I was saddened to hear of the passing of former baseball player Bob Horner this week at the age of 68 due to yet unannounced causes. Horner arrived on the scene just as my curiosity about Japanese baseball was achieving critical mass.
I got into the game here because my first posting as an English teacher in 1984 was in Toyama City, on the Sea of Japan coast, where the edition of the Japan Times we received at my office had to go to the printers in Tokyo before west coast night games were finished.
As a lifelong San Francisco Giants fan, I got my daily results fix from the most popular sports paper, which published the scores, winning and losing pitchers, saves recorded and home runs for each game. The Nikkan Sports became my gateway drug into Japanese baseball through its elaborate color-coded graphic scoresheets of each pro baseball and high school championship game.
Within hours of Shinnosuke Abe’s Monday arrest for domestic assault, the Yomiuri Giants manager submitted his resignation on Tuesday, presenting the organization with a monumental challenge.
The challenge isn’t about how to move forward with a new manager to win more games than the team loses this season, but how to control the damage and sweep as much of the necessary repair work under the carpet in order to preserve a carefully managed team tradition.
Police showed up to Abe’s Tokyo home Monday night, answering a call from his 18-year-old eldest daughter. Abe said he tried to break up a fight between his two daughters, was enraged when the older one gave him some lip, and shoved her to the floor. Police reported that there was alcohol on the skipper’s breath.
