The Ongoing Diary of Casey Neal

Sometimes it Sucks to be at Work

(March 2020)

“Can you get off work tomorrow?” I asked DK before I went to bed.

Now that the Ruskies seemed to be essentially on our side, I didn’t really need to stay at DKs, but he seemed to like it and it was fine enough and the price was most definitely right. So that’s where I figured I would bunk until the time came that either I was ready to go home, or I was kicked out.

“Why I need to do that?” he said.

“Thought you might like to come with me tomorrow.”

“Psst,” he hissed. “And sit through boring interview?”

“No problem,” I gave the most blatantly nonchalant shrug I could.

“Where you go?” DK said, on cue better than if I had written the script.

“Ah, nowhere special. Gonna drive out to Kyoto someplace.”

DL smiled.

“You see Battousai?”

I gave as cheesy of a Duluthian smile as I could.

“I call.  See if I get off.”

#

When you say Kyoto to most people around the world today, they think of climate change and the Kyoto Agreement.  But the city has a much longer history and holds a sacred place deep in the heart of many Japanese.  It was, at one time, the largest city in the country, and was quite arguably the cultural center of the world in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Not, I suppose, that this matters too much today.

Today is about baseball, which I’ve brought DK along to see, and about meeting with Patrick Hildreth, the man who sits in the Battousai GM’s chair.

Despite the tumultuous times round them, the Edo club has not made to many splashy moves this off-season.  In fact, Hildreth made more headlines this off-season for his personal joy ride into space than he did from his participation in the winter process–at least that’s the story you’ll hear from Battousai fans who are not so enamoured of the club’s agreement to move to Cuba next season (where PEBA officials see a new pile of untapped money).

DK, I can tell, is torn. He loves his Edo Battousai as deeply than any sports fan has loved any team. And he’s always felt a kinship from afar for the club’s front office.  So, the fact is that he’s in denial at some level.  He’s ignoring the move, acting as if it doesn’t exist.

We don’t even talk about it on the trip.

Instead, we listen to music, and DK plays air drums while I drive.

Edo will send Kenkichi ‘Virus’ Gato, to the mound as they host Naha in a late afternoon game.  Gato is entering his 8th season with Edo.  DK says he’s basically a fastball/cuveball kind of guy, but can throw a changeup in there every now and again.  He’s started his entire career, doing well enough, I guess, with a career record around .500.  “He’ll need a third pitch to deal with PEBA guys,” I tell DK.

“Bah!” DK replied.  “Japanese pitchers throw the kitchen sink at PEBA hitters.  They duck walk back to bench.”

I laugh and keep driving.

When we got there, I left DK in his seat to join Hildreth.

“Can I at least meet him?” DK asked.

“When we’re done,” I told him, “I’ll ask him if he would mind.”

DK smiled as if it was a done deal.

#

Patrick Hildreth is known as a bit of an eccentric among LRS owners (though that may be like saying that Axyl Rose was known as a bit of a partier among old rock stars.  As I noted above, he spent part of his off-season in earth orbit, and came into the league back in the old days after a mysterious “incident” in Burma.  He is an enigma in that he seems to take very little as directly serious, yet still plays a pretty straight game. He talks without much accent, but merely through word choice you get this jovial vibe of aristocracy about him.  When I asked him what his first thoughts were about the scandal, for example, his response was a quippy “I was thinking: my God, I hope we don’t burn up on re-entry.”  Then he collected himself and said that when he heard the truth “even though the scope of it all was astounding, it all suddenly kind of made sense.”

He was, let’s say, no big fan of the Charlie Coopers.

“He rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning,” Hildreth said.  “You know, just a gut feeling really.”

We held the interview in seats directly behind home plate, and Hildreth was sipping white wine and eating chips with whipped cheese dip.  It was 78 degrees out by the left-field thermometer, and the sky was clear.  It was, admittedly, a thoroughly delightful time.

Sometimes it just sucks to be at work.

