Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2104: International Affairs

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

With this year’s MLB free agent market enlivened by international players, Ben Lindbergh talks to three guests about three baseball-rich countries. First, Jeeho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency joins to discuss the response in South Korea to Jung Hoo Lee 이정후’s signing, Shin-Soo Choo 추신수’s forthcoming retirement, the legendary career of Choi Dong-won, and […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats, with Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs. Effectively Wired. Effectively Wired. Effectively Wired. Effectively Wild by Meg Raleigh of FanCrafts. As mentioned on our last episode, Meg is in the mountains with some spotty internet. So I'm on my own today, but I won't be on my own for long because I've got three great guests lined up. Now when Meg's away and I'm planning a solo show, I think, what am I curious about? And who could join me to slake that curiosity? And right now I'm curious about international players

and international baseball markets. So that will be our theme for today because as Meg and I have discussed, this year's free agent market would be pretty unexciting if not for players who have joined or are joining MLB from other international major leagues. Jung-ho Lee, Shohei Otani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Padres just signed Yuki Matsui, the Shota Imanaga and Yariel Rodriguez rumors are flying. And also, I must admit, this has been on my mind because one of the players I picked in the minor league free agent draft, Jonathan Perlaza, well, unbeknownst to me and Meg and Ben Clemens,

he had signed with the Hanwha Eagles of the KBO, which will probably work out fine for him, but which I was not pleased to learn after using a pick on him. We discussed that very scenario on that episode, picking players who have signed or go on to sign with international teams. And yet, I made that mistake. But today I'll bring you three engaging conversations with three guests centered on three baseball-loving countries. Jiho Yoo of Korea's Yonhap News Agency will join me first,

followed by Rob Fitz, who is a historian of Japanese baseball, and finally by Sammy Kahn, who's the co-director of The Last Out, a recent documentary about three Cuban players who defected in hopes of making the majors. It's actually been about 30 years since the start of the modern era of Cuban, Korean, and Japanese players coming to MLB. In 1993, Rene Rocha made the majors after becoming the first active player to defect from the Cuban national team. In 1994, Chan-Ho Park became the first South Korea-born MLB player after signing with the Dodgers as an amateur. And in 1995, Hideo Nomo exploited a loophole in his contract to become the first NPB player to permanently relocate to MLB.

Each of those departures and arrivals cracked open a door that many more players have used. If you've wondered, hey, all these great players are coming from other countries to play in MLB. How does that affect baseball and baseball fandom in the countries they're coming from? Well, we will address that today. Maybe you've heard about Eric Fetty and Yoshinobu Yamamoto winning the equivalents of the Cy Young Awards in the KBO and MPB. Those awards were named after Choi Dong-won and I.G. Sawamura. Maybe you've heard or read those names, but do you know much about those pitchers? Listen on and you will. How has bullying become a big issue in Korean baseball? How would baseball be different if Japanese players had come to MLB earlier?

And what toll does it take to defect from Cuba, as Yario Rodriguez did, in order to become an MLB free agent? All of those questions and more answered on this episode. One last reminder, next time we'll be running down a story we missed about each team in 2023. I'm still soliciting suggestions for those stories. I have one for the White Sox, the Guardians, the Rockies, the Astros, the Royals, the Dodgers, the Twins, the A's, the Mariners, the Rangers, and the Blue Jays. But all other teams still looking for ideas. So if you want to nominate something that we didn't discuss or maybe mentioned only in passing this year, a statistical quirk,

a fun fact, an off the field story, some strange game, whatever it was, please email the idea to podcast at fancrafts.com. Okay, we've got three guests to get to, so let's get going. San Francisco Giants fans are happy to have Jung-Hoo Lee, but what do fans of his old team, the Kiwoom Heroes, think of that? It's time to find out. All right, I am joined now by Jiho Yoo, who covers Korean baseball in English. Fortunately for those of us who do not speak or read Korean, for Yonhap News in Seoul, welcome to the podcast, Jiho. Hi, Ben. It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me. Very happy to have you and to be able to read your coverage because we've been talking a lot about Korean baseball lately. And I wonder if you can give me your perspective on Jung-Hoo Lee's signing, which we've talked about from our perspective and the reaction over here. But what have Korean fans made of where he signed and what he signed for? Yeah, sure. I mean, the size of the contract, $130 million for six years.

I'm sure you guys covered this. This is the largest contract ever given to a Korean player going from the KBO to the majors through posting and A lot of people were I guess pleasantly surprised by the figure. I guess even the most optimistic fans would have thought You know, maybe around 60 million dollars in total value, maybe 90 million, I think we saw in some places. But to go to a figure that starts with $100 million with an extra $0 million at the end, I think people were pretty surprised that he got that much money.

And also to be going to the Giants, which is, you know, they're obviously a very well-known team. You know, they've won three World Series titles, I guess, in the recent recent in the recent past 10 12 and 14 they've got a pretty sizable fan base maybe not as big as the Dodgers which is a team that has a pretty strong Korean history but the Giants do have their fans and he's the second Korean player to play for the Giants after I guess a long-forgotten third baseman, Jaegyun Hwang, way back when. But Jungwoo, by far the bigger name in the KBO to begin with, former MVP, one of the best players in this league since his rookie season back in 2017. And for him to be going to MLB, signed a big of a contract.

You know, whenever a Korean player moves overseas to MLB, signed a big of a contract. You know, whenever a Korean player moves overseas to MLB, it's a source of a lot of pride for Korean fans in general, not even considering which team you root for. Even if you're not a fan of the Kyomiros, the East former team, I think a lot of the fans of the other teams will feel proud of seeing one of their guys, one of their KBO players, signing such a big contract and going to MLB.

Yeah. Is it purely pride or is there also some sense of loss or disappointment? Because if you're a fan of the heroes, he is no longer on your team, right? And there's a big time difference and you might not get to see the player in person. I mean, is there some sense of that or is is it just purely congratulations, go do your thing? Well, with the heroes, I mean, their fans are kind of used to this. He's the fourth guy to leave for MLB through posting. Jung Ho-Gang for the Pirates.

We had Byung-Ho Park going to the Twins. Of course, Ha Sung-Kim going to the Padres. Not through posting, but I guess he was a free agent at the time. But yeah, so I guess, you know, I can't really speak for their fan base, but I'm pretty sure they're kind of used to this. Seeing all of their guys kind of going to bigger and better things, if you will. Right. But I sense a lot less of, I guess, the sense of loss and more of a sense of pride of seeing Korean guys go. So I guess it's also a validation of, I guess, the level of KBO

for one of their best players to be signing for that much money and going to the majors. Kind of maybe less so now than in the past, but seeing one of the top guys in the KBO going to MLB, kind of a validation for fans here that, hey, our best guys can command kind of attention, can command kind of a contract. And obviously, it's up to now Lee to go out there and prove himself on the field. But he's 25 years old, still very young.

He's got a long career ahead of him in MLB. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly does a lot for the global profile of KBO when a player from Korea comes over and excels in the majors. And of course, during the pandemic, a lot of people in the U.S. were watching Asian baseball leagues as well. But I would imagine there might be some mixed feelings, I guess, especially if it becomes a common practice, as opposed to a somewhat new thing that stars will come over regularly, just because you know that if you have a very young, talented player in the KBO, then the clock is ticking, right? Time is limited, because you might only get to enjoy them in person for so long. Well, that's a good point.

You know, I haven't, that's one perspective that I haven't really thought about. But I could see how fans might feel that way. You know, when Jungwoo came up out of high school, winning the Rookie of the Year, like leading the league in runs in his first year as a teenager, and among the league leaders in batting average and hits. And, you know, it seems like this guy was being groomed for success and he was already on his way to the majors eventually when he would complete his seventh year

and then became eligible for posting. So, yeah, I could see how fans might feel that way. But for me, I think there's a bigger sense of pride of seeing their type guys go. And it's not really... I think we would get maybe one every couple of years, as far as guys living through posting or free agency to MLB. Many years, we don't see anybody leave. We might have some guys get posted, but not getting any contract,

or not really generating a lot of interest but uh yeah uh so yeah so it's um i guess there's a bigger sense of pride i think among the fan bases here yeah and you talked about how it can lead to a lot of attention for a team that employs a korean player have you seen that with the padres since they signed kim have they become significantly more popular does that lead to yes a lot more padres fans and and potentially revenue for the padres even oh no question i think you start seeing more you know giant skier on streets in korea i think we certainly did that with uh with the padres uh you know they didn't have a lot of korean history even though that was channel park's last team i think or one of the last teams that he played for he's still he some sort of an advisory role with the front office.

