From 2018-23, I was a full-time lecturer at Ritsumeikan University. You might recall that for a stretch there, we were under pandemic rules, which meant that classes were conducted entirely online. Perhaps it was because of this dearth of networking opportunities, one of the school’s alumni, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, conducted a Zoom session to talk about his life in America as a Major Leaguer and how he learned English through a lot of observation and fearlessness (not to mention a ton of studying).
Well, in the days after that meeting, I looked up his latest book, and stumbled across this title: メジャーリーグで覚えた 僕の英語勉強法 (Meja- Ri-gu de Oboeta Boku no Eigo Benkyo-ho-). Though his more recent title interested me, this is the one I really wanted to dig into. And so, at long last, I purchased it a few months ago and breezed through it.
Shiggy, as he was known in America, had the foresight to start learning English well before he signed with the Anaheim Angels back in 1997. He had actually spent some time with non-Japanese people and was shocked at how little his English was understood and how hard it was to understand the English spoken by native speakers. So he hit the books. But he did not stop there. He watched the news in English, subscribed to magazines, and took correspondence language courses offered by NHK (Nippon Ho-so- Kyoku).
This book highlights his study methods, both before leaving Japan and after arriving in America. He takes readers through various materials that worked well for him, study tips, useful phrases, and more. He even directs people’s attention to different situations they will need English for when they arrive in the US (assuming they are moving, and not just visiting).
Here are some of the nuggets I dug out of his book…
- Start with getting your ears used to English
- Do not skimp on learning materials – they are an investment
- By the same token, don’t be afraid to jettison materials that don’t resonate with you (time is as valuable as money!)
- Learn English via grammatical structures, and then plug-and-play – and use what you’ve learned as soon as you can after studying!
All in all, it is loaded with great information, both practical and theoretical. Two things are clear from reading this, too. First, he lived in a different time than the one we are in. A lot of the resources he recommends are either obsolete or no longer very useful. However, the thinking behind these materials is still plenty relevant.
The second thing is that he wrote this himself. I have read my share of baseball books by athletes about their memoirs. They all read quite eloquently and are devoid of mistakes (but also of flavor, truth be told). This one, though, was so obviously written by Hasegawa and not checked carefully by editors. How do I know this? A lot of the English phrases in the book were grammatically wrong, and showed evidence that at the time of publication, the writer was still just in his fifth year living in America. (I think I probably could have written a book about learning Japanese after 5 years here, but surely there would have been some mistakes in it as well.) Examples include:
- I wanna take spaghetti.
- I feel broken my leg.
- I have a burn stomach.
- That were boy. (Can you even guess what this one is meant to be? Answer at the bottom of this review.)
So despite the way this book aged rather quickly, and the mistakes that were not caught by the editor and/or proofreader (trust me, there were a LOT more than the 4 above examples), I truly delighted in reading this book. It was very conversational and made me feel like Hasegawa is an approachable, intelligent man. Also, as an educator who pleads with his students all the time to take initiative and find things to make studying fun and meaningful for themselves, many of Hasegawa’s words were like a confirmation that I am not the only one out there who desires for English learners to step up their games.
I would love to see a newer player write a similar type of book to this one. I bet Yu Darvish could do a great job of this. He seems intelligent and probably devised a lot of strategies to pick up English quickly and not lean entirely on his interpreter for everything he needed. He’s also a Kansai native and one of my favorite MLB players, so I would love to hear from him in a similar way to this book! Congratulations, Mr. Hasegawa. You had a wonderful career, and surely your post-playing career, no matter where you are, is experiencing success now, too.
By the way, “That were boy” is actually “Attaboy” (which, according to Wikipedia, is short for “That’s the boy”).