From T-Ray’s Daily Sports Monthly Column / トレバーの虎場から
Twenty-twenty started with so much excitement but was filled with a lot of dread, loss and hardship. It’s finally about to come to an end, but no one has promised us a better 2021. Every year has its ups and downs, its starts and its ends, and I want to reflect a little on two Tigers, both of whom have had huge expectations placed on their shoulders.
Justin Bour signed with Hanshin back in December 2019 to much fanfare. Headlines and articles written by the local media repeated the same mantra over and over: 92 MLB home runs! The second coming of Randy Bass! But here we are, heading into 2021 without a championship, a Triple Crown, a Colonel thrown in the river, or Bour himself.
I am pretty bummed by his departure. Firstly, he was a ton of fun to watch. His baserunning might not have been speedy or graceful, but it was aggressive and brought the crowd to its feet on more than one occasion. His home runs came in bunches but were also missing in action for weeks at a time. Still, who can forget the fireball celebration? I will also never forget some of the balls that he took, only to have them called strikes. For all the difficulties of coming to Japan, waiting out a three-month baseball (and life) shutdown, playing in empty stadiums and traveling through a strange country in the midst of a pandemic, I would say he did an extremely good job, and am glad he was part of the team.
Besides that, I was able to befriend his wife (and so in a sense, the man himself) via Twitter. We talked of doing a family BBQ at our house someday, and were it not for the restrictions that existed to protect the players from close contact with others (a perfectly fair rule), it would have happened. I really looked forward to getting to know the man off the field, because I sure liked who I saw on it.
And so I sat through November and December hoping against hope that a new deal would be negotiated with him to come back. It never came. And it doesn’t seem he will sign on with any other team in Japan for 2021, either. (That still remains to be seen, though.)
I would honestly have a huge hole in my Tigers-fan-heart right now, were it not for the new guy that we signed out of Korea, Mel Rojas Jr. Obviously, we know little about him at this point, but the story of his coming to our team is pretty darn exciting.
The man won the MVP Award in 2020, plus Golden Gloves in 2019 and 2020 for the KT Wiz in KBO (Korean Baseball Organization), making him one of the most talked-about free agents for much of November. Predictions of where he would sign included the majors and Japan, and one of those teams interested in him was Hanshin. However…
Reports came out on Twitter on December 6 that he had reached an agreement with the Yomiuri Giants. (The tweets from those “sources” have since been deleted.) He immediately denied it with a tweet of his own:
Then a few days later, the local media said he was signing with Hanshin! I was definitely not about to fall for their headlines and decided to wait until the team made it official. There were reports that he chose us over them (the Giants) because we gave him a player option for 2022, but they wouldn’t. Another said it was because Kobe is a better place for his family than Tokyo. (He did, after all, start following some of our current and former import players on Instagram this offseason. I am sure he asked them questions about what it was like living here and playing for the Tigers.)
Anyhow, I started following his accounts at that point, and then the team made it official on Christmas Day that he was joining our team. This had me breathing sighs of relief, but I also got another Christmas present out of the deal:
And so now, even though I have not officially connected with the Rojas family (outside of follow-backs from him and his wife on Twitter), I feel like there is new hope for 2021. On the field, I think we can expect great things if/when we put Rojas in left or right and slide Jerry Sands over to first base. Off the field, I hope this bloody pandemic will go away or at least be adequately kept under control by a vaccine, and that even though I could not BBQ with the Bours, perhaps I can do one with the Rojas crew!
Here’s to a Happy New Year and a prosperous, joyful, pennant-winning 2021, Tigers fans!