But they clearly were not as well-known as the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Red Sox or what have you. But having a Korean player does help with the visibility in the Korean fan base. I talked about the Giants having already a pretty sizable fan base in Korea, but it's only going to grow with Jungwoo playing there. I think we're going to see a few No. 51 lead jerseys on the streets of Korea. And sometimes players depart, sometimes they also return. I wanted to ask you about Shinsu Chu, who recently announced that he is going to be

playing his final season, right? It'll be his age 41 season. So some MLB fans might not know he has continued playing since he's been in MLB. He's gone back to Korea. He's been with the SSG Landers for three seasons now and has been pretty productive. And I wonder what his status and stature in the country is among Korean baseball fans. How do they feel about Shin Su-Chu? How is he regarded among the great Korean players of all time? Yeah, with Chu, I think one thing people maybe not realize, he never did play in the kbo before going to the majors he came he went straight out of high school to to seattle their organization he was in the minors for a bit i guess had a bit of a cup of coffee with them in the majors and he got traded to cleveland that's

where he really blossomed and then had one unbelievable season with the reds and then ended up in texas and became an all-star there in one season. And then he came back to his country, but signed for the first time with the KBO. And then won the Korean Series title in his second season with the Landers franchise. Then last year, mostly a DH. He wasn't really playing in the field a lot. Then going into 2024, he will be turning 42, I think, in the summer. So I think at some point, he's going to break some records as far as being the oldest to do blah, blah, blah.

He will be 42 and change later in the season. He's going to be potentially getting home runs and RBIs and hits. He's going to be, if not the oldest, but one of the oldest to do it. Yeah, he commands a lot of respect, obviously, as a former Major League player. And he does have most homers among all Asian-born players in Major League history. And guys actually keep track of that. Even the younger guys coming up, his teammates they know like what this guy's about and they know how how good he was uh you know playing in the majors so just because of his

history he commends a lot of respect but also at the same time now that he has gone out of his way to you know make sure the guys around him feel comfortable in his presence, not just, you know, having this. They wanted to feel as though they've got just another teammate, some old dude playing baseball next to them instead of, oh, here's this former major league guy, and I don't even know how to talk to this guy. So he has gone out of his way to make sure he would let his guard down and make sure guys would feel comfortable coming just reaching out and talking to him and i think he's he's been a great leader in that sense over the past couple of years so i don't know if he's going to go on a retirement

tour per se yeah but we'll see what happens i think he certainly deserves one even though he hasn't played in the kbo for that many seasons yeah was there any any sense of being spurned or the fact that he did not go to KBO initially, that he bypassed the Korean League and went straight to MLB? Was that seen at the time as something of a betrayal or was that also just pride and go succeed there? Like, did he have to rehabilitate his image at all when he returned by playing in the kbo for the first time or was he beloved no i don't i don't think so yeah okay i mean there was there was such a long time ago right when he first left was that 2002 or three ish right so

it's such a long time ago and there were very few guys even going that route at the time going from high school to the majors. So he's one of the first guys that opened the path for the players that would come after him, like going from high school to signing a minor league deal with a team and then working his way up to the majors. And not a lot of guys have been successful in that way. Like Ji Man Choi, Hoi Park, I think, Ji Hwan Bae. I think those are the three most recent guys

who've gone their route and made it to the majors and not even really as successful as Chu. So, Chu was very unique the way he curved out his major league career.

I don't know if there was any resentment at all at the time. But, you know, there is a sort of a penalty I guess if you call it that imposed on players who signed their first professional contract outside of KBO. If they do want to play in the KBO later on in their career they have to actually wait two more years to be able to sign or get drafted, to enter the draft. So we had guys like Hak-Joo Lee,

then a couple of former Chicago Cubs minor league guys who kind of never made it to the majors, kind of panned out, topped out in AAA or AA. So they wanted to come home and play in the KBO, but they weren't allowed to enter the draft right away. So they had to wait for two years. That applies to everybody who goes professional overseas right out of high school or college. So what most players do in those two years, they serve in the military. They do their military service in the meantime and they come out and enter the draft in the KBO and then

you know some guys get drafted in the first round and some in the later rounds and end up playing the KBO that way. So we have a few guys in the league right now that have gone down the path where they went out of high school to the majors, didn't end up making it to the majors ultimately and decided to come home. So some American players also will go to the KBO and some of them will return, like Eric Fetty, of course, who was the KBO MVP this year and also won the Choi Dong-won Award, which is the KBO equivalent of the Cy Young. Now, it's always described here that way, the KBO equivalent of the Cy Young Award. Now, I think most American fans know something about who Cy Young was,

but they might not know much about who Choi Dong-won was. So can you tell us anything about him and his career and why the award is named after him? Yeah. So this award was created in 2014, basically recognizing best pitchers, not only in the KBOBO but also in the amateur ranks. So they actually give out awards for amateur players, amateur pitchers as well every year. So Choi Dong-won, the pitcher, had a very short peak. It was a great awesome peak. You know, he had to retire at the age of 32 because he was really, his body was really broken down at the time. But from 83 to 87

this is a you know early era of the kbo the inaugural season the kbo was in 1982 and for che from 83 to 87 he pitched the 200 plus innings every year so he's the first guy well i guess the only pitcher to throw 200 plus five seasons in a row and I don't think anyone's gonna touch that mark. Now he's, whenever people talk about Trenum 1 around here, the 1984 Korean series, that's where his legend really was born. He had a great regular season that year too. He won the regular season MVP.

You know, some of the numbers I'm going to throw out, like, this is a different time. So, he pitched in 51 games, okay? 20 starts, 284 in two Thursday innings, 14 complete games, and he had 223 strikeouts, which actually stood as a record for a single season until Ariel Miranda struck out 225 two years ago. So 223 remained a record for the longest time. His record, 27 and 13. Also has six saves. 2.40 ERA, 1.04 whip, 134.44 ERA+, according to one of the websites in the KBO. Now, in the Korean series, his team, Lotte Giants, they won the series in seven games over the Samsung Lions.

So, seven-game series, Choi Dong-won pitched in five of them. So, he pitched five times, one of them in relief, four starts. So game one, complete game shutout, okay? This is September 30th, 1984. And two days rest, he came out on game three, complete game, right? So there was that. And game five, this is October 6thth and two days off game five his team was the road team so he stayed he pitched eight innings in a in a loss there was a complete game

as well yeah and the very next day after throwing eight innings the very next day he came out of the bullpen threw five shutout innings gave up three hits and struck out six. Kind of like Madison Brumgarner, right? Yeah. So, this is the very next day, October 7th. And now, they were supposed to play game seven on the 8th of October that year. But you know what? That game got rained out. Oh, no. So, he got an extra day off. He got an extra day off. He came back out on game seven,

complete game, nine inningsnings four months given up for foreign runs so that was a pretty huge break for the team because they got extra day off yeah and it wasn't even it was a night game as well so five games four in one record two complete games one complete game loss four starts one relief 40 innings 35 strikeouts 11 11 walks, 610 pitches in a seven-game series. So he's the only guy, he will remain the only guy to win all four games of a four-game Korean Series victory. He pitched five times. And I think somehow he didn't win the MVP of the series. Well, you know, the voting culture

was different at the time. He won the regular season MVP and for some reason in the Korean culture you don't give one person everything. I see. So a guy, one of his teammates who hit a goal, had three run shots in game seven and ended up winning the MVP

even though he hit below 200 for the series. But this is where Choi Dong- up winning the MVP, even though he hit below 200 for the series. But this is where Choi Dong-won, the pitcher, the legend, was born. Again, his body was broken down not so long after that. I mean, he had a great 85, 86 seasons as well, but late 80s and early 90s, he was not the same pitcher. But he was just an icon of ultimate sacrifice for the team.

For a lot of the younger fans who only heard about him or who'd only seen highlights of last series, he was just a very mythical figure, synonymous with, I guess, sacrifice, if you will, in the KBO. Yeah, I would name an award after him. I guess that makes sense. But it sounds like Cy Young, even though this is 80 years after Cy Young's career, those workloads sort of similar, right? And I guess his career predated the KBO and then the KBO was formed during his career, like the American League was formed during Cy Young's career. So yeah, there are some parallels there.

It makes sense. So one more thing I wanted to add about Choi is the fact that he'd actually signed a deal with the Toronto Blue Jays back in 1981. I think he would have become the first Korean player in Major League Baseball if things had gone right but so at the time uh he'd been scouted pretty heavily after he had pitched in a tournament in edmonton uh he had a one-hit shutout against canada actually had a carried a perfect game into the ninth inning of that game so uh you know some blue jays scouts i think were were in hand for that game later they

would say how che had the ability to Pitch in the majors right away at the time and of course the Blue Jays were you know, they've been launched in I think 1977 There was still a young team. I guess they were looking for some immediate help wherever they could find them but at the time the thing is Korean athletes all the Korean healthy young men have to serve in the military. And Choi at the point had not done his military service, but the government waived his duty on the condition that he would go play for the national team overseas, but he would actually stay put to play professionally in his native country. So he would only get the exemption

if he had stayed put in the country and played Pro Bowl here. But if he wanted to go overseas, the government forced him to serve in the military first and then go. At the time, the length of the service would have been three years. Now it's 18 months.

