The Ichiro Factory 1: A Great Day for Baseball, Part I
The Ichiro Factory is an homage to that venerable institution in the Japanese educational-cum-penal system known as shonen yakyuu, or little league baseball. [Note: To avoid insults and lawsuits from Little League Baseball, Inc. in the US, we will refer to the Japanese sport in lower-case letters. The Japanese brand of youth baseball resembles its US cousin in appearance only. To the discerning eye, it is a totally different animal. And to the parents of a young player caught up in the insane world of shonen yakyu, it is a phenomenon unto itself. Let’s hope it stays that way.]
It is also important to explain that these memories of years gone by and the, um, joys of youth baseball with my two kids (both now grown) are essentially combinations of people and events encountered over a considerable span of time. Some are composites of events I experienced with one kid and others that I saw 10 years later with his little brother. However, all are firmly based in reality, not in my imagination. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent, among others.
DWR
A Great Day for Baseball
Part I
Approx. 04:50 on an icy-cold Saturday in March, sometime in the late 20th Century.
I’m still dreaming. Wonderful, soothing dreams, my body weightless, like I’m being pampered at one of those spas where they cover you in warm sand or mud. Soft, sensual, completely secure … And then, from somewhere, a sound… softly at first, like a lost bird at my frozen window, a harbinger of a Spring that may never come: cheep-cheep it tweets quietly. I pull my wonderful, warm cocoon over my head and ignore it. The bird’s voice grows louder. Cheep-Cheep… Cheep-Cheep… CHEEP-CHEEP! Thankfully, I do not wake up, but I feel myself suddenly unmoored from the comfort of my warm dreams, and my unconscious attention begins to search for the source of this disturbing noise. Ever so slowly the warm, enveloping arms of Morpheus begin to loosen their embrace. No, no, not yet! Take me back! I was wrong; I will not listen to the bird. I have no desire to be conscious. Really! A vastly over-rated experience. Please, wrap me once again in that warm, soothing embrace …
But the frozen tentacles of winter consciousness continue to creep in, threatening to rip away the two futon under which I am huddled and expose me to the freezing air in my bedroom. And what the hell is that God-awful noise? CHEEP-CHEEP! — somebody shoot that bird! NOW!
I gradually become aware, through channels I cannot fathom, that the double futon is still in place, exposing only my face. My nose resembles an Arctic ice core sample, which is nothing unusual for this time of year and this altitude. I also sense that everything around me is still mercifully dark. Slowly, ever so slowly slowly, the remnants of my mind begin to come together like a jigsaw puzzle in a time-lapse film, and I can now focus on the meaningless sound that is robbing me of much-needed slumber. At last, the most ancient instincts buried deep within human DNA kick in, and I am once again a hunter-killer, a beast to be feared in this dark, frozen tundra, and I will do whatever it takes to survive. Still only half-conscious, I rise up on one elbow, raise my other hand in a vicious sweeping arc, throwing off the futon, and lash out with ferocious, instinctive precision, slamming my hand down murderously onto the crown of the digital clock. The bird dies. And so does my fellowship with the Land of Warmth and Pleasure and All Things Good. Instead, I find myself tossed into an ice-bath called consciousness. I realize that one arm is now exposed, frozen momentarily beyond its protective cover, and the only light in the room — a painfully bright, sickly greenish glow that looks vaguely like the numerals 04:30 — is burning its message into my single open retina. Damn! It’s time for baseball.
I take a deep breath and throw off the futon, noticing for the first time that my wife had placed an extra down-like quilt on top of the usual stack of Japanese comforters just to make sure I did not turn into some frozen specimen of my species, destined to be discovered centuries hence, thawed out, and exhibited in some future museum. I slowly crawl out of bed and immediately pull on a warm fleece jacket and thick fleece pants, not in that order. It’s early March, which out here in the countryside near Mt. Fuji means Real Winter. All that “March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb” crap? Not up here. March comes in thinking it’s January and goes out the same way. Old Man Winter hasn’t heard that in just a few weeks cherry blossoms will start to bud in Tokyo, only a couple of hours’ drive away. Frankly, the old guy couldn’t care less about weather changes in subtropical zones such as Tokyo, and the frigid gusts howling outside my windows warn me that he might toss in a few blizzards in April and again in May. Hey, why not? he says. Never liked goddam cherry blossoms anyway.
