Yu Darvish and the give and take relationship of Japan and the MLB

[missionhockey21]

A very long, but interesting article covering multiple topics including Japanese pitching sensation Yu Darvish, the business of Japanese baseball, the impact of Japanese baseball stars leaving for the US, and the culture and attitude toward baseball from the little leagues and up in Japan. I took selected sections out, but I'd recommend reading it for yourself, very interesting.

SAPPORO, Japan -- The Sapporo Dome's sellout crowd of 42,126 (not counting 45 assorted cheerleaders -- yes, 45 cheerleaders!) bangs Thunderstix and howls for Yu Darvish as he fires his 124th pitch of the game. The pitch snaps the bat in half -- the long end sails toward the mound and bounces off the dirt -- as Darvish calmly fields the ball. Taking his time, he tosses the ball to first to complete a four-hit, 10-strikeout 1-0 shutout on opening day for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters. The best pitcher in Japan slaps his glove against his teammates' hands, walks to the dugout and exchanges a high-five with the club's costumed mascot and ... no, hold on a minute. Back up.

Travel to Japan to catch a glimpse of the country's latest pitching phenom, Yu Darvish.

...

Unlike Bonds, though, Darvish doesn't have an image problem. To the contrary, he is extraordinarily popular, particularly with the teenage girls who swoon over him, his youthful face staring out from ads and magazine covers (and, inside one publication, a good deal more of his body). And not just on the less densely populated north island of Hokkaido where Sapporo is located, but throughout Japan.

In Japan, Darvish is more than an unhittable pitcher. He's a rock star, married to an actress and fodder for the tabloids.

And why not? In addition to his extraordinary talent on the mound, Darvish is a demographer's dream: young, 6-foot-5 and slender, with the sort of strikingly exotic face that is seen more often in Calvin Klein ads than on baseball cards. Features like this -- a blend of his Iranian father, Farsad, and his Japanese mother, Ikuyo, who met (where else?) in the U.S. -- are practically sui generis in Japan.

....

And Darvish began his pro career in Japan with an American manager, Hillman. "When he was drafted his father was outstanding," Hillman says. "He said, 'Trey, he's all yours. I know that you'll treat him like he was your own son.'"

Darvish progressed quickly and steadily with the Fighters. He lowered his ERA from 3.53 as a rookie in 2005 to 2.89 in 2006 to 1.81 last year. But the 2007 season ended on a down note. Despite allowing only one run in the final game of the Japan Series, Darvish took the loss when the opposing team pitched a perfect game. He is 5-1 with a 1.46 ERA so far this season. "Yu is tremendously gifted, and he's developed a great work ethic," Hillman says. "I didn't have a lot of conversations with Yu, because there wasn't a need for it. He understood that he needed to start working harder. Actually, after the 2006 season, he was so dedicated and committed to his workout program that he [chose] to forego the team trip to New Zealand."

"I don't need much motivation," Darvish says through an interpreter. "I'm never satisfied until I win all the games and have an ERA of 0.00. I want to throw a faster fastball. I want a sharper curve. I want to improve all my pitches."

Most observers feel he either is already as good as Matsuzaka or soon will be. "I think his numbers in Japan are going to be equally as phenomenal as he continues to move on, barring injury, as Dice-K's were in Japan," Hillman says. "He's got a different type of frame. Dice-K's got a more powerful frame, but Darvish has looser levers and a taller frame with more whip, and I think that gives him an opportunity to have more powerful and more electric secondary pitches as well as a fastball.

"The curveball is just not fair. Honestly, it's just not a fair pitch."

...

Hillman compares Darvish's marketability to Tiger's and MJ's. "He understands how cool people think he is. He understands the adulation and the mystique."

Indeed. Hillman says the driving force for Darvish's weight regimen was an intense desire to get stronger and "be the dominating pitcher that he can be" but also that "he wanted to look good for those endorsements."

...

In addition to boosting his popularity now, is it designed to also drive up the price for Darvish in a possible posting down the line? Under Japanese rules, players are not allowed to become free agents until after nine seasons (though free agency rules might soon be changed, allowing players to become free agents after seven or eight years). Darvish is in his fourth season. However, a player may leave early under the posting system in which his team sells the right to negotiate with him to the highest bidder. Teams do this when they realize they will lose the player anyway and want to get some money in return (which is how Dice-K came to the Red Sox). They usually don't do so until the penultimate year of the player's enforced servitude, but Nippon Ham general manager Masao Yamada was quoted this spring saying that if a player requested to be posted earlier, his team would pretty much have to abide by his wishes. "We will admit a transfer, if it is allowed by the system," he said. "We won't chain our players. Actually, we want to train players like the majors are looking for and [see them] perform well over there. That's kind of our goal."

One Fighters beat writer thinks Darvish is looking for a greater challenge and gives better than even odds the pitcher will be posted after this season. He also says it depends on whether Darvish's wife wants to go to America. Oakland Athletics scout Randy Johnson, who played two seasons in Japan, says he thinks Darvish will be posted early but not for several years. Others believe he will never leave Japan.

...

