Free The Meaning of Ichiro by Robert Whiting Page A

condition that he restrict his voting interest to less than 50 percent. It was a restriction described
     by Donald Hellman, director of the Institute for International Policy at the University of Washington, as “out and out racism.”
    Nonetheless, Yamauchi, described by one business writer as “a likeable crab,” agreed to pay $75 million of the estimated $125
     million total price of the team, and consented to leave the day-to-day management of the Mariners to Nintendo America’s chief,
     Howard Lincoln. Lincoln hired Pat Gillick as general manager, a man who had a reputation for creating competitive teams on
     less than exorbitant payrolls, and the Griffey/Rodriguez era was launched. Then in the winter of 1999, Gillick signed Kazuhiro
     Sasaki, relief ace of the Yokohama BayStars, who became an instant success with the Mariners, winning the 2000 Rookie of the
     Year award with a record of 37 saves and an ERA of 3.16. That year, the Seattle Mariners made a profit (of $10 million), the
     first in the history of the franchise. And, of course, they made even more money in 2001 when Yamauchi suggested the team
     acquire Ichiro Suzuki. By the end of that year, Japanese was virtually a second language at Safeco Field, with ideographs
     featured in advertisements all over the park. Suzuki was unable to walk in downtown Seattle without being mobbed.
    Ironically, those owners who initially opposed Yamauchi’s acquisition wound up benefiting from it heftily thanks to MLB TV
     broadcasting contracts with Japan that proved to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
    Author Shawn Wong, an Asian-American professor of English at the University of Washington who had himself experienced discrimination,
     was particularly happy about the way things ultimately turned out. He was so moved by the sight of 45,000 people in Safeco
     Field chanting Ichiro’s name when he came up to bat (and yelling
“sanshin”
when Sasaki struck out an opposing batter) that he declared the people of Seattle had become global citizens without leaving
     home.
    In an article he wrote for the
Seattle Times,
he praised the respect and loyalty, “distinctly Japanese traits,” exhibited by Ichiro and Sasaki. The latter had quietly
     signed a contract extension without the bargaining in the media that was standard for American stars. When it was over Sasaki
     made the simple public statement, “I love the city of Seattle and my teammates.” Wong also movingly described a little white
     boy holding up at sign at Safeco which read, “I want to be Ichiro when I grow up.”
    “Today,” wrote Wong, “the corporation known as Major League Baseball is looking like a global missionary, marketing its products
     in Japan and around the world… . I’m beginning to think that an entire city can understand how race changes their culture
     and society and can embrace and even encourage that change.”
The View from Japan: Members of the World
    For Japan, the significance of Ichiro’s accomplishment was a slightly different matter. His success was one of those great
     postwar moments for the Japanese that inspired a sense of triumph—like the exploits of Rikidozan, a former sumo wrestler who
     popularized pro wrestling in Japan by defeating outsized American wrestlers in carefully orchestrated matches. Rikidozan’s
     first match, in 1954, was seen by a record 24 million people, nearly one-third of the nation’s population at the time, who
     crowded in front of promotional TV sets set up in public squares around the country and watched in delirious joy as their
     hero pounded an American, Ben Sharpe, into submission.
    His matches gave an enormous boost to the nascent television industry in Japan, as well as an incalculable lift to the spirit
     of the nation, still trying to recover from defeat in war. Said Matsutaro Shoriki, the president of the Yomiuri media conglomerate
     that had telecast the Rikidozan matches, “Rikidozan, by his pro wrestling in which he sent