SPORTS / U.S.A.
March 18, 2019
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Man who lived in Asia refugee
camp now behind altar in Mississippi
VICKSBURG, Miss. (AP) — A man who was living in a
refugee camp in the Philippines more than 20 years ago is
now the pastor at a Catholic church in Mississippi.
The Vicksburg Post reported that the Rev. Joseph
Nguyen was installed as the 18th pastor of St. Mary’s
Catholic Church in Vicksburg.
In 1991, the Vietnam native was waiting at the refugee
camp with family members to come to the U.S. Now,
Diocese of Jackson Bishop Joseph Kopacz has placed him
to succeed the retired Rev. Malcolm O’Leary.
Nguyen says he was inspired to enter the priesthood by
the dedication to serve others shown by two missionary
priests at the camp.
Nguyen arrived stateside in 1993. He was ordained in
2008, and came to St. Mary’s in September. It’s his first
pastor assignment.
q
Rule to prevent illegal sales of
baby eels approved in Maine
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — New controls are coming to
Maine’s valuable baby eel fishery this season.
A state panel approved new requirements for the
exportation of baby eels, called elvers. The Maine
Department of Marine Resources wants to add a
requirement that baby eel exporters notify the Maine
Marine Patrol 48 hours before preparing to pack and ship
the eels. The officer will then witness the packing.
The new rule is designed to deter illegal sales of the
valuable fish. Elvers are almost always worth more than
$1,000 per pound at docks. They’re then sold to Asian
aquaculture companies so they can be raised to maturity
for use as food.
Department of Marine Resources commissioner Patrick
Keliher is expected to sign off on the changes before the
elver fishing season begins March 22.
q
Filipino teachers return to Baltimore
classrooms after visas extended
BALTIMORE (AP) — Most of the two dozen Filipino
teachers who had to leave Baltimore at the end of the last
school year because of expiring visas have returned to
their classrooms.
Baltimore City Schools chief human capital officer
Jeremy Grant-Skinner told The Baltimore Sun that the
district was committed to bringing the veteran educators
back because of the value they brought to a school system
beset by high teacher turnover.
Most of the teachers worked in tough-to-fill math,
science, and special-education positions, and were hired
through a foreign teacher recruitment effort in the late
2000s to compensate for a lack of U.S.-born teachers.
The district worked with an immigration firm to secure
visa extensions and will now try to help the teachers
establish permanent residency. One case has yet to be
settled.
q
Permanent daylight savings in Oregon?
“Hell yes,” says governor Brown
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon governor Kate Brown has
endorsed a growing movement to make daylight savings
time permanent.
When asked if she was in favor of a proposal to abolish
the yearly time shift, the Democrat told reporters “Hell
yes!”
“I think everyone’s done with the time change,” she
added.
Washington and California are also considering
shifting to permanent daylight savings time. Florida
became the first state to approve such a change.
Any state law extending daylight savings time would
have to be approved by congress.
Brown noted that this was one of the few issues where
she agrees with President Donald Trump. The president
tweeted earlier this month that daylight savings time
year-round would be “O.K. with me!”
ICHIROMANIA. Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners bats during the third inning of a spring training baseball game against the Oakland Athletics
in Peoria, Arizona. Jerry Dipoto’s first introduction to the world of Ichiro was only a small taste compared to what the Seattle Mariners are about to
experience when they open the season in Tokyo with a pair of games against Oakland. The most decorated player ever to export his talents from Japan
to the major leagues is returning home for what could be a farewell to his Hall of Fame career on both sides of the Pacific. His teammates can’t wait.
(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
Ichiromania returns to Japan:
Will he retire, or won’t he?
By Stephen Wade
AP Sports Writer
OKYO — There’s an adage in Japanese that
translates easily to English.
Deru kugi wa utareru.
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
Ichiro Suzuki has been the nail in a culture that values
formality, caution, and deference to authority. Doing it his
way, he’s developed into Japan’s greatest baseball player
and arguably its best athlete.
“At such a young age he already had his own mind,” said
Keizo Konishi, a reporter with the Japanese news agency
Kyodo. “The older generation tells young people what they
should do. Particularly in the structured baseball world.”