A glance out my second-floor window tells me the ground is still frozen. Hard to tell, of course, because it’s still pitch black outside, but I’m sure I can see a distant street light reflecting off the frost on our back yard. Yes, my numb brain begins to repeat, as if thinking will make it so: it’s going to be a good day for baseball. Next, I roust the slumbering Wife Unit, still hibernating under the warm futon, where instincts much older than the volcano out back are urging me to return.
“It’s time,” I croak, just like I do every Saturday and Sunday all year round. There is no trace of movement from the dark lump next to me. My brain is still only partially defrosted, and the idea of sticking my head in the microwave would be appealing if I could even form such thoughts at this early, pre-linguistic stage of human evolution. I squint at the big bulge in the blankets. Hmmm, it could be my wife. Or it could be the Incredible Hulk taking a nap. Then the bulge emits a soft groan, a familiar noise that I recognize as emanating from that graceful flower of Japanese womanhood I married and not the Hulk, although no one but myself could tell the difference at this hour.
The groan means, “I heard you. Big freakin’ deal. Leave me alone.”
05:00. Choosing the better part of valor, I go down the hall to wake our seven year-old. He’s just about to become a second grader (the school year starts on April Fools Day in Japan), and he’s the spitting image of his old man in at least one respect: he hates to get up. I have to coax, cajole, and ultimately pry him out from under his cozy futon. Can’t blame the guy one bit. It’s damn cold. I’ve been up for about a minute and already I’m shivering.
“Ken, time to get up,” I say, first in Japanese, then in English. He buries deeper into the futon, displaying remarkable bilingual ability to ignore me in both languages. I boost the volume, adding a little rasp of urgency now: “Let’s get going, big guy… time to get up!” He pulls the edges of the futon in tight around him, knowing instinctively that it’s better to be warm than to breathe. “Kenji!” I bellow in English, eager to finish this chore and get downstairs to start the heater. “Get your rear end out of bed, get downstairs, and eat some breakfast NOW!” I always wanted my son to associate English with the pleasant things in life, the fun things, the cozy me-and-my-Dad things. Wouldn’t it be great if life was like that?
05:10. Seeing that the Offspring Unit is starting to move, eyes are opening, arms are stretching, I go downstairs and fire up the big, industrial-strength kerosene heater in the living room. With the exception of Western-style apartments in the larger cities, Japanese houses are not centrally heated, a fact that gradually begins to make good sense as we spoiled Westerners adapt to the realities of a resource-challenged world, something the Japanese have been doing for centuries. Still, space heating works best when someone else turns on the heater and you only show up when the room is toasty warm (toasty warm in my neighborhood being anything close to 50 degrees F.). Being the honorable father-provider, I have foolishly taken on this responsibility myself. I hear my son’s feet finally hit the floor upstairs with a thud that shakes the whole house. Then his bedroom door slams closed behind him (when heat itself is a valuable resource, you quickly learn to seal off unused rooms as soon as you vacate them), and he stumbles downstairs, where he is immediately sucked in by the awesome black-hole-like force of the giant heater next to me.
The Beast is a 3 ft.-high Dainichi “Blue Heater,” the kind ubiquitously installed in large restaurants and factories throughout the colder parts of Japan. Big, noisy, and reliable, it has digital output settings from 1 to 10. Setting it to number 1 will warm any small room quickly, even in the pre-dawn hours in the frozen tundra like this; #4 will turn Grand Central Station into a climate that can support orchids in about 60 seconds. I have never had the guts to try anything above #6, but the manufacturer swears that #10 approximates the surface temperature of the Sun, and I believe it. We stand there for a moment, father and son, warming our backsides around the metallic cylinder of flame, our outer edges still frozen solid, but the side close to the heater already fried to a golden brown. It isn’t heaven, but it does get the blood moving. In a moment the door to my own bedroom suddenly closes above us, and a few seconds later I hear my wife slowly clomping down the wooden stairs, her sprightly gait reminiscent of Boris Karloff in his prime. OK, she just needs some coffee, I think. Me, too. We’ll be fine, I keep repeating to myself. It’s a great day for baseball.
