“The Evas Treated Me like a Piece of Garbage,” Says Arsenal Pitcher
By Konosuke Kiyomizu, Kure Ledger
9/2/2013: Nagoya, Japan – It wasn’t a save situation, but it was the final out, and for Kiyoshi Shinohara, nailing the door shut in Sunday’s 8-1 Arsenal victory at Genesis Park was sweeter than daifuku.
“Was I thinking about it?” Shinohara rhetorically asked reporters after the game. “Was I thinking about it?! How could I not? The Evas treated me like a piece of garbage. Who would forget that so easily?”
Signed on August 1 for $1,000,000, Shinohara was added to the roster and given no more than a single appearance in the Shin Seiki Evas bullpen, entering a crucial Aug. 11 game at Neo-Tokyo in the top of the 6th. After getting Yoshi Suzuki to fly out and yielding a single to Takahiro Yoshida, the Nishio native gave up a 388 ft., 3-run blast off the bat of catcher Noritada Ogawa. The Evas would go on to lose the game 7-5. For the six days that followed, Shinohara failed to see game action for the Evas, and on August 18, he was designated for assignment.
“’Shock’ would be one word I might use,” he said. “I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t my best on August 11th. I entered a close game, put a runner on and gave up a big fly ball to put the team further in a hole. But for [expletive] sake, can I have some time to work out the [expletive] kinks? I hadn’t pitched since late January. Can I have a few days to shake off the [expletive] rust?! You give me a million dollars one day, put me in a game the next day and expect nothing but total domination? Give me a [expletive] break.”
Shinohara had last pitched for the Moca Segadoras de Café in the Liga Dominicana de Béisbol Invernal, helping lead the team to a championship in the Serie de Dominicana Final. According to Shinohara, he’d been in training after taking a couple months off and had been looking to sign with an LRS team during the 2nd half of the 2013 season. Things had gone according to plan, until the surprise DFA.
“I can’t tell you how thankful I am to the Kure Arsenal organization for giving me proper chance. We’re seven games behind the Evas, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere other than where I am today. I told my wife this morning; that, really, things couldn’t have worked out any better. I’d rather play for an organization with character than some faceless money machine like the Evas. Over there, you walk in the clubhouse and you’re just another millionaire. You’re just another cog and you might bump into another millionaire who’s being shown the door while you’re walking in. But rest assured, if you’re playing for the Evas, you’ll be heartlessly shown the door soon enough, and then you’ll be the millionaire getting bumped into by another unknowing millionaire who’s just arrived to take your place. No thanks. Good riddance. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight.”
Currently the Arsenal sit in third place behind the 1st-place Evas and the 2nd-place Neo-Tokyo Akira with a month and a half to play. Their two best players, Akihito Ichihara and Tomiji Watanabe, are shelved by injuries. Still, Shinohara is optimistic Kure can overcome the odds and snag a playoff spot.
“Well, from what I’ve seen just during my short stay, this team can do just about anything. It was the same thing last year – lost three solid pitchers within a week and the team still takes it to the last game of the season. This is a small budget team. The payroll is 1/3rd of the Evas, but look at the season series. It’s tied 9-9. That’s the thing about money. The Evas think they can just throw money at all their problems. `Oh, here’s a million, there’s a million.’ Guess what? The Evas have forgotten there’s a human element to this game. They’ve forgotten these are people with wives and children that go to school, and fans that spend the money that makes the LRS go round. Hey, that’s okay. At the end of the day, money doesn’t win championships, and the Evas, post-manager Morita, are a walking, talking example of that.”
Current Kure manager Toyokazu Morita led the Evas to its 2007 Neo-Tokyo Cup win, the team’s lone appearance in the final despite having made the playoffs in every succeeding year. After hearing Shinohara’s comments about the Evas, Morita declined to comment when asked if he shared any of his pitchers opinions about the Evas organization.
“Oh, I don’t think we need to get into that,” he said, “I had a nice run at Genesis Park and I’ll always be thankful to the fans that came out and supported us at that time. We had a nice squad… won a championship, won the division crown the following season, made the playoffs again in 2009, and then they fired me on November 3, 2009, a couple weeks after the playoffs. That’s all there was to it and it’s all water under the bridge now. It was a decision they made and I’m very happy to be here managing the Kure Arsenal and having some success.”
When asked if he agreed with Shinohara’s comment that the Evas “throw money around like a drunk billionaire“, Morita held up his hand and said, “No, no, no. No need to go there, folks. The Evas have a lot of money; everyone knows that. More than any other team in the league. By far. Do they have an easier road than other teams? Sure they do. Should they win the championship every year going away? Probably. You might say that. It’s not so much that they outspend everyone when it comes to signing players; it’s that they can afford to absorb their mistakes. I think they felt they were doing that by waiving Shinohara after one bad inning. But our people here at Kure think they’re wrong, and that’s why we grabbed him when we could, and that’s why we think he’s going to be a big contributor on this ballclub down the stretch.”
