The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

The Other Japan

(January 2020)

 

My calendar solved my immediate problem of personal safety. I was due to be in Okinawa the next day to speak with Iyou Seigyoki, the reclusive owner of the Naha Shisa.  Seigyoki had asked for the questions in advance, and cleared an hour of his time for me. Given his reputation as a Howard Hughes clone, I didn’t want to waste it. So I avoided the whole issue of the Ruskies by hopping on my plane that then took a little run over the ocean to the south and the west.

The only time I had ever heard of Okinawa before the whole PEBA/LRS merger business was when we studied World War II in high school.  Even then it was just a distant, ghostly kinda name.  I knew it was an island.  I knew soldiers had stormed the beaches. I envisioned it as a flat piece of coral sand out in the middle of nowhere. In other words, either I had forgotten the truth, or my classwork was never very good to start with. My pre-trip research uncovered details of that whole battle. It was apparently a horrific thing, some 90,000 soldiers died there–roughly 75% of them Japanese.  What isn’t often mentioned among all the technical details and the stories of soldierly heroism is that as many as 150,000 civilians also died as a result of that one battle.

That’s a lot of freakin’ people.

Until I really spent time learning about the place, I admit to the guilt of having thought about the whole thing like it was just one big movie.

We arrived at the airport, flying over a land of trees and cane fields, before landing at just past seven o’clock.  I had a hotel at the airport–so no problems there. I used the evening to review the team’s situation.

As a result of the MSB fraud, the LRS had undergone a contraction process, shrinking from the traditional twelve teams, down to only eight.  These eight teams will play one final season as a Japanese centric league before being absorbed into to the PEBA.  Three of the existing organizations–Edo, Kawaguchi, and Fushigi Yugi–will physically relocate to various locations across the globe.  Naha will stay where they are.

League officials are selling this whole merger bigtime, of course, and they probably have a leg to stand on. The television deal for rights to broadcast the first real international baseball operations alone was eye-boggling, and every team in the leagues are reporting bumps in pre-season ticket sales.  But Naha, the capital city in the Okinawa prefecture, is a different place than most.

Their fans are loyal, dedicated, and fiercely protective of their home.

The front office has a similar reputation, as I witnessed by the fact that General Manager Morris Ragland declined my invitation to speak to him, saying only that he would not give interviews until the official investigation was complete.

He has been a busy man, though.

Like most of the remaining eight teams, Naha recently participated in a contraction draft, which basically served to administer the coup de grace to the four dead teams, and split up their assets.  Since then, he signed free agent outfielder Tadamichi Sato to a three season, $12M deal, and made deals that brought slick-fielding shortstop António Pérez and outfielder António Morales to the team, handing both additional three-season extensions for what, in Japanese baseball, would be considered pricey, but which by PEBA standards could be quite nice.  Less than a week ago, he made a similar move, re-upping catcher Yo Horiuchi  for three seasons at just shy of $3M each.

These moves help define the team for me–they are shrewd deals made under the radar screen of most of the baseball world, the kind of deals a group that makes their home on an isolated set of islands in the middle of a vast ocean can get away with making.

I woke up the next morning feeling better. I got breakfast, and then the concierge helped me get a cab to take me to the corporate headquarters of the Nyu Gijutsu Toiretta group, where the reclusive Mr. Seigyoki holds his office.

I paid the cabbie, and asked him to come back in one hour, then I turned to look at the office.  I found I was suddenly nervous about this meeting.  Sure, I knew how unusual the opportunity to talk to this man was, but until then I felt that more as a badge of honor for me–that Mr. Seigyoki understood I was working on something that was important.  But standing there before this tower that rose into the clear sky with its monolithic strength made me feel suddenly quite small. My hands actually shook.

I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and walked into the glass-encased foyer of the building.

The entry was comfortable, and open. Lit by natural light from the ring of glass walls on the exterior.  The central wall behind the front desk was a natural wood surface polished to a golden-brown glow. Ceiling-high photos of toilets (which the company designs and manufactures) grace panels to each side of the front desk, and the emblem of the Naha Shisa is embossed several times over on the pedestal that serves as the actual front desk.

Three young people were behind the counter, each dressed impeccably.

I walked to the young woman in the center. To say she is put together in a professional manner would be an understatement. Her business suit looks like it had never wrinkled in its entire existence, as does her skin, though her smile is breezy and easy.  She might be twenty-two or twenty-three years old, but her presence is worldly. And she has a slight scent that is cloudlike.

“Good day,” Mr. Neal,” she said before I introduce myself.

“Good morning,” I replied.

She reached under the desk and retrieved a package.

“Here you are,” she said as she handed it to me.

It was a thick manila envelope, the flap crisply folded over and sealed.

“What is this?”

Her eyes betrayed only a hint of confusion before she responded. “It is your interview, Mr. Neal.”

“My … ” I weighed it in my hand and I could envision a stack of paper. I looked at the woman and realized her demeanor said she thought I was here as a courier of some kind.  “No.  I’m not a delivery man.  I’m here to see Mr. Seigyoki.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Neal. I’m afraid that is not possible. Mr. Seigyoki does not grant personal interviews.”

