‘Konichiwa, America’

Many times here in the Neighborhood I’ve mentioned how much I love the game of baseball.
Recently I’ve had another reason to add about why it’s well deserving of being our national pastime.
I can’t think of any other sport where such a large number of its players come from another country.
It’s a microcosm of the way our country works -- anyone can come and make an impact.
First, we started seeing more players from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Hispanic players are still making a huge impact on the game, but in the last decade or so, we’ve started seeing influence from a different direction.
The most recent wave has come from the Far East, particularly Japan.
In 1995, Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese baseball player to play in Major League Baseball in thirty years.
I remember watching that tornado-style windup and thinking, “Who is this guy?”
Turns out he would become only the fourth pitcher in major league history to pitch a no-hitter in both the American and National Leagues.
In 2001, another baseball sensation made the jump from the Japanese leagues to Major League Baseball in the form of Ichiro Suzuki.
Ichiro became the first rookie to lead the majors in votes for the All-Star game, not to mention that he set a rookie record for hits in a season.
Three years later, Ichiro set a major league record for the most hits in a season with 262.
His success made major league teams take a longer look at Japanese players, and now we have players like Tadahito Iguchi, Kazuo Matsui, Hideki Matsui and So Taguchi making contributions to their teams every day.
In fact, Iguchi became the first everyday Japanese player to win a World Series ring when the White Sox won in 2005.
The latest sensation to hit the major leagues is Daisuke Matsuzaka.
“Dice-K,” who was the MVP of the 2006 World Baseball Classic, has been picked up by the Boston Red Sox, and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of stuff he brings to the table.
The early word is that he’s got six or seven different pitches that he can throw, and he has looked impressive in spring training.
This influx of Japanese players has even trickled down to Troy.
This season we have our first Japanese-born player in Shohei Fujita.
So far, he’s been a solid offensive performer, but his strongest point has been his defense at shortstop.
I wondered how long it would be before we had a Japanese player on the team, and I finally got my answer.
As I said earlier, this is a great thing.
Just like foreign players are making an impact in the majors, I would like to see something similar here.
We’ve had international students making an impact on our tennis and basketball teams for a while, and I’m glad to see that it’s starting to spread to some of the other major sports on campus.
Such diversity can only be good for everyone involved.