With Aki Iwamura (Rays) and So Taguchi (Phillies) active in the 2008 MLB World Series American baseball fans may be interested in what the post season is like in Japan. The NPB has a quirky playoff system and the holes in that system reared their ugly head this week in Tokyo.
The Yomuri Giants are playing the Chunichi Dragons in what would be the equivalent of the NLCS. The winner will advance to the Japan Series which is a best of 7 series that determines Nippon Professional Baseball’s champion. Because the Giants finished in first place of the Central League this season they not only get a bye in the first round of the playoffs (a best of 3 between the 2nd and 3rd place teams) they also gain a one game advantage in the second round.
So even though the series is technically a “best of 7” the first game played is actually Game 2. Before the Giants even step on the field, they lead the Dragons 1 game to none.
To further complicate this already complicated system NPB’s regular season tie rule stays in effect throughout the playoffs. In Japan no game goes longer than 12 innings and in the post season the same holds true. After winning Game 2 and losing Game 3 the Dragons were trailing the Giants 2 games to 1. Game 4 ended in a 5-5 tie, bringing the Giants advantage to 2-1-1, or if you look at the actual games played on the field 1-1-1. Confused yet? There’s more.
In the event of a tie in the post season there is no extra game added, no potential Game 8. The game is simply chalked up as a tie and if the series ends 3-3, the team that won the regular season, the Giants in this case, advance to the Japan Series. So because of this tie and the one game advantage before the series even started the Giants really only need to win 2 games in this best of 7 series to be Central League Champions and move on to the next round.
Absurd? Absolutely. This is the kind of confusion that goes on in Japanese baseball that often leaves the casual fan and American player wondering why.
BEING HOME AND MOVING ON

October 13, 2008 - USAIt’s been good to be home, it’s been two weeks but it seems like so much longer. It had been nearly two months since I had seen my family and they are glad I am home again. This is the fun time for me as my schedule is wide open with free time and I get to do a lot of things with my wife and kids.
The news came yesterday that I will not be returning to the Hawks in 2009. This was not a surprise. The last 2 months of the season the team performed poorly and eventually finished in last place, a disgrace for our organization. It seems some of the coaches and the foreign players are taking the blame. Strictly from a baseball standpoint this is what I was hoping for and I will tell you more about that next month.
My family and I absolutely loved living in Fukuoka. My kids have grown to love Japan and they were really hoping we would return. I have received so many nice e-mails from Japanese baseball fans recently and I want to thank all of you for making my time in Fukuoka an enjoyable one. Living in your city and playing for you team was the experience of a lifetime but it is time to move on.
When people have asked me about playing in Fukuoka, I have always said the same thing; living here is great, the fans are great, the city is great, but the baseball was frustrating and unfulfilling. The foreigners in Fukuoka were in one of the most difficult situations in Japan. People had told me that before I came to Japan and players from other teams told me the same thing after I arrived here. Eventually I got to experience it myself. It was disappointing because it was so close to being the perfect situation. The team took great care of us and our families but on the field was frustration after frustration. I will explain more of what I mean by that later next month.
What’s next for me? Some of you have asked me to coach for the Hawks and I even got a request from one of you to be the GM. While I think I have a lot to offer in both of those roles I don’t think that is in my future.
Under the right situation I would like to play in Japan again, we will see what is available to me. Being here for 2 seasons I know what I am looking for and more specifically who’d I really like to play for. If there is a good match for me I will probably take it. I will look for a different situation than I was in here with the Hawks.
I will really miss my Japanese teammates. Considering the language barrier I have gotten to know many of them very well and wish them all the success in the world. There are staff members I have gotten to know well and I will miss them too (but not all of them!)
Thank you again for all the great support over these 2 seasons. It truly made my time here so much fun. Also I want to thank the three people that have brought this blog to you in Japanese. Ken, Koretaka and Shinichi were incredible at translating for me and you. They efforts are appreciated more than I can ever put into words.
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THE END OF AN ERA

