New York Sign Language A NY Welcome for Irabu-san By BOB YAMPOLSKY	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
ＮＹ式の伊良部の歓迎 伊良部秀輝投手がニューヨーク・ヤンキースに入団して3ヵ月。試合での成功と失敗、マイナーリーグ落ち、そしてまた復帰と、めまぐるしく変わる状況に、ニューヨークのマスコミやヤンキースファンたちの反応もさまざまです。

New Yorkers like to have firm opinions about things: This is good, that is bad; I am right, you are wrong. But the spectacle of Hideki Irabu ― the anticipation, the promising debut, the swift fall, and the as yet inconclusive "comeback" ― has left New Yorkers baffled. Do we cheer or do we boo? In our confusion, the best we can do is crack jokes.

We started hearing about Irabu last fall, when he refused to play for the team that had the rights to him, the San Diego Padres. He would play only for the Yankees. Even at this early stage, when no one knew anything about Irabu, opinion about him was divided. Cynical observers believed his motives to be simple: He knew the Yankees would pay him much more money. Sentimental Yankee fans felt differently: Irabu was one of them, a true Yankee fan, and playing in New York was his dream.

In any event, the owner of the Yankees, George "the Boss" Steinbrenner, made it clear that he wanted Irabu, badly. This made negotiating easy for San Diego, which kept to its demands until Steinbrenner gave in. (For the rights to negotiate with Irabu, San Diego got the Yankees' top prospect and several million dollars.) Then an odd thing happened: Irabu suddenly wasn't sure that he wanted to become a Yankee; perhaps Chiba, after all, was where his heart really belonged. So Steinbrenner coughed up $12.8 million (¥1.48 billion, for a pitcher that no one in the Yankee organization had ever seen pitch), making Irabu the highest paid rookie in baseball history.

The date for his debut was carefully chosen, months in advance: July 9 at Yankee Stadium. The opponent was the weak-hitting Detroit Tigers, and it was a mid-week afternoon game, which usually means a small crowd. As we all know, with the eyes of the world on him, Irabu had a splendid debut before a sold-out Yankee Stadium ― it was a success all around. "BANZAI!" said the banner headline in the Post the next day, and even The New York Times ran the story on Page One.

How happy all Yankee fans would have been had the story continued in this vein. But he was hit hard in his next game, even though he won. And in his third start, in Milwaukee, he was hammered, and during that short performance Irabu very charmingly spit. One comedian described it this way: "Yankee pitcher Hideki Irabu spit at the fans in Milwaukee. To be fair, he spit through an interpreter." (Irabu said later that this wasn't true; he was spitting at the other team. This explanation did not win him much sympathy.) He got a lecture from the Yankee manager about manners and politeness, and the headline in the Post was, "SPIT HAPPENS."

Then came his fourth start, which was back in Yankee Stadium, against Seattle, the best-hitting team in the Majors. He made many bad pitches (now called Ira-booboos) and was hammered again, and the same fans that had stood and applauded him now stood and booed (that is, Ira-booed). And the next day, less than four weeks after his heroic debut, he was sent down to the minors (or, as the Post put it, IRA-BOOTED).

As I write this article, Irabu is back with the Yankees, at least for the time being. People here still believe that Irabu is a talented pitcher; the question now is whether he has what sports people call "the mental toughness" to cope with all the pressure that comes with playing for the Yankees. As one Yankee coach put it, Irabu has no problems "from the neck down."

Yankee fans all want Irabu to succeed ― there is no question about that. They like nothing better than standing and cheering their players. But if he does fail ― well, that will not be a total disappointment, either; at least the fans will have the satisfaction of booing him out of town.

In the meantime, though, New Yorkers will just have to sit and wait and make jokes about the whole situation. There have been a number of jokes, but I am happy to report that as far as I have heard, there has been none that is insulting in an ethnic or racial way. Perhaps the closest thing came in the form of a cartoon in a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine. An agent is trying to impress Steinbrenner with a player that he represents. "Let's show Mr. Steinbrenner what you can do with the bat," the agent is saying as the player advances to the plate. The player is Godzilla.

Shukan ST: Aug. 29, 1997

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