Angels Reliever Draws Visitors From Homeland
Last month, some die-hard Japanese baseball fans made the 5,500-mile trip across the Pacific Ocean to Anaheim to join a crowd of 31,087 at Edison International Field.
The big draw: a match-up between Shigetoshi Hasegawa, an Anaheim Angels reliever, and Ichiro Suzuki, right fielder for the Seattle Mariners.
As Suzuki came to the plate, the stadium announcer came on to say it was the first time in Major League Baseball history that a Japanese-born pitcher faced a fellow countryman at the plate.
According to an Angels official, the game ball signed by Hasegawa and Suzuki is on its way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Hasegawa and Suzuki are no strangers. Back in Japan, they were teammates on the Orix Blue Wave in Kobe City. Suzuki, the best Japanese hitter, was imported by the Mariners this year, while Hasegawa joined Anaheim in 1997.
Now in America, the two Japanese players are even more popular back home than when they played in Japan.
“These days, TV news programs report more about Japanese major league players like Hasegawa and Suzuki than our prime minister’s resignation,” said Toshiya Miyazaki, a Japanese journalist who came to Anaheim to cover the Angels-Mariners game.
Both Japanese and American travel companies arranged tours exclusively for the match- up. Nippon Travel Agency and H.I.S., two big Japanese travel bureaus with offices in Southern California, sold a five-day “ball-game watch tour to Anaheim.” Another 150 Japanese visitors and Japanese-Americans joined a one-day tour to Edison Field organized by Torrance-based Japanese community paper Bridge U.S.A.
Baseball is big in Japan. Boys learn English words such as “first,” “second” and “third” by playing baseball, according to journalist Miyazaki.
The Hasegawa-Suzuki face-off took on added significance in the top of the ninth inning. Suzuki singled off Hasegawa’s 91 mph fastball.
To concentrate on his pitching, Hasegawa said he keeps his eyes trained on the plate and doesn’t even take notice of “Ichiro-kun” (Suzuki is known as “Ichiro” in Japan).
In the bottom of the ninth, another Japanese pitcher, Mariners reliever Kazuhiro Sasaki, took the mound. Angels’ left fielder Garret Anderson stung Sasaki for a home run that gave the Angels a 4-3 win.
“I have witnessed something really special tonight,” said Tomohiro Motonaga, another sports journalist in from Tokyo to cover the game.
Japanese tourism officials hope Hasegawa and other Japanese transplants will spur more business from traveling baseball fans. With the expanded Disneyland Resort, Anaheim already is a hot spot for Japanese visitors.
“In addition to Disney’s magic, the new, clean Edison Field coupled with Anaheim’s safe atmosphere are attractive to the Japanese tourists,” said Marcy Imai of Nippon Travel Agency.
But getting more Japanese baseball fans to visit Anaheim may depend on Hasegawa’s arm. He posted a 10-5 record with nine saves and a 3.48 earned run average in 66 games last year.
With that record, Hasegawa became the team’s most dependable reliever last season. But he’s off to a tougher start this year: he has a 1-2 record with no saves and a 6.52 earned run average as of last week.
The soft-spoken Kobe native said he was embarrassed when the Japanese reporters mobbed the Angels’ Tempe, Ariz., training site in 1997.
His teammates asked him, “Shiggy, are you Michael Jackson?”
“In America, 20 reporters do not cover a rookie pitcher,” Hasegawa said.
Hasegawa lives in coastal Orange County with his wife and child. He said the county is safe and comfortable for the Japanese who accompany family members like him.
“In a way, OC is safer than Japan,” he said. n