“I mean, I was always quite guarded when dealing with him in his first incarnation,” Hildreth continued on after a sip of wine. “We had very different valuations of players which probably made us both feel like the other side was asking for too much. But he was very pushy and very active.  I like to breath a little, you know?”

“So he was tough to work with?” I asked.

And he gave this big Kevin Klein kind of laugh.

“Reminded me a lot of Vail and Kierstead actually. To be fair Kevin and Mark were always willing to explore ideas more deeply and have a proven track record to their methods.  They aren’t tough to work with, so much as they always test the boundaries.”

I had waited for the right time to hit him with the next question, which had actually come from friends of DK.

“I hear rumors you were considering leaving the LRS because of it all.”

Hildreth paused and stared at me with mock respect.

“My, my Mr. Neal, but aren’t you good?”

“So it’s true?”

“Life is too short to work in places that annoy you.”

“That’s not a direct answer.”

He smiled as 31-year-old Takeshi Hayashi drove in a go-ahead run in the bottom of the third.  “I love life, Mr. Neal. And we’re ahead 2-1.”

We watched the game for a bit after that.

It would remain close until the Battousai would turn a walk and four singles into three runs, and never look back.  Edo will win 6-3 before it’s all done.

It strikes me, as we’re sitting there watching, that this Edo team is a direct stand-in for what Patrick Hildreth earlier explained for me was the reason baseball is so important in Japan. “Teamwork. The game is a metaphor for Japanese society and the Samurai spirit. It is at once an homage to the past and present.”  The Battousai have been a benchmark of Japanese baseball’s past, and at their core will represent the Japanese spirit as it merges into the west. Time shifts.  Second by second, it shifts, and for a moment I’ think back to when I first got on the airplane to come to Japan, thinking about second chances and how you never really run out of them until you die.

I admit that I looked out over stand for a bit, hoping that maybe I could find a frumpy man in a beard and a Hawaiian shirt.  To no avail, though.

“Did you ever get the sense that all these people you were dealing with–in Hyakujuu, Kure, Seoul and Kawaguchi and maybe even in the US–were actually the same guy?”

Hildreth scratched his chin.

“Nah.  Not at a conscious level. It did seem unfortunate that we suddenly were getting a lot of guys who were fast and loose traders.”

“Kevin Vail recently told me he thought the league was it’s own worst enemy in that way. Would you agree?”

“Sure.  Makes sense.  As a group we are all pretty straight and forthright guys, you know?  Us GMs herein Japan.  We all want to win, and we’re willing to do some pretty crazy things to do it.  But this sort of nonsense was beyond what any of us could envision.”

Then the game is over, and the sun is falling.

I look at Patrick Hildreth.

“Thanks for a very enjoyable afternoon,” I say.

He shakes my hand with a solid grip that suggests he really means it.

“Anytime.”

“Could I ask a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got a friend who is a total die-hard Battousai follower. Could you–“

“Not a problem at all.  Where is he?”

I look down the left field line and wave at him.

DK comes on the run, or at least a very fast walk.

“I really appreciate this.”

“Seriously, not a problem.”

When DK gets here he’s all out of breath.  But he does a quick bow and they talk for a bit.  DK asks how Herb Martin is doing, and Hildreth tells him the team thinks he’s ready to go now he looks so good.  And he asks two or three more questions before getting to his last one.

“Why, if you don’t mind? Why move to Cuba?”

Hildreth looks DK in the eye and tells him he’s sorry that the team’s moving, and that he has appreciated all his support.  “The money is there, though, DK.  I can’t deny that.  You can still follow us, though, you know?  Like the monk Yoshida Kenkō said, Blossoms are scattered by the wind and the wind cares nothing, but the blossoms of the heart no wind can touch. The Battousia will always be our foundation.

With that he says his goodbye and leaves us there as the sun sets.

DK watches him go, shielding his eyes against the sun.

“What a pile of bull,” he says.

Then we leave.