Homu-Ran!

(February 2020)

The calendar has flipped again, and Spring Training is on the horizon. DK is talking baseball while we eat the rice and spinach concoction he made for dinner–a treat that is surprisingly yummy, if I can be forgiven for using that word.

Morihiro Nakamura (or Homu-Ran!, as DK calls him … and, yes, you can hear the exclamation point at the end of the nickname whenever DK uses it.), is 35 years old and plays left field for the Edo Battousia. It is important to DK this evening that I agree Homu-Ran! is the equal of any US hitter in existence today. DK has been sipping beer throughout the entire dinning process and his tongue is a little loose, but I think there are a lot of conversations like this one happening all over Japan. Fans are interested, fans want to move on. And in particular, I think this fan is actually worried about how his ballclub will fare in competition at the PEBA level, though DK would never admit to that in a bazillion lifetimes.

I’m old enough now to know these comparisons are silly in some ways. The truth will come out soon enough, after all. But I’m feeling full enough and warm enough, and just the right amount of exhaustion to decide to goad him on, and after awhile I remember how much fun it used to be to sit around with a bunch of guys and just be a fan.

“Homu-Ran! has four hundred and two-two dingers in his lifetime,” DK said. “But to compare you must take Japanese schedule into account.”

“I think you have to take more into account than their games played,” I argued. “There’s quality of pitching and the tiny parks the Japanese leagues use.”

“Bah! Pitchers just as good, too.”

“That’s just crazy-talk,” I said.

“Crazy-talk!” DK replied, obviously liking the phrase.

Nakamura is the League of the Rising Sun’s all-time home run leader at 422 career dingers. DK’s makes it painstakingly clear that to compare players, you need to account for differences in the number of games each league plays.

“So Homu-Ran would have 445 by now if he played in PEBA all career.”

“Nah,” I said. “He would have maybe 200.”

I think DK is going to have apoplexy.

“If Homu-Ran play in PEBA all his life,” DK said, punctuating his conversation with his glistening chopsticks, “he is #2 home run king behind only Morimoto san. Who is Japanese also!”

“Morimoto is nearly washed up, though,” I egged him on. “He might not be able to keep his job for long.”

He laughed. “That’s crazy-talk!”

“It’s straight up,” I said.

“Yes, washed up Japanese batter hits more than any US hitter.”

He had me there.

“You are fuller and fuller of Crazy-talk,” he said. “But Homu-Ran! will lead us to the championship!”

We go on like this for much of the night, comparing players, making points. I don’t touch on the point that his team will be moving to Cuba at the end of this season, and he doesn’t bring it up. Fans are like that, I guess. True fans, anyway, and DK is nothing if not a true fan. When we retire for the evening, I find myself crawling into bed more relaxed and ready for the world than I can remember being in a very long time.

It was nice, I thought to myself as I drifted to sleep, to be talking about real baseball again.