I am genuinely curious about pretty much anyone who played baseball for the Hanshin Tigers. The same is true of Japanese players who gave the Major Leagues a shot. These days, I have started to really become more curious about the world of translating and interpreting as well, so I take a deeper interest in the person who stands alongside the athletes who have difficulty corresponding with coaches, teammates, and the media. And this was why I picked up this book, written about the life of the late Hideki Irabu, who spent just two seasons with the Tigers after several struggle-filled seasons in the USA.
This book is written by his agent and good friend, Don Nomura, who has had a significant role in the lives of several Japanese baseball players to play in Major League Baseball, including pioneer Hideo Nomo. Nomura takes time to compare the process that each man took to get to the majors, as well as the impact that each had on the future of the game. He talks about Irabu’s personality, playing style, approach to the game, social skills, misunderstandings with the media (who, Nomura claims, decided that Irabu was a heel and interpreted everything Irabu did through that lens), and more.
The book starts and finishes with Irabu’s tragic death, which came as a surprise to Nomura despite what he said was an eerie feeling that Irabu was going to take his own life. Nomura walks the reader through some of the misunderstandings about his friend, such as him being short-tempered, easily angered, and hard to please. He discusses some of Irabu’s career highlights, but gives a great deal of time to the arduous process of moving from NPB to MLB. He also dispels the rumor that Irabu insisted on playing for the Yankees so he could get extra national exposure and hopefully bring his estranged American father out of the woodwork. That simply is not true, says Nomura. It was simply an overwhelming fascination that Irabu had with the Yankees.
Nomura highlights all of Irabu’s strengths and all the bad luck he had throughout his career, particularly in MLB. He says that despite Irabu’s inability to communicate in English (or Spanish, as he spent time in Central America as well), he was always more than willing to teach his teammates how to grip the ball for different pitches, and just about anything they asked him. He was a true student of the game, and really had very few vices (perhaps alcohol being an exception, but that is not uncommon among baseball players).
On the whole, this book was quite informative, but I also felt like it was completely biased and showed an inability to look critically at what, despite the media’s vindictive nature, was a career that failed to meet the expectations many had of him when he first broke out with the Chiba Lotte Orions.