Full Title: The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports As a (relatively) casual fan of the game, and as an avid fantasy baseball player, the words “Tommy John” and “arm issues” were rather impersonal to me. They meant “look for another pitcher on the waiver wire” and “never draft this…
It’s not just that the Hanshin Tigers season is all but over. It’s also that I need good reading material for on train and bus rides (my commute to work is almost 2 hours one way). So I have a decent stock of books to get me through until next spring, or at least I…
Great news for Hanshin Tigers fans out there who feel like they do not know much about the team but want to know more! T-Ray is planning to write a book in 2017 (and 2018 if more time is needed)! The plans at present are for the book to tell the incredible story of the…
If “You Gotta Have Wa” is the ultimate book to shed light on the American’s experience playing baseball in Japan, then “Cherry Blossoms Over the Stars and Stripes” is the opposite. Though likely not intended to be so, this book, written by Robert Whiting (of “Wa” fame) gives the Japanese audience a look into the…
This book, written by current manager (and former player) Tomoaki Kanemoto, is only a mystery to me because of when it was released. Kanemoto was still in his playing days and still extending his ironman streak from game to game, season to season, at this point. Why did he write a book and have it published…
Masayuki Kakefu is easily one of the most prolific and recognizable hitters and names in Hanshin Tigers history. He made his way into the heart of the order quite quickly after joining the club, and remained there for most of his playing years, which unfortunately ended too soon. For decades after his retirement, he mysteriously…
First of all, what is a “scorer” (スコアラー) anyways? Before picking up Hiroshi Miyake’s memoirs, I would not have thought of them as anything more than guys who keep track of each at bat in a game – tracing lines on a scoresheet to indicate which runners made it how far in every inning of…
Anyone who has followed Matt Murton while he played for the Hanshin Tigers knows that the man is a Christian, and a vocal one at that. While his faith may not appeal to everyone, there are certainly people within the Christian community that root for him based solely on his beliefs. Contrarily, there are people…
You wouldn’t think it would be a hard task to find a newly published Hanshin Tigers magazine in the Kansai area… and yet I went to major bookstores in Sannoymiya (Kobe), Ashiya and Nishinomiya and came up fruitless. FINALLY today I found it! In Himeji, of all places! So here’s the book I searched high and…
Former Hanshin Tigers manager (2004-2008) Akinobu Okada must have seen something in the Yutaka Wada regime that he couldn’t find in his successor, Akinobu Mayumi. Apparently the Tigers went from being a winner (2003 and 2005 Central League champs) to somewhat of a loser until 2013. Having become a sports analyst, he decided to write…