Most everyone says if Darvish is posted, the bidding will easily top the $50 million the Seibu Lions received in exchange for the rights to Dice-K. After that, Johnson says, "The sky is the limit as to where the big-money teams would go." Given the usual escalation in baseball contracts, it isn't crazy to think the negotiating fee could go to $75 million.

...

For what it's worth, Farsad Darvish says Yu's background -- he has traveled to the States twice, and he has several aunts and uncles living in the U.S. -- would help him adjust culturally to the major leagues. "If he ever wants to go there, he'll be around the right people, the right connections," he says. "If Yu ever wants to maybe go to America, he will be ready."

And is there any team for which Farsad would like Yu to pitch? "I love the New York and Boston area. If he ever makes it there, I don't know, it's up to him, anywhere in the States is good, but I personally love New England."

Theo Epstein, Brian Cashman: Consider that your wakeup call.

When Farsad Darvish says, "I personally love New England," you know Red Sox Nation is listening.

...

Darvish says he would like to help make the game popular in his father's home country of Iran.

...

Valentine likens it to what happened to the Negro Leagues. "Jackie Robinson went and other [stars] followed and then they took the medium-level players away. What eventually happened was there was no Negro League. A league that had full stadiums, a league that had many teams in different cities, that league, in fact, collapsed. I don't know that the same thing will happen here, but there's definitely the same possibility.

"MLB should understand, the game of baseball is too important here in Asia to just take the talent away. What MLB has to do is think of the growth of baseball in the world, not just the growth of individual franchises in the States."

Former NPB stars Hideki Matsui, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ichiro Suzuki became hotter properties by leaving for America.


This is another aspect of baseball in Japan you need to appreciate. Mohawked mascots notwithstanding, the NPB is not marketed as well as it could be. "You see as many advertisements for Major League Baseball in Japan as you do [for] the NPB. And in some cases more so," Hillman says. "Sitting in our dugout during games the last five years and up on the scoreboard there's Ichiro Suzuki, and now Matsui commercials in Yankee pinstripes and Dice-K commercials in a Red Sox uniform. If they want to fix it, in my opinion, they've got to stop selling the product on the other side of the world."

The keys, he says, are getting NPB teams to work together to promote their own game and doing a better job of keeping players like Darvish. But that's not as easy as it sounds. "People think of Japan as the land of the group, and they think of America as this group of entrepreneurs who are all independent of one another," Valentine says. "But the fact is, in American baseball there are 30 teams that are owned by rich guys and they work together. They promote each other's teams, they share revenues, they share ideas and they prosper together with TV contracts and sharing the wealth of the game. Here, there are 12 teams that work independent of one another. They share nothing."

...

The exodus, actually, has had some positive effects on Japanese baseball. The success of Japanese players in America, Valentine says, has given the NPB new credibility. He also says the talent level is better than ever, in part due to Japanese players paying attention to major league style. Teams are slowly trying to bring their facilities up to major league quality. While ratings might be down for the Giants, more fans are watching the other teams. Nippon Ham, which used to share the Tokyo Dome with the Giants, moved to Sapporo in hopes that being the only baseball team on Hokkaido would boost attendance. It did, as did signing Darvish. "He brings them out," Hillman says. "He puts rear ends in the seats."

Given Darvish's popularity, it would make more sense for the NPB to do whatever it takes to keep him home rather than let him go to America, where he would become just another loss for Japanese baseball. By staying, he would help Japan market its game better and perhaps reverse, or at least slow, the current trend. Of course, that would depend on what Nippon Ham felt made the most sense for the corporation and not for Japanese baseball.

And how would Japanese fans react if Darvish should leave? "I think they're just numb," Whiting says. "They've lost so many of their top stars they would just go, 'Well, who's coming up next?'"

...

"What's amazing watching kids play baseball here is the amount of respect they have for everybody," says Small, whose son, John, plays for a Tokyo Little League team. "When they get on the field, they drop their hats and they bow, because the field is sacred. And when they go to the batter's box and the umpire is there, they bow to the umpire. And the worst thing you can do -- and my kid was taught this really early -- is throw your glove. Because his glove is his tool, and the glove is sacred.

For more on the future of Yu Darvish, watch "Outside the Lines: First Report" at 3:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday on ESPN.

"They're taught -- and you see this with Dice-K and with the top players here -- from when they're this tall to respect the game," Small says with his hand held waist high. "And I just think it's wonderful the way they do that."

More importantly, Ariyasu says, the kids increasingly talk about playing in the majors rather than Japan. They want to go directly to America and bypass pro ball in Japan entirely, no messing around with waiting nine years or asking to be posted early, as Darvish must. And Ariyasu says he wants them to do so.

"I tell them that Japan lost to the U.S. in World War II, so they need to practice hard and go to the majors and show Americans what they can do." But often, kids don't know what he's talking about when he mentions World War II. "They say, 'Huh? World War II?' They don't know. So instead, I tell them, 'Be like Dice-K.'"

...

Japanese fans will have to decide for themselves whether his answer should inspire pride, anticipation or dread, or possibly a mixture of all three.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. Masa Niwa contributed to this story.

ESPN.com - E-ticket: Dice-K 2.0

[Saber]

Darvish is not as good as Matsuzaka.