Ichiro has played 2,651 major league games since
joining the Seattle Mariners in 2001. Konishi has seen
almost every one; from Seattle to New York, then to
Miami, and back to Seattle. Add on hundreds before that
with the Orix BlueWave.
The odyssey returns him to Japan where Ichiro is
expected to play in a two-game series when the Mariners
and the Oakland A’s open the season March 20-21 at the
Tokyo Dome.
Afterward, who knows? Some Japanese want the
45-year-old to finally retire, and the Mariners have said
they want to go with youth.
One thing is certain in Tokyo: Ichiromania rules.
He’s a source of national pride; the first position player
to make it big in the majors, countering the perception
that the country produced only pitchers, and players like
Ichiro were too small. He’s revered for breaking through,
for his fashion sense, and his zen-like training. He’ll be the
first Japanese player inducted into the Baseball Hall of
Fame, almost surely on the first ballot.
He can also be aloof and arrogant, known to disdain
interviews, and often evasive with a habit of turning his
back on reporters and disparaging questions he doesn’t
like. Japanese journalists have often been targets, and
organizers say just over 1,000 are accredited for the two
games.
“On so many occasions he’s given me very interesting
answers,” Konishi said in an interview with The
Associated Press. “But he can give me a hard time. He
tries for perfect preparation. So he also requires me to be
perfect, which is not easy.”
The baseball editor at Kyodo, Takashi Yamakawa,
described two Ichiros.
“He’s acting, I think. He’s playing Ichiro,” Yamakawa
said. “There are two different aspects. There’s the very
normal, polite Japanese man. And there’s maybe the real
Ichiro breaking the rules, fighting for himself. He’s always
thinking in a different way.”
If Ichiro is the seldom-bending nail, his father,
Nobuyuki, was the hammer who put his son through
rigorous, well-documented daily baseball training from
age seven.
“It bordered on hazing and I suffered a lot. But I also
couldn’t say no to him,” American Robert Whiting quoted
Ichiro saying in his book The Samurai Way of Baseball.
T
The book was first sold under the title The Meaning of
Ichiro.
Whiting points out that Ichiro means “most cheerful
boy” in Japanese. He writes he “was not always so cheerful
about practicing, especially during the harsh winter days
of central Japan, when his fingers grew so numb from the
frigid air that he could not button his shirt.”
Whiting has spent much of his life in Japan writing
about baseball and Japanese culture. He speculated that
because of World War II and the American occupation,
Japan developed an inferiority complex in relation to the
United States. Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics and the booming
economy of the 1970s and ’80s remedied much of that, and
Ichiro and pitcher Hideo Nomo further boosted morale.
“The athletic field has a different kind of symbolism,”
Whiting said in an interview with The AP. “No American
could name a famous Japanese; not a top singer or the
prime minister or even the emperor after Hirohito. The
Japanese were simply known as people who could make
things. But everybody could name Nomo and Ichiro. It had
a huge impact on the country’s psyche.”
From its beginning in Japan about 150 years ago,
baseball — known as yakyu (field ball) — has been viewed
as a moral discipline and linked to the martial arts and
relentless training. Whiting recounts how the first game
between Japan and the U.S. took place in Yokohama in
1898. Japan won 29-4, and many of those players were
members of Samurai families.
“Basically, Japanese baseball involves an insane
amount of practice,” Whiting said. “The whole idea of
self-sacrifice and the development of spirit. Japanese
baseball starts voluntary training right after the new year
and camp started February 1. American spring training
looks like a three-week vacation at the Fontainebleau
Hotel in Florida.”
Whiting called Ichiro “transformational” with five
times the buzz that Nomo created just a few years before.
“He shocked everybody by how good he was. He is an
everyday Japanese position player — not a pitcher — who
had what it took to be a big star. It was something people
didn’t imagine before.”
Ichiro was must-see TV when he joined the Mariners.
Large-screen video displays in central Tokyo played —
and replayed — every game as the Mariners won 116
times in the regular season. Ichiro won the American
League batting title and was the league’s Rookie of the
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