September 26th, 2008 - 30,000 feet over Montana, USAPrior to our game on Tuesday night, Mr. Oh called a meeting of all the players and staff. Mr. Oh addressed the team and told us that he would retiring from managing after the season. It was pretty shocking news and just the day before the newspaper had stated that Mr. Oh was welcomed by Mr. Son, our team owner, to continue managing as long as he would like.
I had spoken to Mr. Oh about how long he would like to manage this past spring training and he had told me that he believed no manager should be in one place for too long. He never directly told me, but I sensed it would be his last year.
However, as the season progressed I began to think that Mr. Oh would continue beyond 2008. His health had seemed better than last year and he had more fire than I remembered from 2007. The passion to win was still there and I had a hard time believing he was ready to step down.
This season was a bad one for the Hawks, but also one riddled with injuries. Nearly every major player on our team had been hurt for some time during 2008. Without Saitoh, Wada, Kokubo, Tamura, Ohmura, Mahara, Mizuta and Kawasaki for a good part of this season made it hard for us to win the way we should have. I had thought since we were not at 100% strength that Mr. Oh would want to manage one more year with all of his players back. I was wrong.
All good things come to an end and I believe it was probably Mr. Oh’s time. He said something when he addressed the team that really caught my attention. He said that over the past two seasons he had put an incredible amount of pressure on his players and demanded more of them over that time than he had ever before. I guess that was because he wanted to win so badly in his last season. Ironically I have been here for the past seasons and only the past two seasons so I had assumed that Mr. Oh was always that demanding of his players but he admittedly was not.
I don’t know if that makes me feel good or not. I do know however that as I look back on my time under Mr. Oh that although, yes, he was highly demanding, more so than any other manager I ever had in my 15 year career, I am very proud and honored to have played for him. This has been an experience like to no other for me. My career has taken me all over the place from 11 organizations in MLB with dozens of managers to Japan playing for the great Sadaharu Oh. I am glad I am able to say that.
To experience playing under Japan’s greatest baseball legend and even getting to know him a little bit personally is pretty cool. We have shared a few dinners over these two years and even a few laughs. I always tell people that off the field Mr. Oh is an absolute first class gentleman and always made sure the foreign players were comfortable. On the field he was the most demanding manager I ever played who expected greatness from his players. Sometimes it seemed unreasonable or that he was asking too much but when you play for the world’s all time homerun hitter you can understand why he sets the bar so high. Great players are driven to be the best at all costs and Mr. Oh is one of the greatest to ever play the game. As a manager he expected us to have that same drive, to never accept failure and to always give our best effort. If we didn’t do that he would let us know. We didn’t always like his style, but we respected it, greatly.
Mr. Oh will be missed by his players and fans. His last game on Wednesday night was an emotional one with players and fans crying throughout the Yahoo! Dome. The mark he made on the fans of Fukuoka will never be forgotten and his legend will live forever.
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LEAVING FUKUOKA

September 26th, 2008 - Somewhere over the Pacific OceanAs I write this the season isn’t actually over, but it is for me. As I mentioned in my last blog once the Hawks were eliminated mathematically from the playoffs the foreign players were told they could go home, Mr. Oh wants to give some of the younger players a chance to play in the major leagues over the final 8 games.
The end of the season is always difficult and this year was no exception. Reflecting on the past year, saying your goodbyes and wondering about next season are the range of emotions that pass through your head. For me saying goodbye was difficult. Next season is uncertain for me (I’ll write about that in a couple of weeks) and knowing that this will possibly be the last time I would see my teammates & staff members and quite possibly my last time in Japan was hard for me.
I have been on this team for two years now. Back in the States I had not been on the same team two years in a row since 2000-01. I am relational guy, I like to get to know my teammates and develop deep relationships with them. The language barrier can make that hard but still I felt I have gotten to know a lot of the players and staff pretty well, at least I have tried to. I believe most people think I will not be a Hawk next season and I sensed that I as we were saying goodbye. That was hard for me, I care a lot about my teammates and the staff and I’m not ready to leave them yet.
That is where my faith comes in. I believe strongly that God has a plan for each and every one of us and if that plans means I don’t wear a Hawks uniform next season I am willing to accept that. That doesn’t mean however that I have to be happy with it. I will have a lot of regret if I never throw a pitch for this team again.
I have been in Japan for 8 months this year and about 8 ½ months last year. That means over the past 20 months I have lived in Japan for 16 ½ of them. I got to the point where I felt like Fukuoka was more of my home than America, and I was OK with that. My family and I love Fukuoka and we couldn’t imagine playing anywhere else. The people have treated us so well and to each of the fans and people we’ve interacted with over our two years here we would all like to say ‘thank you.’
Leaving my apartment for the last time was sad, driving to the airport, saying goodbye to my foreign teammates and translators wasn’t easy. Yes, I am so excited to see my family later today, very excited, but I have been here so long I felt like I was saying goodbye to second family, wondering if I’d ever see any of them again.
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GAIJIN GO BYE-BYE

