SPORTS
Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
December 1, 2014
Asians in American sports w Asian Americans in world sports
Asian baseball victories
on both sides of the Pacific
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
he world of Asian baseball
saw two recent victories, one
in America, another in Japan,
demonstrating the growth of Asian
baseball talent on both sides of the
Pacific. The first win came in the
World Series, where both teams
featured Asian players, while the
other was the first Japanese victory
against an American team in more
than 20 years.
This year’s World Series saw the
upstart Kansas City Royals trade
blows with the San Francisco Giants
for seven dramatic games. It was just
the second World Series to go the
distance in the past dozen years, but
no matter which team won, Asian-
American sports fans would be
happy, since both teams featured
players or managers with eastern
roots.
The Giants continued their
alternate-year pattern of reaching
the championship game of Major
League Baseball (MLB); they won in
2010 and 2012 before this year’s
appearance. The Royals, on the other
hand, were in their first World Series
since 1985 and just the third in the
team’s 45-year history.
Instrumental to the Giants reach-
ing the World Series was Travis
Ishikawa, a fourth-generation Japa-
nese American and Seattle native.
Traded from Pittsburgh to San
Francisco earlier this season, Ishi-
kawa rejoined the team with whom
he had both made his major-league
debut and won his first World Series
in 2010.
Mostly used as a defensive first
baseman, Ishikawa stepped in to the
outfield when teammates Angel
Pagan and Michael Morse went down
to injuries. Playing left field for the
first time in the majors, Ishikawa
started three of the team’s four final
regular-season games, and then be-
came the starter for the postseason.
In 16 playoff games, Ishikawa hit
.256, with a home run and 7 RBI,
nearly all coming in a dramatic
National League Championship
Series. Ishikawa drove in three of San
Francisco’s five runs in Game 3, and
he hit the game-winning home run in
the series-clinching Game 5.
In the World Series, Ishikawa and
the Giants faced the Royals, who
featured some Asian talent of their
own, including a recent import from
Japan’s Nippon Professional Base-
ball (NPB), Norichika Aoki. A .329
hitter in Japan, Aoki has been less
productive, but remarkably consis-
tent, while playing in the U.S.,
hitting .288, .286, and .285 in his
three seasons. His excellent .353
on-base percentage placed him atop
the team’s batting order this year,
following his trade from the
Milwaukee Brewers.
Also contributing to Kansas City’s
success were two Pacific Northwest
Asian Americans: pitcher Jeremy
Guthrie, a third-generation Japanese
American, and bench coach Don
Wakamatsu, who became baseball’s
first Asian-American manager when
Seattle hired him as their skipper in
2009.
A journeyman pitcher who has
been with four different teams in his
10-year career, Guthrie has found his
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Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1
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Solution to
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Puzzle #23457 (Easy)
All solutions available at
<www.sudoku.com>.
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stride with Kansas City, where he
has a 33-26 record and a 3.92 ERA in
three seasons. Guthrie started Game
3 of the American League Champion-
ship Series before being called upon
for a crucial Game 7 World Series
start.
Before reaching the World Series,
Kansas City had won all eight of their
playoff games, four of them in extra
innings. The Giants proved a more
formidable opponent, however, and
the series momentum shifted back
and forth.
San Francisco blew out Kansas
City, 7-1, in Game 1, but the Royals
struck back with an almost-identical
7-2 blowout in Game 2. After the
Royals won a squeaker, 3-2, in Game
3, the Giants demoralized them with
back-to-back wins of 11-4 and 5-0.
But Kansas City returned home to
win 10-0 in Game 6 and set up a
climactic Game 7.
In that clinching game, Guthrie
gave up three runs before getting
pulled in the fourth inning, but the
Royals had scored two of their own,
keeping victory within sight. San
Francisco’s Madison Bumgarner,
however, came on to pitch just three
days after a complete-game master-
piece in Game 5, and he shut down
the Royals for the final five innings,
giving the victory to the Giants.
Despite the disappointing loss in
the World Series, Jeremy Guthrie
continued his season with a team of
MLB All-Stars who travelled to
Japan to revive a transpacific tradi-
ASIAN BASEBALL VICTORIES.
Former Hanshin Tigers leadoff man Norihiro
Akahoshi (top photo, right), laughs as Kansas
City Royals pitcher Jeremy Guthrie uses a
smartphone to take a picture of photographers
during his visit to the Japanese Baseball Hall of
Fame and Museum in Tokyo. In the middle
photo, Team Japan outfielders Sho Nakata,
center, and Yuki Yanagida, right, celebrate with
teammates after beating the MLB All-Stars in
Game 3 of their exhibition baseball series at the
Tokyo Dome in Tokyo. Japan defeated the U.S.
squad 4-0 with four pitchers in a no-hitter. Pic-
tured in the bottom photo is Guthrie, the starting
pitcher for Game 3 of the exhibition series, de-
livering a pitch in the first inning.
tion. From 1986 to 2006, a team of
MLB All-Stars and NPB All-Stars
had faced off in a biannual series that
was discontinued when the World
Baseball Classic began.
The NPB squad had won just one of
those 10 series, way back in 1990, but
they were ready for this revival with a
twist on their usual lineup. Rather
than fielding an NPB All-Star squad,
Japan featured its national team, the
Samurai Blue. Although many of its
players would have also appeared on
an NPB All-Star squad, the Samurai
Blue had the advantage of team
harmony, having played together
many times in preparation for the
World Baseball Classic.
The U.S. team, on the other hand,
had only practiced together a few
times, and the lack of chemistry
showed. High-powered hitters like
Robinson Cano, Evan Longoria,
Yasiel Puig, and José Altuve could
only muster four runs in the first
three games, while their Japanese
counterparts scored 14 runs, winning
all three games.
Even more surprisingly, the
Samurai Blue pitchers held the MLB
All-Stars hitless in the third game,
only the second no-hitter ever in the
history of the series and the first by a
Japanese team. Although the MLB
squad rebounded to win the final two
games, Japan won the series, 3-2,
once again proving the increasingly
competitive level of baseball talent in
the east.