Book Reviews

Book Preview – History Treasures

Book Preview – History Treasures

Now I’m going to sound like a spoiled child, but my father-in-law called up his daughter (my wife) the other day and said, “I found something your husband might be interested in. Can you come over sometime this week and check it out? If he wants it, it’s his. If not, that’s OK, I can…

Book Review – School of Hanshin Fans

Book Review – School of Hanshin Fans

Knowing very little of the team’s tradition or its long-time writers, I picked this book up to get a quick education. It ended up being much more than that – a real entertaining read about some of the quirks of Hanshin fans, anecdotes of various players throughout history, and even a few write-ups about Tigers-related…

Immature Man (Kyuji Fujikawa)

Immature Man (Kyuji Fujikawa)

The original title of the book is 未熟者 (Mijuku Mono). Written in the 2008 offseason and released prior to the second World Baseball Classic in 2009 (which the author played well in), Kyuji Fujikawa wrote a book that is not quite an autobiography but is somewhat difficult to classify. He mostly talked about how he got…

Book Review – Throwback

Book Review – Throwback

I have tried to focus on NPB and specifically the Hanshin Tigers as much as possible since last year. However, as someone who has mostly followed the game on paper for the better part of the last two decades, I thought I needed to get an education from someone who played the game on the…

Book Review – Slugging it Out in Japan

Book Review – Slugging it Out in Japan

To purchase and read this book, I had to put away my dislike of the Yomiuri Giants. After all, the subject and co-author starred for them during the most interesting years of my Hanshin Tigers’ history. He was a perfect foil to then-star Tiger Randy Bass, who enamored the fanatics at Koshien from the time he arrived in…

Book Review – The Meaning of Ichiro

Book Review – The Meaning of Ichiro

It is hard to believe Robert Whiting waited 15 years after publishing the groundbreaking You Gotta Have Wa (1989), but with all the changes in professional baseball, The Meaning of Ichiro presents several new angles on the Japanese-American relationship as seen on and around the baseball field. Instead of looking at how Americans adjusted (or didn’t) to Japanese…