September 25th, 2008 - Fukuoka, JapanLast night the Hawks were officially eliminated from playoff contention. We had a monster collapse in September. We have put together a paltry 3-16 record so far this month with 8 games to play. We had been right in the middle of the playoff race and fell fast. I’m not sure I have ever been on a team that went to pieces so quickly.
Because we no longer have an opportunity to play beyond the regular season Mr. Oh has decided that the foreign players were no longer needed in 2008 and he has allowed us to go home. He wants to let some of the younger players have a chance to pitch in the majors with no pressure. I fully understand this decision but it is bittersweet for me.
I am looking forward to getting home but I don’t like leaving my teammates when there are still games left to play. I would have liked to stayed and finished out the season, especially since I have been pitching well lately.
I will be traveling home to the United States in the next day or two. Over that time I will write all about the season, my future, Mr. Oh’s retirement and share with you pictures and maybe some videos from the emotional last night at the Yahoo! Dome.
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THE STRUGGLES CONTINUE

September 15th, 2008 - Osaka, JapanWhat a couple of weeks this has been. As I write this we are coming off a 3 game sweep at the hands of the Chiba Lotte Marines. Currently we sit in 5th place, 2 ½ games behind the 4th place team and 3 ½ games behind the 3rd place. With the top 3 teams making the playoffs we have an uphill battle to get into the post season.
Things just haven’t been going our way. When we pitch well we don’t score runs, when we score a lot of runs we don’t pitch well. That is pretty much how you get put together a 2-9 September while chasing a playoff spot.
The atmosphere surrounding the team has not been great. You can tell guys are feeling the pressure. That pressure needs to be alleviated somehow but it just isn’t happening. These are those times when I wish I spoke better Japanese. I sometimes get frustrated with the way things are done here or how the players are talked to. I know it is the Japanese way and I need to accept it but there are also times when I think I have something to offer than could help some of players, especially our pitchers, but it is just too difficult to communicate. Watching my teammates mentally and physically grind through this part of the season is hard for me.
I don’t know how this season will finish out, but right now it is not looking good for us. What I do know is that this challenge will not get any easier as we start a 3 game series against the Orix Buffaloes who have been red hot as of late. It appeared only a month ago that their season was going nowhere, now they are in 2nd place. They have been tearing up the Pacific League and we have our work cut out for us.
For me personally I haven’t done much of anything. Since my demotion back in late July I only pitch when we are losing by a significant amount of runs. It’s difficult and frustrating to sit back and watch this team fail when you’re not called on to help. I know I could, I'm just not being asked to right now.
Recently I went about 22 or 23 days without pitching in a game. That is absurd amount of time and presents a tremendous challenge for me but I'm trying to make the best of it. The clock is ticking and the Hawks need to turn things around or our off-season will start early this year.
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THE LEARNING CURVE