05:20. Kenji and I have peeled ourselves away from the life-giving aura of the Blue Heater and run into the next room, where we quickly sit down on the carpeted floor and shove our legs under the kotatsu table. A kotatsu is essentially a low coffee table with a small electric heater attached to the underneath side and a heavy blanket draped all around, covering your legs to seal in the heat. It sounds dumb, but it’s amazingly warm and quite efficient. We sit on cushions on the living room floor, Japanese style, our legs very warm and our faces slowly thawing. Midori has produced some instant coffee while I was looking around for my American-made fleece-lined blue jeans. She’s on her second cup as she puts a full breakfast tray in front of Ken. It’s the standard recipe Major League ballplayers have started the day with since Babe Ruth was a rookie: a bowl of warm rice with paper-thin slices of nori (salted seaweed), scrambled eggs, two pieces of buttered toast, a small bowl of hot miso soup, lots of natto (never mind), and a jelly donut. He eats the donut. Out of respect for the past 1,500 years of Japanese culture, I bow my head, clasp my hands together momentarily, and say itadakimasu (thanking the gods for delivering this food unto me), and only then, with the appropriate reserve, do I inhale the contents of my breakfast tray like a starving dog. Suddenly, a single gene buried deep in my DNA triggers an instinctive self-preservation response and I look up for a fraction of a second, my rice bowl poised at my lips and a bit of scrambled egg slipping from one corner of my mouth, to see Midori staring at me with a look of stern disapproval. I hand her my plate and say something roughly translatable as, “Dear, that was so delicious. How can you possibly cook such wonderful food this early in the morning? I’ll have some more.” Kenji smiles behind his jelly donut.
05:35. I’ve located my jeans but am dressing as if underwater. Midori has somehow convinced Ken to eat half of his breakfast, a feat roughly comparable to convincing a cat to take a cold shower. Now she’s getting him into his uniform: White knee socks with old-fashioned blue stockings, white polyester knee pants and garters to hold them, two dark blue thermal undershirts, and a white polyester shirt emblazoned with the name of our village in big English letters across the front: NARUSAWA. And the prefecture name in Japanese characters on the left sleeve: Yamanashi. I’m sure this is done so that if a child ever falls through a wormhole in space and turns up suddenly on the plains of Argentina, they will be able to send him back home by return mail or something.
05:38. I’m looking for some warm wool socks to wear. My hair is a mess. My glasses have some kind of greasy film on them. Or is it my eyes? They aren’t fully open yet, so it’s hard to tell. Ken seems to have the same problem. He’s put his blue stockings on wrong — do major league ballplayers really go through all this with the stockings bit? How do they ever get out of the locker room on time? He struggles mightily with the uniform while Midori rushes over to help. In no time at all she’s got him fully dressed, is jamming his blue hat with the big white “N” onto his head, straightening his uniform, and lecturing him all at the same time. Now her voice is up in that sharp, hard, drill sergeant range that all Japanese moms use when imparting vital information to a child. I only catch bits and pieces of it. “This uniform tells people who you are…You are a member of a team! You represent Narusawa! Everyone is looking at you… Dress right… Don’t pick your nose; keep your fingers out of your mouth; keep your shirt tucked in; and DON’T LOSE YOUR HAT!”
Mom, it’s time for us to go, I say. Husbands here often call their wives “Mom,” while wives call their husbands “Old Fart Bag.” OK, I made that up. Women usually address their husbands with a polite form of “you,” but when they speak of them in the third person, even to a group of good friends, they use ancient terms meaning “Lord” or “Master” to indicate their honored spouses. Men, especially those of us who came here from afar, find these traditional terms of respect perfectly natural. After a while, we can’t remember why American women don’t call their husbands “Lord” or “Master.” Japanese women, on the other hand, never mistake the ancient form of a word for its true meaning. They know that these thousand-year-old honorific terms really mean “Old Fart Bag,” but they see no reason to state the obvious to their husbands, who probably aren’t smart enough to understand any of this anyway.
05:50: We need to get going. The team will be lining up at the local elementary school at 6 AM sharp. Being late is not an option. Sports in Japan are a little like the military, well actually, a lot like the military, and the demands placed on the kids are shared by the parents. The crazy thing is that we are all volunteers, even the manager and the coaches. Gluttons for punishment. But no time to think about that. Just grab the kid’s 200 lb. gear bag, the two-sizes too big batting helmet, and the aluminum bat, and then shove the little guy out the door into the frozen dark.