“But I have an appointment.”

“Yes, Mr. Neal. You have an appointment to pick up your interview.” Another young person came to stand beside her as she spoke, and she smiled at him.

The two stood there, looking at me, and the truth dawned that I would not be seeing the owner of the Naha Shisa anytime soon.  The envelop burned in my hand.

“I see,” I said, feeling deeply embarrassed.  “Thank you for your time.” I motioned to a series of leather chairs along the doorway.  “Do you mind if I sit here for awhile to read it?”

“Go right ahead, Mr. Neal. Could I get you some tea?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Tea would be great.”

 

#

 

I sat down and opened the envelope. The papers were crisp and thick sheets of bleached rice paper. The type was old courier, and it was clear it had been made on a manual typewriter.  I envisioned the old man doing his own typing.

My eyes scan the pages, skipping here and there over passages to find things that felt important in the moment. I feel like Indiana Jones unearthing a lost treasure.

 

Question: How have your fans been taking the whole process? Are they worried? Happy?

Answer: … more than in the main islands, the local team is more important than the league. There is still a sense of Okinawa being separate from Japan, so they aren’t as concerned about national pride. they are happy to have a team. They will adjust to the Americanization of the game better than most, I feel.

Question: How do you view the state of baseball as a whole?

Answer: … America is coming to the realization that it is not necessarily the center of the baseball universe …

Question: What were your first thoughts about the scandal?

Answer: … I knew our club was an innocent party … I worried about how far this contagion might have spread. How many teams were a part of it?

Question: Were you ever really worried that the LRS was done for?

Answer: Not until the decision was made to kill it, no. I felt they could have recovered with 8 teams, though I think the league offices would have needed purging.

 

#

 

I stopped here and looked out the window-walls at traffic that moved silently across the city streets.  These were not the words of a man who saw the merger in the same triumphant notes that the league office saw them.  These were words of a man who saw the situation as an unfortunate compromise of the moment.

I sipped my tea. It was still tasty, though it had grown cold.

Why was he giving this to me?

I flipped a page and read on.

 

#

 

Question: So, what were your impressions of this Charlier Cooper character, or whatever his name was? Did you have any dealing with him?

Answer: … I had no contact with anyone from the teams in question.

Question: What are your thoughts and feelings about the merger with the PEBA, and how the whole thing went down?

Answer:  … PEBA has acted in its own best interest. It would be unreasonable of me to ask it to act differently. And I am happy the expansion happened, but wish it had not been at the expense of Japanese teams. There were 12 Japanese professional baseball teams in 2019, and in 2021 there will be 5. Japanese fans deserved better than this.

Question: How does that make you feel?

Answer: This is disappointing, but I can see how some might conclude that the LRS had proved incapable of policing itself.

Question: As a stakeholder in the whole of baseball, what are your biggest concerns?

Answer: … The DH is not baseball. If I had to point to MLB’s largest failing, it would be the American League’s introduction of the DH in 1973.

Question: Where will the league be 5 years from now? 10 years?

Answer: … The demise of the LRS (I think the term ‘merger’ is a complete misnomer) has left a vacuum in Japan that some wise owner or future owner will fill.

 

#

 

The last pages had a few scatterings of bits I thought I might be able to use, but that was the bulk of it. I turned to the last page and saw Mr. Seigyko had left a block of text out on its own. It read:

 

People tend to forget how resilient this game is. Scandal can’t kill it. Astroturf couldn’t kill it. The designated hitter couldn’t kill it. Steroids couldn’t kill it. Human greed can’t even kill it. Baseball outlived the MLB, it outlived the Nippon League, it outlived the LRS, and it will outlive the PEBA, if need be.

 

#

 

“People tend to forget how resilient this game is …”

I was still thinking about that when the cabbie came a few minutes later, and I packed up my stuff and returned my empty cup to the front desk.

I got into the car, and looked out at the people of Naha as we drove through the city. I thought about those words Mr. Seigyoki had used, words written by an old man sitting at the top of a tall building that was located on an island out in the middle of Pacific Ocean.

Though I had been shut out of an actual meeting, I wasn’t so dumb as to realize what a scoop I had been given. These were words of a man pragmatic enough to know time marches forward, but one who held a deep sorrow for past expectation that did not come to fruition. The interview would go viral if I did it right.

Of all those words he had given me, though, only one kept echoing in my mind at that moment.

It was a word that seemed to leak out of every pore of this city, a word that rode along with every man and woman I saw as the cab passed them by. It was a word that came in the way the beachy sand seemed to ride up over the asphalt men had laid down over it.

I was tired.

And I was broken. I could finally admit that here, as I stood alone on Okinawa. The fact that I had come to Japan in the first place was half an admission that I didn’t know who I really was.

But, life is strange like this.

Strange in that here I was holding one of the more valuable pieces of paper in my hand that I have ever had, an “interview” with an icon of Japanese baseball that I knew would make a major splash somewhere.  And suddenly all I could think of was a word that I found I needed to hear more than anything else.

That word was …

Resilient.