September 3rd, 2008 - Sapporo, JapanIt’s a basic principle, trial and error. You learn from your past mistakes. When you make a decision or you do something a certain way, and that way fails, you make adjustments so you don’t fail again. Or at least you increase your chances of not failing again. It’s how many of us learn, even children. If my daughter touches a hot plate that just came out of the oven or the microwave and she gets burned, she knows not to that again.
For some reason though, those types of lessons don’t register here in Japan. I have completed nearly 2 seasons here and it amazes me to watch the same mistake being made over and over and over again in regard to pitchers.
I’ve watched pitchers in Japan throw an incredible amount of pitches both in games and in practice. I’ve been told that it is the Japanese way, that the players like it and it’s what works. I could believe that statement if at least some of it were true, none of it is.
My favorite example is of a pitcher who I witnessed throw a bullpen session of over 160 pitches in spring training last year. The next day he came out and threw 10 minutes of live batting practice. He told me he had “Japanese soul” to which I rebutted “you’re going to have Japanese surgery if that continues.” He laughed. That pitcher missed some of last season and all of this season following arm surgery.
In fact you’d be hard pressed to go through our roster and not find a pitcher who hasn’t had some kind of arm trouble. But the tradition continues and throwing goes on and on and on.
We were without our ace pitcher for the majority of last season and all of this season because of an arm injury. He is known as a “work horse” because when he takes the mound anything less than a complete game is a disappointment, regardless of pitch count. We’re in the middle of a tight 4 team race for the final two spots in the post season, we could have really used him this season.
Recently we tied a game 0-0 in 12 innings. The opposing starter threw 9 innings and 171 pitches! That is no typo, 171 pitches in 9 shutout innings. Our starter in that game threw 10 innings of shutout baseball using just 143 pitches to do it. He missed some time this season and last season with an elbow injury.
The latest example game for us this past week. We lost yet another starter to an arm injury. I once watched this guy throw a bullpen session the day before he was scheduled to start. That is unheard of in American baseball and would shock most American pitching coaches but the insanity continues. He was having a nice season, he will be greatly missed.
The relief pitchers may have it the worst. These poor guys throw every single day off the mound. As we enter the final month of the season I watch them reluctantly get up to throw when their name is called. It is what they do here and I’ve yet to meet a reliever that tells me likes it. They just do it because they are told to do it. It took a few months but the team finally realized how I prepare for games and that I would not be getting up to throw off the mound unless they needed me in the game. I think the other guys are envious of my routine and that I have the freedom to do what I know is best for my arm.
If you’re looking for evidence that the bullpen system is a bad one look no further than the fact that for most of this season we were without our closer, top set-up man and most experienced lefty due to injuries. Also look at the turnover rate in our bullpen, we have used so many different relief pitchers this season, it’s no wonder we struggled to be consistent.
It’s like the dots can’t be connected. I’ve heard it said that when these players get hurt 90% of the time it’s their fault. That they are weak and don’t condition themselves properly and that is why they get hurt. That is an ignorant way of thinking. The human body is not built to throw a ball overhand, it is an unnatural motion. We can obviously do it, but we have to take great care of our arms. That requires us to be smart in our training.
Injuries are part of the game and you can’t completely prevent them from happening, but here they happen at an alarming rate and adjustments need to be made. The old school way of thinking is antiquated and ineffective. Each generation is expected to be smarter than the last one, we seem to be about 5 generations behind.
When kids copy their friend’s bad behavior parents we rhetorically ask them, “If your friend jumped off a bridge would you jump off a bridge too?” In Japanese baseball the answer is “yes.”
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THREE TIES!

August 31st, 2008 - Fukuoka, JapanOne of the things about Japanese baseball that foreigners find amusing is the tie rule. No game in Japan can go past 12 innings. As of three days we had no ties this season but that changed in a big way.
I don’t really know if this is some kind of record or what but we tied an entire three game series with the Seibu Lions. The final scores were 4-4, 2-2 and 0-0. The crazy thing was these games were all low scoring but all took a really, really long time. Our 4-4 game took over 5 hours and our 0-0 game took nearly 4 ½ hours. 9 innings of 0-0 baseball should take about 2 hours, it took us 3 ½ hours. Japan has some serious time of game issues and maybe I will address that in another blog entry.
Coping With the Situation
I haven’t done much of anything these past 2 weeks and I hate my current role with the team. I am not contributing at all and I am bored out of my mind just watching baseball games. Baseball players want to play baseball, it’s what we love to do. I love to pitch, I hate to sit and watch baseball games in my uniform from the bullpen.
I recently was reviewing some of my games from earlier in the year and it left me wondering what happened to this season. Actually, I know what happened but I can’t share that with you. I watched some really good and really important games I threw for our team this year. It was frustrating to watch.
I just want a chance to show what I can do here in Japan. I haven’t had that full opportunity here. I feel like I have shown more than enough to pitch in 60-65 games in a season with this team but it just isn’t happening. I trust that I am in my current situation for a reason and remind myself everyday to make the most of it and be ready. But as everyday passes without pitching it gets more and more difficult.
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