Sendai is a lovely city that bills itself, because of its broad tree-lined avenues, as “The City of Trees.” Yet in that city, the Rakuten Eagles, through recent reports about pitcher Tomohiro Anraku’s shenanigans, are adding to their image as a team that has tolerated players and coaches who have trouble behaving.
The Eagles’ first prominent power hitter, Takeshi Yamasaki, was accused by former manager Marty Brown of bossing around younger players, demanding they do things for him and harassing them if they did something that displeased him.
An outsider as a non-Japanese among outsiders, reporters, I rarely hear Japanese speaking ill of other players, but in 2014, a prominent Japanese MLB player told me, “please do me a favor and don’t ever utter Yamasaki’s name in the same sentence as mine.”
Yamasaki left the club after 2011 to finish with his first team, the Chunichi Dragons, but in 2012 the Eagles hired Hiromoto “Dave” Okubo as a coach.
I’d known Okubo since he played for the Giants, and since I was one of those nerds that tracked what players did in the minors–because I considered it more relevant than most of Japanese teams did—I liked to talk to players about their experiences in the minors.
Most of the players I’ve talked to who were trapped in the minors overlong despite outstanding results tended to look at it philosophically. Dave Okubo was one of the two I met who carried a chip on his shoulder about it. The other, ironically, was Yamasaki.
As a coach for the Seibu Lions, Okubo showed an inclination to play favorites regarding who would and wouldn’t get promoted from the minors, and like a victim of child abuse who as an adult abuses his own children, began basing his decisions not on what players actually did, but how much he liked their attitude. I asked him about two outfielders vying for first-team playing time, and the guy who got promoted–over the guy who like Okubo who hit a ton in the minors was “better than his numbers, a guy who hustles.”
Okubo famously lost his gig with Seibu for slapping Yusei Kikuchi, something for which he sued Seibu for unlawful dismissal. Okubo also had other issues, including smacking around a patron of a bar. All that happened before the Eagles hired him.
