Thoughts from "You gotta have Wa"

​Finished Robert Whiting's book "You Gotta Have Wa" today - really enjoyed reading this one, which gets into the history of Japanese baseball and focuses on it's intersection with American players who played in Japan. The book was originally published in 1990, with some updates throughout the years. So, some of the points below are a bit dated - I'm certain that some views/opinions/practices have evolved since.

• Importance of pre-game practice to the Japanese. They would practice for hours before the game and were horrified to hear that Americans would not do this. “To them, pre-game practice was as much a part of playing baseball as the game itself. A good hard workout every day was considered imperative in order to show the fans, the press, and the opposition that the team was full of fight and ready to play ball.”
  
• If rain before the game cancelled pre-game practice, then the game would be cancelled. The thought was that if they couldn’t have pre-game practice, then playing the game was unthinkable.
  
• Baseball came in the late 1800’s to Japan.
  
• Teams from Ichiko University were forbidden to say the word “Ouch”. Rather they had to say the equivalent of “it itches.”
  
• Americans, specifically universities, played baseball in Japan as early as the 1900s.
  
• Japanese strong belief in maintaining group harmony and removing individualism - “The Nail that Sticks Up Shall Be Hammered Down”
  
• During WW2, one of the potential plans to end the war involved flying Babe Ruth to Guam to broadcast radio messages of peace to the Japanese people.
  
• Amateur baseball has a long history in Japan. Professional baseball, when it first started was viewed as “impure.” Thus, there is still a continued emphasis in Japan on the amateur game and you’ll still see high school players mostly wear white uniforms as a sign of purity.
  
• In the 1980’s a pro team ran a 59 day “autumn” camp after the season ended, consisting of 9 hours of daily drills, 600 swings a day for the batters, 430 pitches a day for each pitcher.
  
• “I heard Japan was a nice country, but I never got a chance to see it. I was always practicing” -- quote from an American pro player in Japan.
  
• Japanese, culturally, were dumbstruck about American players taking time off to tend to sick parents or even for players to be present for the birth of their children. Americans who took time off for such things were heavily criticized.
  
• Japanese view avoiding being hit by a baseball as a true fundamental. Player has no business being angry if he is hit by the ball.
  
• Interpreters that Americans had in the early days were very bad. Eventually, the interpreters grew to change the language being used by players and coaches in order to smooth over problems and prevent things from escalating further.
  
• Early American players mentioned in the book were generally treated pretty poorly, there was a lot of racism against American players.
  
• If an American player was nearing an important statistical record, such as the HR record, Japanese pitchers would walk the player rather than let him hit. They would also be passed over for Japanese born players for important awards, such as the MVP award.