But at the time, it would have been, I think, close to three years, if not exactly 36 months. So, you know, obviously there was a no-go from the Blue Jays' perspective. They wanted this guy right away. They didn't want to wait around for three years. And who knows what would have happened if he had served in the military. So I guess the Blue Jays even at the time, I think, threatened to take this to court, get into some legal battles. But ultimately, he didn't end up going.

Chase, they put and became the star pitcher ultimately he didn't end up going. Chase, they put and became the star pitcher that he had become in the KBO. So yeah, so kind of a big what if in the history of Korean baseball. Yeah, that's an interesting alternate history. Okay. Well, that will help us segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you about, because Eric Fetty's main rival for that award was a pitcher who was actually not likely to win it because of some off the field behavior. Right. And this pitcher, you know, I guess we could say wouldn't have won it in 2023 anyway because he got hurt but an wujin was the best pitcher in the kbo in 2022 didn't win that award because of his history of bullying and i guess to bring this uh full circle he was a teammate of jung-hoooo Lee's, right? He was on the heroes as well. So this is emblematic of a larger issue in Korean baseball and Korean culture at large, right?

There have been many bullying scandals and just a reckoning with bullying and harassment recently. I wonder if we could start with baseball specifically and maybe you could talk about him and what he did, what An Wujin did that stripped him of that award, essentially, and then also led to him being left off of the WBC roster. What was his history with bullying? Yeah, so with Wujin An or An Wujin, his family name being An. Yeah, so with Woo Jin Ahn or Ahn Woo Jin, his family name being Ahn. So this is back in his high school days when he was accused of physically assaulting younger teammates.

I mean, it's a long story. There's a lot of he said, she said. There was some sort of illegal battle going on even long after he graduated, long after he served his suspension after he got drafted into the KBO. And because of the suspension, because of the history, he was banned for international play, in particular the Olympic Games and also the Asian Games, which is kind of like the Olympics in Asia. He was banned from those competitions. And you know how Korean athletes, when you do win

a gold medal in the Asian Games or a medal of any color in the Olympic Games, you get an exemption from the mandatory military service. A lot of baseball players have won the exemptions that way, including Ha Sung Kim and Chung Woo Lee, because they won the gold medal back in 2018 at the Asian Games. But Ahn never got the chance, never will get the chance unless, you know, there's some sort of lifting of any suspension coming his way in the future. Now, with the bullying culture, you know, I grew up playing baseball myself way back when back in elementary school. And there was a lot of corporate punishment, if you will,

from the coaches toward the players, not just in the field of sports, but also in classrooms. Back in the 80s and 90s, or even a generation before that, for my parents or their generations, corporate punishment was an accepted part of culture in Korea. You know, even when myself, I or my sister would get punished in classrooms, my parents didn't even raise an eyebrow because it was kind of a deal. It was, you know, considered part of the deal of going to school in Korea.

You know, if you don't listen to your teachers, if you don't do your homework, if you don't do this and that, you know, you get hit. Right. It's not so different. Yeah, I'm Catholic or was raised Catholic from a Catholic family. And my mom would say the same thing about, you know, going to school with the nuns teaching and, you know, they'd hit you on the knuckles with a ruler or whatever it was. Right. That same sort of thing.

Yeah. I mean, some of them, some of the teachers were pretty violent, too. I mean, some of them, some of the teachers were pretty violent, too. So, and that kind of, I guess, translated into, you know, field of play, whether you're playing sports or baseball or what have you. And there was a bit of a military aspect to it as well, where, you know, if you're older, if you're the senior guy, you kind of have the authority to kind of do whatever you wanted with the younger guys. And you could physically assault them, even punch him in the face or hit him with a baseball bat or whatever. So I don't know exact details of what happened with Don at this point,

but he was accused of assaulting one of the teammates in high school. And he came out and emerged later on after he got drafted. And he wasn't even the first guy who faced that kind of allegations. We went through a period of, I guess, this time of reckoning in recent years where some of the professional athletes had, you know, bullying allegations come up against them long after they graduated from high school or college and some of them had to retire some of them had to apologize and move to another country play to continue play professionally because it was no longer being accepted among the fan bases

in different sports now you know things are changing obviously for you know for the for the better but uh you know back then there is even beating up going on in professional teams as well. Like professional managers and coaches would literally hit players for maybe disobedience or not playing up to their standards. So, you know, it's quite unfortunate, but it was for the longest time ingrained as part of culture in this country. And people say back in the days, people who did things that are worse than whatever Ahn did still got away with it. But times have changed. And he was suspended by his team, the heroes, when he came up. And because of the suspension, he was banned from international play play. Now he was not technically banned for the WBC. There was

nothing that would have prevented him from playing in that tournament at least in technical terms but wasn't gonna be good optics for the KBO to select him for that tournament when he wasn't eligible for the Asian Games or the Olympic Games. So for that reason he wasn't selected. Same for the award selection. There was nothing in the books that would have kept him out of the consideration for that award because he had met every criteria. No question he was the best pitcher in 2022. But the voting committee, the selection committee, decided that, again, the optics, it wasn't going to send the right message for them to, they decided it wasn't going to be the right message for them to recognize this guy for whatever he did in the field when he had that shady history from the past. possible future MLB player too. I guess he still could potentially if he recovers from his injury

and if this baggage doesn't prevent the team from signing him. But as you said, it's not just a baseball issue. I mean, there were the twin volleyball players a couple of years ago, right? Who were well-known and competed internationally and then bullying allegations surface. And there've been a lot of K-pop stars, same thing, right? So it's almost like a Me Too movement for bullying. Yeah, exactly. Right. So was there a specific impetus for this?

Like, was there a specific incident that caused this re-evaluation and this reckoning with this history? Or was it just kind of a gradual cultural shift? You mentioned the volleyball toys. Jae Young Lee and Ja Young Lee, the national team fixtures, they're among the very best female volleyball players in this country. And volleyball is huge in Korea, actually. It's almost right up there with baseball when you talk about TV ratings,

cable numbers and streaming. I think that was really the tipping point or I guess the turning point. Among all the names that have been brought up, they were among the biggest to be accused of bullying from the past. And I think that set off a lot of other allegations to pop up, not just in volleyball, from other, you mentioned K-pop and some other sports as well. So I think that was huge, the volleyball twins, their saga, if you will. So, you know, I think one of the players, one of the sisters is now playing in Greece or somewhere in Europe, I think. So they're basically the first out of the country.

Yeah. And I don't mean to suggest this is solely a Korean issue. There was just a scandal in NPB in Japan just this month. That's right. That Tomohiro Anraku of the Golden Eagles. Anraku, yep. Yeah, he was cut because of the same thing, bullying, harassment of teammates. And Masahiro Tanaka apologized for not doing more as an older leader on that team to stand up for

the younger guys, right? And of course, it's not solely an Asian phenomenon either. There's certainly bullying everywhere in the world and there's bullying in the U.S. I mean, look at the late Bobby Knight in basketball or in baseball. My favorite player growing up, Bernie Williams, was bullied and taunted mercilessly by Mel Hall when when he was a young player in the early 90s. Mel Hall turned out to be a truly terrible person who's in prison now for other reasons. But, you know, that kind of thing went on. And there has been, I think, some discussion of hazing rituals and, you know, things that older players put younger players through. And sometimes it's kind of lighthearted teasing. And sometimes it goes beyond that,

right? And sometimes there are, you know, stereotypes at play. And there has been, I think, some change in that culture, but it hasn't happened in the US. I don't think the same way that it's happened in Korea. It hasn't been quite as widespread where, you know, star MLB players are, you know, oh, they bullied people in college or the minors or when they were, we haven't really heard about that so much. So that's why I've been kind of curious reading so much about the bullying scandals surfacing in Korea. I'm sure a lot of those things were happening here too, but it hasn't really become such a pervasive story for one reason or another. Yeah. You know, I'm a hockey fan as well, and there's been a lot going on in hockey, right?

Oh, yeah. With my favorite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, their recent coach, Mike Babcock, he was, I guess, fired before even coaching a regular season game with the Blue Jackets. And he was meeting with the players and asking them to show him their phones so they could go through the pictures and see what they're about. And a lot of the players and asking them to show him their phones so they could like go through the

pictures and see what they're about and you know a lot of the players i guess some of the younger guys were offended by that so he was let go and he had some issues going on with while he was in toronto some players and uh you know some other coaches i think was bill peters when he was coaching the uh category flames when he had some issues with some players. So there's a lot going on in hockey as well on that front as far as, I guess, workplace misconduct, if you will, kind of euphemism. But yeah, so it's not unique to Korea. I agree. I just feel that that kind of cultural aspect has been ingrained in this country for so many years

that it's going to take a while for us to completely move on from that. Has there been any defense of it? You know, older players who say, oh, that's just the way it was done, or even that's how you should do it, that like, you know, it's the school of hard knocks, or if you don't go through that, you're too soft or something.

