renaissances
Oct. 31st, 2010 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi Kawahara pitched tonight. One strikeout, one walk, one center fly, and then they switched him for a southpaw. Top of the seventh, second game of the Japan Series.
Jun'ichi Kawahara is my favorite baseball player. Not the best player I know of (that would probably still be Kyuji Fujikawa, even though he's had his ups and downs) or the player I've seen the most of (almost certainly the Tigers' own iron man, Tomoaki Kanemoto), but the one closest to my heart.
I first saw him pitch more than ten years ago, when he was an up and coming starter for the Giants. (I won't go through all the teams in the two Japanese leagues, but take it from me that the Yomiuri Giants are the Yankees of Japan, in most all senses.) I liked Kawahara then for the sense of modest seriousness he projected on the mound, the tall slight frame and the beautiful eyes. (Yeah, I'm a girl watching baseball. And your point is?)
Went away from Japan for a while, and came back in 2003 to find him the Giants' star closer. Until May of that year, that is, when what should have been a routine ninth inning, with a healthy lead against the Yakult Swallows, turned suddenly into an upset victory for the Swallows and an unprecedented setback to Kawahara's career. Well, everybody has bad days. The manager--I don't remember who it was that year--put him in against the Swallows again two days later and he did okay, but then only a couple of days after that it happened again. They left him on the mound long enough to dig himself a deep, deep hole, and then finally announced a change of pitchers. Kawahara all but ran off the diamond, the brim of his cap tugged low. While the guy after him was warming up, the camera panned over the bench (I was watching the game on television, not at the stadium). Kawahara was sitting very straight, with his trademark pokerface still on, and one silvery line from eye to jaw. "That is not sweat; it's tears," the announcer remarked somberly. What gave the announcer to know this I couldn't say, but I'm sure he was right.
After that Kawahara was never the same. It was supposed to be something to do with his pitching form, but it always looked to me as if he'd just plain lost confidence, as if he went out to the mound every time thinking "Oh, God, they're going to hit me again, it's going to happen again."
The Giants kept him around for a while and then traded him to Seibu in the off season, shunting him into the less popular Pacific League. Seibu tried using him as a starter; it didn't work that well, and then he got injured and missed a whole year, and then they decided they didn't need him any more.
So he spent a year unemployed. Any sensible guy in his thirties would go look for a job somewhere, wouldn't you think, but Kawahara apparently wasn't ready to give up baseball, or didn't want it to end that way, or... Anyway, he kept training on his own, and then at the end of the year, he took the open test for the Chunichi Dragons, and Ochiai, their caustic and independent manager, took a chance on him.
And did well by him. This brings us to last year, 2009, when Ochiai gave Kawahara a good long warming-up period in the farm team and then, halfway through the season, started using him on the top team as a middle reliever. He tended to pitch only a couple of outs at a time, often not even a whole inning, but he did well.
There was a game somewhere in there when, for whatever reason, they put him up for the "hero interview" at the end. "I, um, I never thought I'd, I'd stand up here again," he said. "I'm just happy."
This year, to my disappointment, Ochiai barely used him on the top team--but as soon as the Dragons hit the postseason, Kawahara came up. Taking advantage of his experience? Who knows. Here he is, though, pitching in the Japan Series, getting the outs, wearing his same old poker face but cracking a smile every now and then. I'm glad for him, and proud of him, and grateful to be reminded that sometimes there's something on the far side of failure.
Jun'ichi Kawahara is my favorite baseball player. Not the best player I know of (that would probably still be Kyuji Fujikawa, even though he's had his ups and downs) or the player I've seen the most of (almost certainly the Tigers' own iron man, Tomoaki Kanemoto), but the one closest to my heart.
I first saw him pitch more than ten years ago, when he was an up and coming starter for the Giants. (I won't go through all the teams in the two Japanese leagues, but take it from me that the Yomiuri Giants are the Yankees of Japan, in most all senses.) I liked Kawahara then for the sense of modest seriousness he projected on the mound, the tall slight frame and the beautiful eyes. (Yeah, I'm a girl watching baseball. And your point is?)
Went away from Japan for a while, and came back in 2003 to find him the Giants' star closer. Until May of that year, that is, when what should have been a routine ninth inning, with a healthy lead against the Yakult Swallows, turned suddenly into an upset victory for the Swallows and an unprecedented setback to Kawahara's career. Well, everybody has bad days. The manager--I don't remember who it was that year--put him in against the Swallows again two days later and he did okay, but then only a couple of days after that it happened again. They left him on the mound long enough to dig himself a deep, deep hole, and then finally announced a change of pitchers. Kawahara all but ran off the diamond, the brim of his cap tugged low. While the guy after him was warming up, the camera panned over the bench (I was watching the game on television, not at the stadium). Kawahara was sitting very straight, with his trademark pokerface still on, and one silvery line from eye to jaw. "That is not sweat; it's tears," the announcer remarked somberly. What gave the announcer to know this I couldn't say, but I'm sure he was right.
After that Kawahara was never the same. It was supposed to be something to do with his pitching form, but it always looked to me as if he'd just plain lost confidence, as if he went out to the mound every time thinking "Oh, God, they're going to hit me again, it's going to happen again."
The Giants kept him around for a while and then traded him to Seibu in the off season, shunting him into the less popular Pacific League. Seibu tried using him as a starter; it didn't work that well, and then he got injured and missed a whole year, and then they decided they didn't need him any more.
So he spent a year unemployed. Any sensible guy in his thirties would go look for a job somewhere, wouldn't you think, but Kawahara apparently wasn't ready to give up baseball, or didn't want it to end that way, or... Anyway, he kept training on his own, and then at the end of the year, he took the open test for the Chunichi Dragons, and Ochiai, their caustic and independent manager, took a chance on him.
And did well by him. This brings us to last year, 2009, when Ochiai gave Kawahara a good long warming-up period in the farm team and then, halfway through the season, started using him on the top team as a middle reliever. He tended to pitch only a couple of outs at a time, often not even a whole inning, but he did well.
There was a game somewhere in there when, for whatever reason, they put him up for the "hero interview" at the end. "I, um, I never thought I'd, I'd stand up here again," he said. "I'm just happy."
This year, to my disappointment, Ochiai barely used him on the top team--but as soon as the Dragons hit the postseason, Kawahara came up. Taking advantage of his experience? Who knows. Here he is, though, pitching in the Japan Series, getting the outs, wearing his same old poker face but cracking a smile every now and then. I'm glad for him, and proud of him, and grateful to be reminded that sometimes there's something on the far side of failure.
