6: January, 2020

The blessing of working in baseball is that it doesn’t give you a lot of time to dwell on the recent past. The calendar marches relentlessly on, and you have new tasks, new goals to attend to. With the higher-ups attending the winter meetings, the office was a little quieter, though we all felt this to be a sort of calm before the storm. I was stretching my legs in the hall when I met with Daisuke Wakabayashi coming the other way, just putting his phone in his pocket. He looked up at me. “It’s a girl,” he said, “Midori.” Yasuhiko Otomo’s wife was expecting. Otomo is an analyst who splits his time between baseball operations and scouting.

I nodded at Wakabayashi. “Good for Otomo,” I said.

“That means that I’ve got an extra plane ticket,” he told me. Otomo and he were to take a trip to look in on our players in winter ball, and also do some scouting of other prospects. “Can you be packed by four?”

I was taken aback by this. Wakabayashi has long been on me about getting out from behind the desk and seeing players in the flesh. “Broaden my skill set,” is how he put it. I looked down at my watch, “yes, I can be ready. I’ll head home and meet you at the airport?” It felt a little like playing hooky, but what the heck.

We arranged to meet up later. I grabbed a cab and started home to pack. I needed to send Makiko (the girl from from the party) a text message postponing our lunch meeting/date/appointment.

Me: Something has come up at work. I’ll be leaving town this afternoon. Are you free next Tuesday?

Makiko: Are you having a baseball emergency? Seriously? Next Tuesday will be fine. You are definitely paying, though.

 The Shisa had two players in winter ball, both pitchers. Depending on how things go with the big league rotation, these two could be playing for the Shisa this year or the next. Kokei Yamashita, whom Naha acquired in the contraction draft, is our best prospect. Isei Yamaguchi, the other pitcher, recently lost his father and the front office weren’t sure if winter ball would be a good idea or not, but Yamaguchi insisted on it. Wakabayashi was here in part to check in on their progress.

Wakabayashi never worked in the Nippon League. After attending college in the U.S., he began his career in the major leagues with the Expos, back in 1988, and the heartbreak happening in Japan is old hat for him. He’s seen it before. After the Expos slinked off in the middle of the night for Miami, Wakabayashi relocated to Memphis in 2004, where he became a regional scout for the Padres. What went down in Montreal never really sat well with him. After just two years with San Diego he left baseball for a while when the MLB folded. He came to Naha after the club was formed as part of the new LRS. “Teams move and leagues fold,” he told me. “This has all happened before, and it will happen again.” The Mister Slimeball kerfuffle hasn’t impressed Wakabayashi much. “I worked for Jeffrey Loria,” he will say, as if no further explanation were necessary.

The Shisa head scout brings with him a gray, three-ring binder, like the one you might have carried around in school. He spends his time comparing the work of other scouts with his own observations of players he sees. One outfielder comes up to bat and catches Wakabayashi’s eye.

“Now, what about this one here?” he asked me, tapping a pencil on his knee. “Anything stand out?”

I go through a mental checklist. His stance looks normal. His swing is short (‘compact’, the scouts would say), and his timing seems to be alright as he fouls off an outside pitch. I shake my head. “Nothing jumps out at me.”

“No gloves,” he says.

I look, and notice that he is indeed swinging the bat barehanded. “No gloves? That’s it? Is that important?”

“You hardly see it anymore. Not with these young kids. You know, Moises Alou didn’t wear any batting gloves. He urinated on his hands,” said Wakabayashi, referring to one of the former Expo players.

“What? How does that follow?” I asked.

“He said it toughened his skin, so he could swing the bat without gloves. You know it’s funny, because his dad never did it. You could shake Felipe’s hand without fear.”

“That sounds . . . unhygienic.”

“Bah. Urine’s sterile, if malodorous.”

“Should I conclude that this fellow urinates on his hands as well?”

“I doubt it. That whole peeing on the hands thing is complete bunk. Softens them, if anything. But then again, ballplayers are a superstitious lot, and folk remedies do die hard.” Wakabayashi turned to the batter. “Urine or not, the kid can work a count. Got a nice square stance, too. Moises looked like somebody broke his right knee when he stood in. Painful to look at. Made it work, though.” He scribbled some notes in his binder.

What, exactly, am I meant to be learning?