Because you hear that just from old-timers often, you know? Yeah. Now now i'm pretty sure a lot of old timers would feel that way but they wouldn't be able to really come out in public and say that not in this climate so okay it would be bad luck on them it would be just terrible optics if anyone came out and said it publicly but i'm sure there are guys who feel that way where like they'll be like oh you know back in my days i did a lot worse right I don't think anybody would be able to, would have even, you know, courage to, or I guess common sense to come out and say that in public. Right. Well, I guess it's a good thing that this has come to light and that it's changing this behavior, right? Even if it's

leading to this upheaval, it's probably in the long run going to lead to better conditions for young players coming up, I would imagine. The bullying and the military service you mentioned earlier remind me of storylines on Stove League. Did you watch Stove League, the TV show about Korean baseball? I did not. I'm not much of a streaming or TV guy. I think it's interesting you brought it up because Hyun Sung Kim, the guy who translated the MVP Machine, who is also a friend of mine. Yes, and was on the podcast. Yeah, he was on the podcast and he asked me about the show.

Like he asked me if I had seen it because I think it was he was mentioning this podcast that you like there. You know, there's people looking for someone who maybe watch this and could talk about it in English. I'm like, oh, you know what? I've never watched that thing because I'm not, you know, I don't really watch shows. But yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, yeah, this was this came up on that show. Megan, I really liked it. We watched it a couple of years ago and we did podcast episodes where we broke down episodes of that show. I guess you're covering the actual Korean baseball, so maybe you don't need to watch a fictional Korean baseball show. But for us, it was really fun to watch

it. I would still highly recommend it to anyone. So go check that out and then listen to our episodes on it. Okay. Well, this was really helpful and informative. Is there anything else that you think is underreported or that U.S. fans should know about Korean baseball these days, whether it is just changes in how the league is run and how statistics and sabermetrics and technology are used or, you know, scoring goes up and down, the style of play changes? Are there any interesting trends that you think it makes sense to mention here? Oh, we're going to have a pitch clock in 24. We're going to have all those same rules that the MLB did in 23.

So we're going to have larger bases, pitch clock. We're going to have also ABS before MLB. We're going to have automated baseball and strike, ball and strike system. I don't know when MLB is going to do it. I know the minor leagues do it now. But KBO is going to have it next year. So, there's some changes coming, man. There's going to be a lot of confusion, I think, in spring training, preseason.

But the games are really long in the KBO. Like, average in nine-inning games will be about three hours and ten minutes and three hours and nine minutes. Even with some of the, I guess guess the speed of rules in place so they haven't been really enforced strictly so they're gonna go ahead and do the pitch clock thing so it's gonna be interesting i'm just you know i'm a fan of shorter games too like there's someone who covers games uh it drives me crazy when you know nine inning games run for close to 4 hours at times. So I'm a huge fan of games being played under 3 hours and 2 and a half hours and change. So I'm personally looking forward to it.

But there's going to be some confusion, I think, in the early going, for sure. Yeah. Well, if it works as well as it did here, then I think it'll be a success, probably. here, then I think it'll be a success probably. But that leads to a last question, which is, how much does KBO kind of take its lead from MLB? I mean, you don't want to just imitate everything that MLB does. I guess you want to preserve your own league's identity and what sets it apart. But then also MLB can be kind of a testing ground and you can see what works there and you can borrow those things. And especially if players more often are going from the KBO to MLB, then maybe there's a benefit to consistency and the rules and the style of play. So is there any concern over, oh, it's too MLB-like? Or is there a desire to make it more MLB-like? Well, we're copying quite a bit, to be honest.

And the current commissioner, Guion Ho, he's a big fan of MLB. He was a former player one time, briefly, I think, in the pre-KBO days. He was a longtime color analyst on TV, became a commissioner a couple of years back, recently elected to a new three-year term. So he's going to be in charge for a couple of years now. But he's a big fan of MLB. He likes doing things that MLB has done in recent years. The pitch clock thing is a prime example.

He's done a whole bunch of other things that MLB has done. So yeah, I think we're going to be copying a lot other things that mlb has done so yeah i think we're gonna be copying a lot of things that whatever happens in mlb and of course he went out and got that seoul series thing done right we're gonna have the dodgers and the padres open their season here in march yeah with hopefully if he's not traded by then hasan kim will play that's gonna be his old his former home stadium too the dome the, the Kocak Skydome, the home of the heroes. So we'll see. But we're doing things, a lot of things that MLB has done. Has a commission of the KBO has a lot of say in that. So I don't know if there's a concern per se.

The fact is, I think we're kind of copying things the way they're being done in MLB. And I guess MLB learns from the KBO sometimes too, because you had your own juiced ball scandal or offense and then deadened the ball before MLB deadened its ball. And we learned from how that worked in Korea and it has worked somewhat similarly in MLB. One last thing, because I've been going back and forth between saying KBO and the KBO. Now, in the US, a lot of people say the MLB, right? But it should be MLB because it's, you know, Major League Baseball. You wouldn't say the Major League Baseball, but people are used to saying the NFL or the NHL or the NBA. And NPB is the same, right? You would say, I mean, NPB, not the NPB,

because it's Nippon Professional Baseball. But KBO is Korea Baseball Organization, right? So is it okay to say the KBO? I guess it's okay. I don't know the exact rules. I write the in my stories. I haven't had anybody come up with what are you putting the in front of it? Like I haven't heard anything like that.

So I'm putting it in my story. So I don't know. I think it's OK. I think it's OK. Yeah. I don't know that anyone would say anything to you if it weren't OK because no one cares. But we care on this podcast. So, OK, I think it's OK to say the KBO just to be clear.

All right. Well, it was wonderful to have you on here. And thank you for getting up very early in Seoul to talk to me. And I recommend that people follow Jiho Yoo on Twitter at Jiho underscore one and also read his work at Yonhap News. Again, it's just invaluable to have that kind of coverage for people in the States. So thanks so much for your work and for joining me today. Okay. Thanks for having me, Ben. All right. Well, the RoboZone and the Pitch Clock are not coming to NPB in 2024. Although some of MLB's recent rules changes are making the leap to Japan, some modified shift restrictions, bigger bases, and I'm sorry to say the zombie runner will be allowed. One good thing about the pitch clock not yet being implemented is that it leaves more time for fans synchronized chanting and cheer songs. So let's listen to a little bit of that from the Tokyo Dome, and then we will talk about that and much more with Rob Fitz. All right.

I am joined now by Rob Fitz, who is an expert on Japanese baseball. He is the author of several books about it. He is the founder of Sabre's Asian Baseball Committee. He's written numerous articles about it. Rob, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Ben. So what's your origin story as someone whose passion became Japanese baseball? I know that you lived in Tokyo for a time. Was that when it started for you? It was. It's a long story, but I'll keep it short tonight. The short version is my wife was already transferred to Tokyo back in 1993, and she was there a month before I went over, and we decided to go over for a year. And the first night I arrived, I got off the long 13 hour flight, completely jet lagged,

got in the hotel room and she says, Oh great, you're here. We're going to a baseball game. And so I went with basically no sleep for 24 hours, uh, to Jingu stadium in Tokyo to watch the hunching tigers play the occult swallows. And it was unlike any baseball game I had ever seen before. Imagine like a top Big Ten football or basketball game with constant noise and horns blaring and drums beating and the cheering and the chanting. And I said, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I fell in love with Japanese baseball that night, my very first night in Tokyo back in 1993.

And I've been a big fan ever since. And it eventually led to a career in writing about it. That is, I think, the thing I envy most about Japanese baseball and international baseball, not just Japan, but the fan environment and the fan engagement and participation, the chants. We just lack that mostly in MLB. Do you know anything about the origins of that? Why that persists or why that developed in Japanese baseball and not in the majors? And what can we do to import it? You know, that's a great question. That's such a good question. I think I'm going to start exploring it.

There's your next book. Exactly. Well, I'm going to start exploring it. There's your next book. Exactly. Well, I'm working on one now, so maybe we'll incorporate that. The exact origins of the modern chanting, I do not know. I do know that in the early days of Japanese baseball, we're talking about the earliest 20th century, the fans were quiet and the players were quiet because they were taking it so seriously. And some of the teams that traveled to the U.S. were so impressed by, especially the California

team's chants. I think Stanford and University of California had cheerleading, male cheerleading sections. And they thought, hey, this is the way we should be playing baseball. And they brought the chanting and the cheering back to Japanese collegiate baseball in the early 20th century. But talking to players from the early 50s and early 60s, they say they remember baseball in Japan to be kind of quiet, and there wasn't much going on with the fans. Like I said before, that's an awesome question, and I'm going to have to figure out exactly when you should find the real modern groups chanting.

And what has drawn you to it in the decades since then, or what distinguishes it in your mind from American brand of baseball? Is it that fan participation? Is it the style of play, the culture surrounding it, the history? I'm sure it's all of the above, but, in your mind, what makes Japanese baseball so special? I go back and forth depending on how frequently I go to Japan, which I like more, MLB or Japanese baseball. I certainly enjoy the prowess of the players in MLB. The speed and the power are better in MLB. But I just went back to Japan in September. I went on a baseball tour, actually, done by a tour company, and we saw a game in each of the 12 professional stadiums in

Japan. So we traveled all over the country. And what struck me so much is how much fun small ball is. When you're not sitting around, you know, I live in New York, so I see the Yankees a lot. And, you know, I'm kind of sick of waiting for a judge to hit a home run. You know, that's basically what the Yankees play for, a walk, strikeout, home run. And when you're in Japan, you saw hit and runs, you saw bunting, you saw stealing, We saw a sacrifice.

Actually, it wasn't a safety squeeze. It was a suicide squeeze that worked. It was really exciting to watch that brand of baseball. So at this exact moment, I'm really high on watching small ball in Japan and that kind of precision style of baseball. Yeah. And have you seen any signs that that might go away at any point? Sometimes people theorize that as we get globalization and mass media, differences in regional dialects could be reduced.

Could that happen with the regional brands of baseball? You know, as analytics, sabermetrics makes its way overseas, obviously, that has permeated the Japanese game as well. And of course, Japanese fans follow American baseball. Japanese players are coming over here all the time and vice versa. Do you think that those will remain distinct styles of play or do you forecast or do you fear that at some point they will kind of converge? Now, I guess they could converge in that we could maybe borrow some aspects of Japanese baseball, which have fallen out of favor in the majors, but I don't know that I see that happening currently.

That's what I would like to see. Well, the Japanese professional teams are certainly using sabermetrics, analytics, video, all the modern technology that we use in MLB. But I still see their style of baseball, this small style of baseball, not going away. Yes, they have home run hitters, but they're taught different swings, at least as of now. Their pitchers rely on more off-speed pitches, more curves, more junk. So the batters just can't, you know, sit back and wait for that fastball. And, you know, one of the things that's happening in MLB, of course, the faster it goes in, the faster it

goes out, right? When you're throwing a hundred miles an hour and you do get wood on it, it's going to fly. And, but when you're in Japan and you're throwing maybe 10 to eight miles an hour slower, a lot of off speed, a lot of really good pitches on the corner. I don't think you can sit back and just wait for the pitch to hit it hard all the time. So I think Japanese baseball style will probably remain consistent for the near future. Well, I want to ask you about a few aspects of Japanese baseball history that you have written about, in some cases at great length. And the first is the history of Aichi Sawamura, who I think American fans have heard the name of a lot recently as they're getting to know Yoshinobu Yamamoto, if they didn't know him

already. What you often hear about him is that he won three Sawamura Awards in a row. He is the second Japanese pitcher ever to do that after Masaichi Kaneda, the all-time wins and strikeouts leader. And you always hear it described as it's the NPB equivalent of the Cy Young Award. People know something about Cy Young probably, but they might not know so much about Aichi Sawamura. So can you enlighten anyone who doesn't know who that award is named after and why? Absolutely. So Sal Amore had a fascinating short life.

He is, in 1934, he is a high school pitcher pitching in Kyoto. He's a star pitcher, considered the best pitcher down in that part of Japan. And 1934 was when the All-American team led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig come to Japan. And the organizers of the All-Nippon team, the team that was designed to face the All-Americans, decided they really wanted Sal Amora to join. But they had to convince him because he was still a high scorer. And there was a rule back then that if you played against a professional, you could no longer play school ball at any level. So he had to quit his high school team

and he had to forego college to play against the All-Americans, which he did. And he became famous because on November 20th, 1934, he pitched pretty much the game of his life. It ended up as a one-run game where he lost 1-0 on a Lou Gehrig home run, but he had a no-hitter going through the first four innings. He struck out Charlie Gerringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmy Fox in a row at one point, and he had the shutout going, I think, until the seventh inning when Ge when Gary hit his home run. So he became pretty much a national hero the next morning. It's important to realize that during the 34 tour, other than this game, most of the games were blowouts. Most of the time, the All-Americans were barely even trying, and they were winning by double digits.

So for Selmer to hold the All-Americans to one run and almost win the game was really remarkable. And he's only 17 years old. So after the tour, he signed a pro contract with the Yomiuri Giants. And he pitches in the Japanese leagues throughout, let's see, from 36 to I think it was 38, I think, when he's drafted for the first time. And he serves time in the Japanese army, and he ends up doing three stints in the Japanese army before he's killed as his transport is headed off to the Philippines in the 1940s. So what is remarkable about Salamora is just like Babe Ruth is not only a ballplayer, not only one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, he's also a symbol of American culture.

So Salamora is like a symbol of Japanese culture because I look at it that his life had kind of three stages. early period in the 1930s, Japan is still trying to prove itself as being equal to the big Western powers of England, Germany, the United States. And Sawamura takes on the best American baseball players out there, and he almost defeats them. And he shows that he's basically their equal. So he becomes a national symbol of Japanese pride at that point. And during the war, he was a common soldier, but at the same time, he was used as a propaganda machine. He would write articles, probably ghostwritten, that were published in baseball magazines. And they talked about the Japanese army life and, you know, how he was proud to do his duty. And then he's killed. And after the war, when Japan and the United States are reconciling,

he becomes a symbol of what was wrong during the war, of how so many promising lives were wasted due to militarism. And the Japanese people looked back at the war as a mistake that they were brought into by militaristic leaders and so he becomes a hero yet again as kind of a loss a lost hero if you will kind of a james dean type in a way and that's in 1947 is during that period that the salamore award is named after him and And I wanted to ask just about the alternate history, the what ifs, if Japanese players had come to MLB before they ended up doing so, because it was said, I don't know if this is apocryphal or whether it is accurate that Connie Mack was interested in signing Salamora to a major league contract. Is that true Or is that kind of... I believe it is true. I have read in sources from the time period, contemporary sources, that Mack was interested. But he wasn't

interested in bringing him over to a major league team. He was interested in signing him into a minor league contract. And, you know, because he's only 17 years old and getting him to mature. And he saw a great deal of potential there. It's my opinion that very few Japanese players of the 1930s through early 1950s could have made the major leagues straight out of the Japanese leagues. There's a lot of talent there. And if they had gone to the minor leagues, they perhaps could have moved up into the major leagues. But I see very few players that could have just gone straight over. Now, one of your books, Mashi, the Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the first Japanese major leaguer who, of course, came over and played for the Giants in the 60s.

And then there was a long, long hiatus between Murakami and finally the influx of Japanese players after Nomo. So that, I think, maybe is an even more interesting hypothetical. If he had not been forced to return to NPB, where he went on to pitch for many years, if he had stayed, if others had followed sooner in his footsteps, how do you think that would have changed Japanese baseball and American baseball? Yeah, I agree with you. because Mashi came out of nowhere. He was a minor leaguer in Japan in 1964 when he came over to the U.S. into the U.S. minor leagues and then got moved up to the San Francisco Giants. So he was basically a nobody and he could prove that he could succeed at the major league level.

So by the mid 1960s, as you basically said, you know, there's talent in Japan that could have at the major league level. So by the mid-1960s, as you basically said there, you know there's talent in Japan that could have come over. So if they had opened up at that time, well, first of all, of course we would have seen a lot more Japanese in the major leagues, but I think that would have been detrimental to the Japanese leagues. At that time, I don't think the Japanese leagues would have been strong enough to survive. I was about to say they wouldn't have been strong enough to survive a rating of their players. But yes, they would have survived, but they would have not, in my opinion, grown the way they did

to become as strong as they did if they had been rated the way, say, the Mexican leagues or other maybe Latin American leagues were rated. Yeah, or the Negro Leagues for that matter, which, yeah, I mean, those are domestic, but still, yeah, right. That's the best example, of course, yes. Yeah. I know you've met Murakami and you wrote about him. How does he feel about his career in retrospect and the fact that his MLB career, at least, was cut

off quickly? So he has a lot of regrets, actually, because he came over in 1964 as basically an exchange student, minor league exchange. And he makes the September call to the Giants, and he signed a contract with the Giants for the 1965 season. But he's still morally under contract with the Nankai Hawks, just not legally, because to come over to the minor leagues in the U.S., he has to sign a contract with the Giants that says, you know, I'm now part of the Giants, and the Giants can retain my contract for this sum, I believe it was $10,000. And the Giants exercised that right at the end of the 1964 season. So Mashi ends up having signed two contracts before the start of the 1965 season, one with the Giants and one with his team,

the Nankai Hawks. So he's put in a difficult legal situation without going into all the detail, because it does take up chapters in my book. It's very complicated. The giants and the Hawks basically come to the realization that the mistakes have been made. There's translation mistakes. There's kind of moral obligations going on. And they tell Mashi.

So at the end of the 65 season, you may choose whether you stay in San Francisco or come back to the Nankai Hawks. Moshi feels obligated to go back to the Nankai Hawks because the Hawks, and especially the manager of the Hawks, were the ones who signed him out of high school, who allowed him to go to the U.S., who took care of him. So he feels that he needs to go back to the Hawks, as he puts it, to be a moral human being. He is still proud of that choice, and he still regrets that choice, because he gave up something that made him truly happy, which was living in the United States. He loves coming to the States.

He loved playing in the major leagues. He loved the camaraderie, the freedoms. He just had the time of his life. So to this day, he says I made the right choice, but at the same time, it was the wrong choice. Well, I was going to ask you whether you think that the impact on Japanese baseball in the past few decades has been positive or negative. I'm sure it's a bit of both again, but when you first attended, that was, I guess, right before Nomo left, probably, right? Correct. So much has changed since then.

And we're seeing that this offseason with Yamamoto, with Yuki Matsui, with, well, Otani, of course, with Imanaga, right? And so, obviously, at first, it was just a trickle. And those players had to prove themselves. And in many cases they did stunningly. But is there a point at which it becomes detrimental? You know, even though there's, I think, a lot of national pride and the players who go over to MLB and have success. But have they set things up such that it's not too much of a talent drain to take away from NPB?

Or has it gotten to the point or could it get to the point where it becomes a threat or at least a hindrance to the success of Japanese baseball domestically? It's a very good question. And it's something that both as a writer I've been wondering about for the last 20 some years. that both as a writer I've been wondering about for the last 20-some years, and I'm sure all fans and people involved professionally in MPB are wondering and are concerned about. Since NOMO, what we've seen in Japan is not that the league ends up being hurt, but that new players are rising to the occasion and becoming stars, and that with the influx of players to MLB and then also coming back, and with fans and young players,

and I'm talking about pre-high school players having watched MLB games now on Japanese TV for 20-some years, 30-some years, I think the level of play has risen in Japan. Players are certainly bigger and stronger than they were before. They're using analytics. They're using training methods that both MLB and Japan were not using 20, 30 years ago. So I think the level of play is stronger now. And I think there's enough talent base in a country where baseball is still the dominant sport and so many millions of kids play the game, there'll be enough talent coming through to keep the Japanese league strong. And even with some of their best players going to the United States, the big question I think is now what really happens in the future is does Japan decide, okay, enough's enough.

We want a World Series. We want one of our teams to be as good as the New York Yankees. Do they start importing foreign players, top foreign players, and try to convince them to come to Japan in the peak of their careers to form super teams in Tokyo or Osaka or Hiroshima? I don't know if it will happen, but that's certainly a possibility. Although I do think that Japan is pretty happy with their victories in the World Baseball Classic, for now at least. Right. Yeah, and I guess to go back to the analogy of the Negro Leagues, I mean, one thing that did those leagues in was the talent drain, and another was the fact that they weren't compensated for their

players of course that it really was rating that often there was uh no money whatsoever and if there was it wasn't anything close to fair value at least mpp teams are getting something although i guess under the current posting system one could argue that it's not really fair value since it is limited and obviously the the player is getting much more than the team, which is maybe appropriate. But I wonder if that changes the calculus of, you know, we develop the player and we organize our franchise around the player and then potentially the player leaves after a certain number of seasons

and we aren't left empty-handed, but we're not full-handed either. Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not really sure. I mean, the Oryx Buffaloes are going to come away with a very fat paycheck. And with Japanese salaries being in the low millions for star players as opposed to the upper millions, they might be able to use that money to hire some free agents, to develop a lot of young players, to improve the team in many different ways.

So as a transaction, it may actually work out well, even though they're losing one of the greatest Japanese pitchers, maybe of all time. We don't really know yet, but he certainly has the potential. But I think we'll have to wait and just see on a player by player basis, I think, for the short term. Yeah. I wonder, as someone who follows Japanese baseball so closely and sometimes from afar, what strategies you've developed to do that? Because we were lamenting on the podcast not

long ago that Yamamoto, when he was pitching in the Japan series, we couldn't watch it. It was basically inaccessible. And this is a huge star pitching on the biggest stage, about to get hundreds of millions of dollars and come to MLB, and you just couldn't see it. I mean, forget about the time difference. There was just no real way to stream it, right? So what do you think NPP could or should do better to market itself overseas if that's something that it's even interested in doing? And how do you get around those kinds of challenges? Well, personally, I don't get around them. It's very frustrating. I'm going to do a little shout out to something I subscribe to. It's called JNext TV. I just started subscribing

right at the end of this past season, and it basically allows you to stream Japanese cable television. So the games that are on the stations that they offer, you can watch. That's nice. However, they did not carry the Japan series. I do not understand exactly why. I mean, obviously it's contractual reasons, but I don't understand how they ended up in that situation. So that's something that has bothered me for 30 years, is that Japanese baseball almost seems unsure of itself. It almost seems to doubt that anybody outside of Japan could possibly be interested.

During COVID, Korean baseball took a huge leap forward when they were showing their games. And Japan did not follow suit. The Pacific League is trying. They have an entire marketing department, I understand, to try to get more interest overseas. But the Central League has not done anything to my knowledge. And it's very frustrating.

You know, I love Japanese baseball. knowledge. And it's very frustrating. You know, I love Japanese baseball. I've loved it for 30 years, and I've been trying to spread the word through my work about how great it is. And then we have the league itself dragging this giant anchor, trying not to, although it does seem like they're trying not to show off what a great product they have. It's very frustrating. Yeah. So can you tease what you're working on next, or is that still under wraps?

Yeah, I can tease it. You actually kind of brought it up a little bit, some of the questions I haven't been able to answer. I've always focused on the history, especially the older history. I enjoy it very much as a historian. history, especially the older history. I enjoy it very much as a historian. But as I was sitting in the ballparks, I realized I don't know much about the inner workings of current Japanese baseball. So the next book is going to focus pretty much on the game off the field. I'm interviewing an umpire, a general manager, some lawyers, hopefully one of the famous beer girls, a manager, a scout, and reporters, of course, to see what's going on behind the game and how it differs from the U.S.

So hopefully it will answer some questions about exactly when did the cheering start and why. There are books out there, by the way, who have already looked at things like that. And obviously I'll be drawing on previous people's work as well. Well, that sounds great. I will look forward to it. And people can find all of your existing books and that one when the time comes

at your website, robfitz.com. Thank you so much for coming on and for all the scholarship. It's been my pleasure, Ben. All right. If you're interested in hearing more about some of the subjects Rob and I discussed, I have a few earlier Effectively Wild episodes to shout out. On 13-11, we talked to former professional pitcher Rick Teasley about what it's like

to play in front of fans in other countries amid that coordinated chanting. On 16-21, we talked to Emma Ryan Yamazaki, who directed the documentary Koshin, Japan's Field of Dreams, about that famous high school baseball tournament, the cultural conflicts about coaching and the abuse of amateur players. And on 1816, we talked to Karyo Nakagawa about the history of baseball in Japan and the role of baseball among Japanese Americans in the early 20th century and during World War II. Now we turn our attention to Cuba, birthplace of Yariel Rodriguez, the 26-year-old pitcher who is

a free agent now. Rodriguez actually pitched in Japan for the past few seasons, but he sat out 2023 after defecting following the World Baseball Classic. In 2014, following many defections, Cuba allowed some players to sign in Japan and South Korea to try to ward off further defections and to try to dissuade players from the very dangerous defections that players like Yasiel Puig undertook. And so some other players who've taken the Rodriguez route include Adoles Garcia, Oscar Colas. In 2018, MLB reached a deal with the Cuban Baseball Federation to end the trafficking of Cuban players by enabling them to sign as international free agents, just like players from Taiwan or Japan or Korea can. But the Trump administration nixed that deal the following year. According to a Cuban state-run newspaper, 635 players defected between 2016 and early 2022, and more have followed since, Rodriguez among them.

in early 2022, and more have followed since, Rodriguez among them. Rodriguez was with the Chinichi Dragons, but when he defected he left that team too, he established residency in the Dominican Republic, and he's probably about to cash in. But not every player who tries to go from Cuba to the US despite the US embargo is so successful, and The Last Out is a documentary about three of them whose dreams didn't pan out. Movie won the Special Jury Award at the Tribeca Thank you. or ballplayer, Pelotero, the 2012 documentary about players being signed out of the Dominican, this is, of course, about Cuba. And we will talk to co-director Sammy Khan after a snippet from the trailer. There's plenty of players everywhere. There's plenty of players everywhere, but they look for the type of a kid that people will fall in love with, a hero.

I'm joined now by Sami Khan, who, along with Michael Gassert, co-directed and also co-produced The Last Out. Welcome, Sammy. Hey, thanks for having me, Ben. So what inspired you to make this movie, and then what inspired you to stick with it? Because it appears to have been a years-long process that took twists and turns that you could not possibly have anticipated. process that took twists and turns that you could not possibly have anticipated? Yeah. So I grew up the son of immigrants in a kind of dumpy factory town on the Canadian border with Michigan. And baseball for me was a way to just assimilate, was a way to make sense of my surroundings. My parents had no clue what was going on. They didn't have the support to

help me integrate into society in the way that native-born kids do. So I relied on baseball. And so it always had this sort of central part in my life. And then as I got older, I started to really gravitate towards these stories, these immigrant stories of baseball players who, you know, they didn't go from Ontario to Detroit. They went from the Dominican Republic to Jupiter, Florida. They went from Baracoa, Cuba to Minneapolis, Minnesota. And in their stories, I saw my own family story. I'm not Cuban, but my father, my parents,

who they couldn't provide everything in terms of social support when I was growing up, but they took these incredible risks for us to make a better life for our family. So that was really a sort of emotional genesis for the project. And as it happened, when I got to that point in my life in sort of early, mid 2010s, there was the story of all of these Cuban ballplayers who were fleeing Cuba, seeking these million dollar contracts and a better life for their families.

And it's one thing to decide, okay, I want to make a movie about players who've defected from Cuba that are following their baseball dreams and trying to support their families. It's another then to find the perfect players to follow and to gain their trust and their permission and to get the access that you did to the point where you are following players as they're crossing borders and just being able to film certain scenes that, you know, really harrowing events in these players' lives. So how did you go about finding players who were willing to let you in the way that the three that you chose did? Yeah, I mean, I'll start off by saying at the beginning of this project,

I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to start. And, you know, I think one of the best decisions I did was partner with Mike and or third partner, John, who are more talented than I am, helped me make me look good. And so after we partnered up, we then, you know, we started thinking about stories in this world. in a 60-degree way was the story of Gustavo Dominguez, who repped Rene Orocha, the first defector from the Cuban national team. Rene played for the Cardinals for a number of years. And Gus had then become the sort of go-to guy for many, many of the sort of first wave of Cuban defectors in the 90s into the early 2000s. And then over the course of two plus decades in baseball and the sort of gray area between where the rules sort of break down, Gus had crossed over and in the eyes of the U.S. government broken some laws and been prosecuted and jailed.

So we started with Gus. We worked on securing access with Gus. And we thought we were telling this hopeful story about this guy who'd kind of been caught between two countries, between sort of dictatorship, communist dictatorship in Cuba, and then the United States, kind of this ideological driven commitment towards an embargo, which doesn't really make sense in the 21st century. But then when Gus mentioned that he had these three ballplayers down in Costa Rica, our focus shifted where we realized we weren't telling a story that was mostly in the past about Gus's backstory and about what happened in the 90s. But we were telling a present tense story about what was going to happen with Gus and these three remarkable guys in Costa Rica, Happy, Carlos and Baró. So as a viewer, it's very hard not to root for those three. Happy Olivares, who is not happy for the entirety of the movie, but is surprisingly happy given what he goes through.

Carlos O. Gonzalez and, as you said, Victor Barreau. Now, as people know, hearing those names, it's not a spoiler to say that they haven't made it big in baseball. We're not watching them play in the majors these days. So you know how the story ends in that sense. But you didn't know how the story would end as you were making this movie. They didn't know how that aspect of the story would end. Did you go into this thinking we're going to document players who are going to strike it rich and become big stars and we'll be there at the ground floor watching them do it? Or did you have doubts?

Did you think this might not work out? And either way, this will be a compelling movie, something we want to document. Did you see it going one way or another? Were you prepared for both eventualities? You know, I think at the beginning, we bought the hype, you know, and, you know, Gus is like a great salesman. That's why he's had tremendous success in baseball and this particular side of baseball. So we bought the hype. We thought, you know, even Happy, which we sort of saw, it's like, yeah, he's kind of doesn't have the greatest tools or, you know, scouting jargon and whatnot. But there's teams coming to watch him and there is a desire we're seeing a desire from these major league teams to sign all of these guys and happy

could have been thrown in into a sort of multi-package deal which is sort of what gus was presenting so at the outset of the film, we thought, you know, they were all going to sign. And remember, this is like, we shot this movie over many, many years. So this was 2015, early 2015, which was the height of the market for Cuban baseball players. Like Puig was sort of in his prime. Cespedes, Chapman. These guys were gone for peanuts compared to what Otani is getting paid today. So teams were throwing money hand over

fist to a lot of players who, even to our untrained eye seemed like fringe players. And, you know, we would be there talking with our guys about, oh, this guy signed for $2 million. And they'd be like, what? That's crazy. I used to play that guy in the Siri Nastia now. He sucks. It's like, well, we're going to sign then. I think the film itself adopts our perspective where you sort of go on that journey where the months we're on, the market shifts, the showcases, the players flounder at the showcases,

and then ultimately the baseball world sort of passes them by. Yeah. And I think it's, if anything, a more effective film for that. Who knows how it would have worked out if they had just become big stars and wealthy beyond their dreams. But as someone says in the movie, for everyone who does hit pay dirt and get that big deal, there are dozens, hundreds who don't. And you never hear about them. And because of your movie, we've heard about these three. And it is obviously it's poignant, it's sad in some ways, but also sort of inspiring to see them persist despite all of these challenges. So even if it wasn't what they expected or what you expected, I think at least for the purposes of the film, it ends up being more memorable in some ways.

Yeah. I mean, I appreciate that, Ben. And I think the challenge now is with the consolidation of power and money in pro sports. There's so much money in pro sports. And there are opportunities to tell stories about sports like never before. And yet the stories that do get told are very familiar, right? They're like access-driven stories around celebrity, around the sort of cachet of iconic sports franchises. But it seems strange where, you know, at this moment where there is so much money there's so much attention in sports we're not talking about like all of the costs that it takes to create this like superstructure of modern gladiators or like this incredible sports industrial complex. And because people, regular people identify

with sports, not just for the celebrity factor, that's part of it, but it's that resilience that you just talked about. And what inspires us about athletes is their ability to persevere on and off the field, right? It's like we can see in the game, it's like you strike out in the first at bat, but then you hit the game winner in the bottom of the ninth to lead your team to the, you know, the World Series. But like those guys have to persevere off the field too. And I think we love those things in athletes because we love those things in ourselves. And so I hope like we can sort of shift the focus to understanding what it takes, not just for the guys who make it, but also the guys and women and whatnot who don't make it.

Right. And I wonder whether your thoughts shifted about Gus, about the agent who's trying to make it happen for these guys. As you said, he sort of sold you on the potential of these players and he sold them on their own potential. And over the course of the documentary, you can see them gradually growing disillusioned with him and with some of the people who work for him. disillusioned with him and with some of the people who work for him as the months and years are dragging on, as they're trying to establish residency in Costa Rica, as just nothing's happening for them, which must be incredibly frustrating because the clock is always ticking for a professional athlete. And this is not the field of dreams. This is not heaven. This is not Iowa. This is a baseball purgatory where they don't know where they stand. And eventually it seems like they were sort of sold a bill of goods or they felt at least

like they were sweet talked into the potential of what could happen. And none of that panned out. Now, is that their responsibility? Is that his responsibility? Is there something exploitative going on here did you feel like there was a villain here a culprit or is it just the circumstances i don't think gus is a villain i think that lets us off the hook you know yeah did gus do things that were wrong yeah he, you know, like you said, he sort of sold a bill of goods that didn't match up with the reality, sold a promise that he couldn't deliver. And he would occasionally

double down on that. But I don't think like Gus is a villain. I don't even think he's a bad guy. I like Gus a lot. I really appreciate the honesty and openness he showed towards us over the course of the film. So he's just a human being. I just want to think about our own culpability in this, in a system where on the political side, there is this embargo, which is 60 plus years old, where it's ridiculous that, you know, whatever problems, political problems the U.S. has with Cuba, the embargo has not solved over six decades. So why are we still punishing people, and especially the Cuban people, because of that and in that moral gray area that the u.s government has created that the cuban government has created and then major league baseball has created because of the rules of international free agency what's right and wrong

is really hard to tell you know so that's that's the world that gus is operating in and certainly you know while not personally knowing them i came across stories with much more sinister actions and intentions with some of these bad faith operators and gus to me is just somebody who had good intentions wanted to make a living, but then in this moral gray area kind of lost his way a little bit. The players and Gus are pretty reticent when it comes to the topic of how the players got out of Cuba and what role, if any, Gus or any of the people who played in that. But I wonder how that process has changed, even since these three players were going through it. Because as you mentioned, I mean,

as you're making the movie, as is mentioned in the documentary, the so-called wet feet, dry feet policy ends under President Obama, right? So how has the US government's changing stance toward Cuba to the extent that it has changed and MLB's international free agent rules, et cetera, how has that changed the reality for players who might be going through something similar to the three that you followed now? I mean, I think the biggest shift is sort of like the bubble burst with Cuban players, right? So I think from just like a market perspective, like a market demand perspective,

there just aren't the dollars that there were, you know, when Rusty Castillo, it's like name from the past, was signing for whatever it was, $72 million in Yasmini Tomas. It's like name from the past was signing for whatever it was, $72 million in Yasmini Tomas. It's like, when has anybody ever talked about Rusty Castillo or Yasmini Tomas? And so I think that's like one of the big things is just the money's not there.

And yeah, maybe that will shift, but like where it was reaching in 2015, 2016 was just completely, completely bonkers. And the other thing that's happened because of this basically a mass exodus of Cuban ball players, there just isn't a lot of talent in Cuba anymore. Those guys have left, right? Or those guys are going to leave. So then the teams want players who are younger and younger because they're IDing these Dominican kids when they're whatever prepubescent or on the verge of

adolescence. So it's in the belly of the capitalist beast. That is really one of the dominant factors. And of course, you know, when Trump came to power, he has his, you know, big political base in Florida with anti-Castro Cuban Americans. So whatever openness had been created in the final years of the Obama administration went out the window, and Biden's rolled back some of that stuff. But still with Biden, you know, you have, you know, to be honest, like an 80 year old politician who governs like it was 1992. Right. So not much has changed on a fundamental level. I'm not as informed as I once was about Major League Baseball and what they're trying to do. I do know that,

you know, there is an active effort. I was actually talking to some of the organizers the other day. In Colombia, in a few weeks, actually, there is going to be basically an exile Cuban squad that's going to play in the Intercontinental baseball series against, you know, the U S and a couple, a handful of other nations. So the efforts to either have like an exile team or unify the Cuban team are maybe the most promising development that's happened recently because we, we live at a time of just like completely complete political intransigence and greed, which doesn't really give me a lot of hope for the future. And it makes me worry, too, about the future of baseball on the island of Cuba itself.

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking earlier in this episode to guests about baseball in Korea and Japan and what effect, if any, the players going from those countries to MLB has had of the cautionary tale there when it comes to people leaving for other shores, greener pastures potentially, you know, in different ways in this case. But as you said, it has had a huge effect on the quality of play in Cuba, the players who are remaining there. I know that the WBC squad did pretty well earlier this year, but of course, for the first time, opened up the roster to major league players, not all of whom wanted to accept that invitation. Obviously, that was quite controversial, but that was maybe a sign of sort of the desperation or the sapping of talent there. So what have you seen or heard about the impact that that has had on the quality of play in Cuba or the enthusiasm for the sport there?

Yeah, I mean, it's been catastrophic, really. There's contraction in the Serie Nationale that's been going on now for almost a decade. And it's not just the exodus of these, you know, great players the last 10, 15 years. It's also baseball doesn't occupy the same place in the global zeitgeist in Latin America that it once did and in the Caribbean that it once did. And I think that's on Major League Baseball, really. You know, it's like you can sort of track over the last 10, 15 years. And it's like an inverse chart of, on one hand, the number of Yankee jerseys that you would see

out in the squares in Cuba with like the number of Messi and Ronaldo jerseys, which to me was, you know, sort of one of the anecdotal tests of the health of the game of baseball in Cuba. And because Cubans, given the embargo, given the limitations and repression of their own government, they want to be part of a global culture, right? And where baseball is still, you know, Major League Baseball is still stuck in its ways and is also kind of trapped

in the 90s to a certain degree. Cuban kids, Cuban youth want to step out of that. They want to be part of like vibrant global youth culture that soccer is, that basketball is. So I think for the health of baseball in Cuba,

it's got to, the game of baseball, Major League Baseball in particular, have to find a way to stay relevant with those young people. Otherwise, you know, it's just going to be like the NFL in, I don't know, maybe the CFL, the CFL, which used to play in the United States. You know, baseball has a religious quality in

Cuba, so it will never completely disappear. It'll always be there. But unless global baseball culture can reinvent itself in a way that is more urgent or relevant, then we are basically witnessing the death of Cuban baseball, in my opinion. Is an international draft something that you talk to players about or thought about? I don't know how that would apply to Cuban baseball, in my opinion. Is an international draft something that you talked to players about or thought about? I don't know how that would apply to Cuban players, if at all. But obviously, that's been a subject of some discussion between the Players Association and the league. And that discussion hasn't borne fruit as of yet. And some people think it's a great idea. Some people think it's a disaster waiting to happen or not that the present situation is so

great either. Do you think that that would address any of the issues that you observed as you were making this movie? I mean, I don't know. On a philosophical level, I think I personally have issues with the international draft. Sure. Or any draft. Any draft. yeah. Our guys didn't specifically bring that up. But one thing that I think is a first step, and I didn't fully have an appreciation for this, but say you're coming from like Baracoa, Cuba, or Mayari, Cuba, it's like your exposure to 21st century global capitalism is much different than if you're coming from Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, or Caracas, Venezuela, or Seoul, South Korea, or Osaka, Japan, right? It's like, despite the growth of the internet and global youth culture, young players' experience of capitalism is just very, very different. So as a first step, and I was just talking about this with some of these Cuban players, former players the other day, it's like informing them about the process, right? So that

they can take what people like Gus is selling them with a grain of salt. You know, it's appreciating the responsibility that Gus has to them, the legal responsibility he has to them. Because there's just so much misinformation out there. And there's just so much bullshit being peddled by these operators who are operating in this gray area. As for the mechanics of making the movie, because it stretched on for so long, you couldn't be constantly with these players and you didn't know how your story would end or when it would end. And you're also filming on multiple fronts, right? You're filming Gus sometimes at his home in LA.

You're filming the players in Costa Rica. You're filming them as they go to the DR and elsewhere. And again, some of the scenes where you had a camera person there documenting these moments where I was thinking, gosh, I'm surprised they were even able to film here, right? So how did those moments get captured and what negotiation or compromise was there? So we started the project with bigger cameras, more equipment, but then we realized that in order to get the intimacy and the adaptability that we needed, we just needed to be much more nimble and much smaller. And when we did that, the characters, the players, they appreciated that. And it allowed them to sort of welcome us in in a much more profound way.

With the access, with the players themselves, we treated them like human beings. We also wanted them to treat us like human beings. We weren't sort of movie-making machines, but that we were flawed human beings that would mess up, that would ask inappropriate questions, but that our hearts, our intentions were in the right place. And I think they appreciated that, that the opportunity to talk about the process of filmmaking. So it was rare where there'd be a moment where they would tell us to stop rolling because we had established the boundaries of this is what you can document.

This is what you can't document. And we never took the access. We never took their relationship for granted. And for anyone who watches the movie, again, you're going to really feel for and fall for these players. I don't know how regularly you're still in touch with them, but for anyone who wants kind of a postscript, how are Happy and Carlos and Victor doing these days? Yeah. I mean, we talk once a month, once every couple months, it's been great to have the movie out there. I think they all feel a certain validation by what we chronicled in the movie. And of course, their opinions we value tremendously.

So Happy's making a life for himself in Houston quite successfully. It's a grind because American capitalism is tough. quite successfully. It's a grind because American capitalism is tough. And Carlos is making a go of it in Miami and has built a really strong foundation down there. With Barro, the picture isn't quite as bright. It's just unfortunately one of those twists of fate that he missed out on wet foot, dry foot policy that ended. And then he was in the Dominican Republic. So it's been, as he reaches his late 20s now, obviously the door is slammed shut on the possibility of baseball stardom anywhere.

And it's just a matter of trying to find another career, another viable life plan. So to be honest, we worry about him and we hope that he can find some other path because it's hard when the promise of millions of dollars is within reach. A couple of the contracts were within reach and then it just disappeared. I can't imagine what that must feel like, especially for someone who's been told their whole life that they're a phenom. Yeah. Did what they went through, as far as you're able to tell, sap their feelings for baseball or change their feelings for baseball? I would imagine going through that myself, it would be hard not to be bitter about that if that was your dream, if that dream didn't pan out in a painful way that maybe you'd need a break from baseball. Maybe it would be tough to follow the sport, love the sport in the same way when it didn't love you back in the way that you wanted it to? Do you know if baseball is or will be at some point still part of their lives,

or have they left it behind a bit the way that it left them behind? The first part of the answer is that they're really talented baseball players, and baseball remains a central part of the Cuban experience, the Cuban-American experience. So there will always be softball games, pickup softball games, or organized hardball games where their talents will be sought out. So the game will always figure into their lives in some way. But on that deeper level that you get at, no, I don't think they feel the same way about baseball that they did when they left Cuba in 2014, early 2015. I think it has left, like baseball left a kind of moral stain on them. They feel scarred by the mechanics of the market, by Gus's actions, by their own mistakes, their own family's mistakes. So that love and passion that they had that you see in the beginning of the movie,

I don't think is still there and has been transferred on to other things like their families, like soccer. And that's sad to see. And their stories aren't often told, but they are told in The Last Out. So you can find out where to watch it. Go to thelastoutfilm.com slash watch the last out documentary. That's the page which we will link to where you can buy or rent it. It's at Prime Video. It's at Apple TV+. It's at Google Play. It's at Vudu Fandango.

It's not hard to find. Thank you very much, Sammy, for making the movie and coming on to talk about it. Thanks so much, Ben. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. And one last reminder, if you're hearing this not long after it went up, please send us your suggestions for stories we missed this year for any team or teams of your choice.

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