Baseball's bridge,
Japan to America
Asian nation sends stars,
MLB sends merchandise
 Koichi Kamoshida / Getty Images The return of Hideki Matsui to Japan fits into Major League Baseball's aggressive international marketing plan. |
TOKYO - Seventy years ago, when Babe Ruth and a team of American baseball stars landed here for a series of exhibition games against local competition, Japan absorbed the spectacle as a David and Goliath affair. In the 1950s, when Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and the rest of the New York Yankees came back for another go, awe of the foreigners again prevailed.
But this week, as the Yankees open the Major League Baseball season with two games against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays at the Tokyo Dome, most of the attention is focused on a homegrown player making a triumphant return -- Hideki Matsui, the brightest star on Japan's highest-profile team before he decamped last year for New York. In these games, the player known as "Godzilla" in Japan will wear Yankee pinstripes, the uniform that has transformed him from a merely excellent ballplayer into a vessel of national aspiration, a Japanese with the audacity to step on the biggest stage in the American game and play like he belongs.
"Before, he was great only in Japan. Now he's someone important in the world," said one fan, Shinji Miyazaki. "I feel like a proud father."
Oh, the other Yankees are here, too -- not least the newly acquired Alex Rodriguez, arguably baseball's best player and inarguably its highest paid, whose first game in pinstripes would ordinarily constitute the most compelling plot line. But for the bulk of the 55,000 people at the Tokyo Dome, everyone but Matsui amounts to supporting cast. Local interest in Tuesday's big league opener at 5:05 a.m. (EST) might have been eclipsed by the exhibition game played here Sunday night, as Matsui's Yankees took on his former team, the Yomiuri Giants.
"I played here for 10 years in this stadium," Matsui said afterward. "It was just business as usual."
For MLB, however, the proceedings here are all about new business. Launching the season here amounts to its biggest step yet in an increasingly aggressive international marketing campaign, seeking to capitalize on a growing Japanese obsession with superstars who have gone to the American big leagues.
Four years ago, the Chicago Cubs opened the season here against the New York Mets. Last year, the Seattle Mariners and their Japanese superstar, Ichiro Suzuki, were supposed to begin the schedule with two games against the Oakland Athletics, but that series was scrapped with the beginning of the war in Iraq.
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"He is the boy every father wants their son to be and every mother wants their daughter to marry," said Jim Small, MLB's general manager in Japan. "His popularity here cannot be underestimated. To have him here in pinstripes is, from a business standpoint, overwhelmingly powerful. It is the most important series that we've ever done internationally."
Baseball's global reach reflects the reality that roughly one-fourth of the players on major league rosters were born outside the United States. In 1996 and again in 1999, baseball opened its season in Monterrey, Mexico. The Yankees have a concession tie-in with another international sports icon, the British soccer team Manchester United. MLB recently signed an agreement with China's government to promote the sport there ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But Japan remains the primary focus. MLB's international revenues are estimated at $100 million per year, through television rights, sponsorships and sales of everything from T-shirts to bobblehead dolls. Japan now accounts for some 60 percent, said Small.
Last year's All-Star Game was watched by a greater percentage of Japanese households than their American counterparts, with interest fueled by the presence of Matsui and Ichiro as American League starters. Last year's World Series -- with Matsui starring -- drew 12.5 million per game, though the games began in the morning. That compared with about 20 million viewers in the United States.
Japan's national television network, NHK, plans to broadcast 300 big league games this year. The Japanese advertising giant, Dentsu, recently agreed to pay MLB an estimated $275 million for the rights to broadcast games here over the next five years.
Forty years have passed since Masanori Murakami, a left-handed relief pitcher, became the first Japanese player to make the jump to the big leagues, joining the San Francisco Giants in 1964 before returning home the following season. Two decades after that came the first Japanese breakout player, Hideo Nomo, whose strangely twisting delivery helped him secure the 1995 National League rookie of the year award with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Japan's baseball relationship with the United States changed irrevocably in 2001 with the arrival of Ichiro. He brought a legendary reputation for practice and such speed that it seemed he was already running to first base before completing his swing. He had won three most valuable player awards and seven batting titles in nine years with the Orix BlueWave. In his first season with the Mariners, he took the American League MVP and had 242 hits -- a total not seen for 70 years.
