata, a popular former star of the Yomiuri Giants. Nakahata told Murata he had some nerve throwing pitches like that to a 47-year-old.
Norihiro Komada, who played much of his career with the Giants and finished his career in 2000 with the Yokohama BayStars was a big hit with the crowd and at bat. He went 3-for-4 and scored the league's first run as the Dreams floated past the Ambitious 3-0.
A crowd that was reasonably estimated at 13,500 saw the Tokyo Dome opener and 15,000 where reported as attending Sunday's game between Osaka and Tokyo at Koshien Stadium, which was won by the Romans.
The other two teams in the league are the Fukuoka Zon-Dags and the Nagoya 80 D'sers.
Zon-Dag, pronounced "dontaku," is a loan word that has been adopted in Fukuoka city to mean festival. The tremendous festival in Golden Week is known as Zon-Dag.
Somewhat more confusing is the Nagoya nickname, which comes from the Nagoya dialect expression for "it's been a while." Reportedly people in Nagoya say, "It's been 80 days."
Since Japanese pronounce the letter "d" as something close to "day," the team has opted for the "D" in the nickname--one that, like Pocari Sweat and Calpis, would not travel well.
If the 80 D'sers were to train in the U.S., imagine the double takes
they would get. Someone hearing an American pronounce their name, would
start looking for 80 fellows with walkers.
!!!
Major league owners have sided with commissioner Bud in their latest propaganda campaign against the taxpayers of America.
By voting to support contraction, they are telling cities that there are no more markets for major league baseball. (Insert laughter here).
If the owners of the Twins and Expos, two teams likely to face the ax should this absurd plan ever see the light of day, put their teams up for sale, they would get an extremely handsome payoff. But if there were no markets left, no one would want them.
So Commissioner Bud's plan is to pay a higher-than-market price to the prospective former owners. That way, they will take the money and run.
Then the next time baseball's self-proclaimed "entrepreneurs" go looking for a handout from the tax payers, the poor unfortunates can claim poverty. If you don't give these spoiled-rotten billionaires more of the freebies they feel entitled to then they will take the ball away and end the game, literally.
Having a former owner in the White House has emboldened these wise guys to go farther out on a limb than ever before. After all, if Microsoft can rape the free market, brazenly disregard court orders, lose in court again and again and still walk away with George Bush's seal of approval--why shouldn't Major League Baseball Incorporated be afforded the same privilege?
Contraction has no chance of succeeding, since it is bound to be challenged in court. And MLB's history in court, where something approaching objectivity rules, is only slightly better than Charles Manson's.
One would hope the owners' hubris would lead them crashing over the precipice and end MLB's odeous monopoly. But no matter how stupid, offensive and idiotic their behavior, George W will be there to catch them. As long as the owners continue to stand in the front lines against Osama Bin Laden by playing "God Bless America" in the seventh inning, they know their pal "W" will go to bat for them.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .