Before last Sunday's game between the Yakult Swallows and Hanshin Tigers at Chiba Marine Stadium, the final group of Swallows veterans were taking their cuts in the batting cage. Shinichi Sato, Takehiro Ikeyama, Atsuya Furuta and...Alex Ramirez.
Ikeyama was quizzing Ramirez, who looks much older than 27, about his age."You're 37 right?," asked the Swallows infielder, known as "Boom Boom Maru" for his all or nothing approach to hitting.
Ramirez joked that he was 37, but that was his Venezuelan age. "Here, I'm 27," said the outfielder.
Ikeyama responded with his sly look. "You're 27? You can't hit now. You hit maybe 9:30 (a.m.) with young guys. Now is old guys only," said Ikeyama.
Although Ikeyama was joking, there was a whiff of truth in his words.
Ostensibly ruled by the law of competition, baseball is less vulnerable to the incompetence that comes with strict adherence to seniority rule.
On the other hand, while every player knows the end must eventually come, the Japanese education system makes sure most players receive a world-class course in the prerogatives that come with seniority. The idea that one's juniors are below you in the pecking order is ingrained. In high school and college, arbitrary beating by upperclassmen in an accepted fact of baseball life.
IIn a perfect world, if you have a 32-year-old veteran who is barely good enough to play everyday and a 24-year-old who is exactly as good, then barring evidence to the contrary, you'd play the 24-year-old and tell the veteran to either accept a part-time role or find a new occupation.
The world doesn't work like that, of course, whether it's baseball, yakyu or your workplace. It might not be any more pronounced in Japan than in the majors, but it sure seems like it some times as veterans play while youngsters, who are obviously superior players sit and watch.
Ironically, players who are shunted aside in their youth and take a long time earning playing time are often those who retain their jobs as less productive regulars later on.
Yomiuri Giants' infielder Daisuke Motoki is an example. As he developed into a pretty good hitter, he couldn't get playing time because Giants coaches were in love with veteran Kaoru Okazaki. For the last few years of his career, Okazaki was nowhere near the player Motoki was, but the veteran played and the youngster sat.
Motoki, never on the speedy side to begin with, is now one of the slowest players in the game. Yet someone in new manager Tatsunori Hara's regime must think Motoki deserves special treatment. Otherwise, how can you explain the playing time he gets?
Motoki is a useful player. He can fill in at nearly every defensive position, and he's got a cool head at the plate. But there's no doubt that Tomohiro Nioka is much better. Whenever Hara has had a choice between the two, he's started Motoki ahead of Nioka--even at short, where Nioka is quite good defensively and Motoki is not.
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Shinjiro Hiyama is not the oldest player on the Hanshin Tigers by a good margin, but he is in a position of leadership as the players' rep. So when manager Senichi Hoshino announced that Tigers players could skip pre-game batting practice at their discretion, Hiyama decided to set an example--by frequently doing opting out.
The Central League's leading hitter hustles off the field after his workout and, as likely as not, remains out of sight until the Tigers players come back out just before game time.
Intercepted before he could reach the sanctuary of the clubhouse on Sunday, Hiyama said, "I guess you want to focus your energy on the game, so it should be OK."
Things have definitely changed. In past years such talk would be sufficient grounds for a media lynching.
A study I did in 1997 suggested that Japanese players tended to fade badly in the second half. The study took every foreign hitter who played regularly and the best Japanese hitter on each team and measured how each player's performance compared to the rest of his teammates who were not in the study.
The top Japanese hitters, as a group, were more productive overall than the foreign regulars, but the foreigners outproduced the Japanese stars by a fair margin in August and were nearly as good as the home-grown marquee players in July, September and October.
It may just be that foreign players, not under the same societal pressure as their Japanese colleagues to burn their candles at both ends in games as well as practice, are better prepared to be the guns of August.
So what does this have to do with the Tigers?
Glad you asked.
Every year, the Tigers spend the hottest months of the summer away from Koshien Stadium and whatever hopes they have for a pennant typically die before they see their home park again.
By giving his men a little extra rest now, the gruff Hoshino may be preparing his club for a second-half kick that will see the Tigers to their first pennant since 1985.
The Hot Corner appears each Thursday in The
Daily Yomiuri .