Ichiro pandemonium unfolded on both sides of the Pacific. Japanese tourists flew to Seattle to see him play, and up went Japanese signs at Safeco Field. His success went beyond sports, altering the basic American view of Japan.
"Before Ichiro and Matsui, Japan didn't have any icons in the United States," said Robert Whiting, a long-time writer on Japanese baseball and author of the recent book, "The Meaning of Ichiro." "All the Japanese had were cars and VCRs. But Ichiro gave them a face and personality. You've got guys in Seattle -- loggers, redneck guys. Ten years ago, these guys didn't know what sushi was and probably didn't think too much of the Japanese. And now those same guys are at Safeco Field eating sushi and yelling, 'Gambatte!' [go for it, in Japanese]"
Matsui breached a final barrier. As his contract neared completion in 2002 and speculation mounted that he was headed to the big leagues, some suggested he would be a traitor to leave Japan. Ichiro had come from a low-profile team, but Matsui played for the mighty Giants, the dynastic counterpart to the Yankees. They were adored by half the country and despised by the other for their swagger and bankroll. Above all, they were ubiquitous -- national television fare night after night for the last half-century. Yomiuri had never lost a player to the major leagues.
But others suggested that if Matsui didn't go, he would look like a coward. He signed a three-year deal with the Yankees for $21 million, walking away from a six-year, $64 million offer to stay. At a farewell news conference, Matsui nearly wept, apologizing to his fans for betraying their dreams to pursue his own. Even against the backdrop of Ichiro mania, Matsui's arrival in New York intensified Japan's interest in big league baseball, in large part because of his character. Where Ichiro can be sullen and inscrutable, declining interviews, Matsui is patient and affable, submitting to the hordes of Japanese cameras even after his worst performances. Where Ichiro is bearded and wiry, Matsui is clean-shaven and broad-shouldered. And where Ichiro relies on guile and craft, slapping at the ball with quick wrists, Matsui is that most revered breed of ballplayer -- the home-run hitter.
In his first game at Yankee Stadium, Matsui hit a grand slam, something no Yankee had done -- not Ruth, not DiMaggio, not Mantle. Overall, he did not live up to his slugger reputation, hitting only 16 homers. But he posted a solid .287 batting average and generally impressed with his all-round high level of play.
"I thought he'd hit more home runs," said Reggie Jackson, one of the Yankees' most prolific sluggers and now a hitting coach for the team. "But under the circumstances he was in, he had a hell of a year. He's one of the most fundamentally sound players on our team."
In Japan, it was enough to cement his legend.
"To see a Japanese player at Yankee stadium being cheered by American fans makes me proud," said Ryo Nakajima, 22, a disc jockey at a nightclub in the trendy Shibuya district whose goatee and diamond earrings are now complemented by a Yankees' cap. Tipped backward, of course.
Sports segments of Japan's nightly news shows now lead with footage of Matsui and Ichiro's latest exploits, along with the newest Japanese star to jump, Kazuo Matsui -- no relation -- who is to play shortstop this year for the Mets. Highlights of the Japanese leagues now run second.
Some worry that Japan's baseball tradition will be swept away by the majors. Television ratings for Giants games hit an all-time low last year, though they still translate to 18 million viewers a game.
"We do have concerns about a decrease in interest in Japanese baseball," said Atsushi Ihara, director of international relations for the Yomiuri Giants. "We see it seriously."
But Ihara also pointed to data that shows a widening level of overall interest in the baseball -- particularly among women -- a trend he figures results from the glamour coverage of Ichiro and Matsui. "We see a new market being created," Ihara said. The Giants are trying to capture it with a new magazine aimed at women, featuring profiles and photos of players wearing stylish clothes.
On the streets of Tokyo, fashion is increasingly suffused with Yankee pinstripes, though many wear the uniform more in homage to Matsui than the team as a whole. Interest in other Yankees builds with exposure -- Derek Jeter and Manager Joe Torre are widely recognized. But conspicuous gaps remain as, Torre discovered Friday while having breakfast with Yankee Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.
A middle-aged Japanese fan approached the table and asked Torre to pose for a photograph. The manager obliged. "So," as Torre recalled, "the guy hands the camera to Yogi, and says, 'Do you mind?' "
Berra cheerfully snapped the picture.
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