The Talk of New York Ichiro does Big Apple 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
イチローのニューヨークデビュー 大リーグのシアトル・マリナーズに移籍したイチローは、ニューヨークでも注目の的。当地デビューとなった対ニューヨーク・ヤンキース戦の記事は、ニューヨーク・タイムズ紙の一面で取り上げられました。筆者も2人の子供を連れて、ヤンキースタジアムにイチローの出場する試合の観戦にでかけました。

A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times had two different front-page articles about two different Japanese individuals. It is certainly the first time I remember this happening. The first article was about Mr. Koizumi, who had been elected LDP president. There was a picture of him, and his mop-top hair, which has received notice here.

There was a picture for the second article, too, but this was not a picture of the individual in question; rather, it was a picture of six young men standing in a row, naked from the waist up; painted on each of their chests was a single blue letter, and together they spelled out "I-C-H-I-R-O." The Seattle Mariners were in town. It was the night of Ichiro's New York debut.

I hadn't been to "the Stadium" in a few years. (Yankee Stadium is "the Stadium." Shea Stadium, where the Mets play, is "Shea.") The weather was nice, Roger Clemens was pitching for the Yankees, and Ichiro would be leading off for the Mariners. It seemed as good a night as any to take my kids out to the Stadium for their first Major League ball game.

Getting the tickets was easy. I went online, found good seats and bought them, in the span of just a few minutes. I would be able to pick the tickets up at the Stadium. In case you're interested, the "damage," as they say, was extensive: The tickets themselves each cost $33 (¥4,000) — the range is between $17 (¥2,050) and $48 (¥5,800) for reserved seats, $14 (¥1,700) for unreserved, and $10 (¥1,200) for the bleachers, the seats way out in center field, where you get bleached by the sun — with an extra $4 (¥480) each for the company running the Web site.

If you live in the city, you take the subway: the 4 train from the East Side and the B or the D from the West Side. The trains at that time are full of Yankee shirts and caps, and everyone's talking baseball. On the night we went, it was the usual multi-ethnic mix on the train, but this time with a noticeable number of Japanese people.

Yankee Stadium is a funny place. From a distance, it's an impressive structure, but if you go there by subway, you come out of the station and are right next to the Stadium, and from up close, its large, mostly windowless walls don't seem much different from a large factory or prison. Once you pass through the gates, you continue into an interior that makes no effort to charm or please: The corridors are all unadorned concrete and metal, perpetually smelling of spilt beer. But then you walk up the ramp to your seat, see the gorgeous green field spread out in front of you, and you feel you are in a special place.

There was a good crowd, especially considering that it was a Tuesday evening early in the season. When Ichiro came to bat, he was announced, of course, by his full name, as all players are, and he was greeted by some gentle booing. Opposing players, when they come to bat, are usually ignored; if they are stars, they are booed; if they are really special, they have things thrown at them. The fact that fans reacted to him at all was actually a sign of respect: This is somebody worth booing.

And, at least as far as I could see, there wasn't any cheering when Ichiro came to bat. If you cheer too loudly for the other team at Yankee Stadium, you usually end up with someone "spilling" beer on you. So all the Japanese in the stands who were cheering for Ichiro were undoubtedly cheering in their hearts.

Ichiro, as it turned out, didn't do all that much. In the seventh inning, after he made the third out, there was a stream of Japanese getting up and leaving, figuring that Ichiro wouldn't come up again.

There were a lot of hits and home runs. Seattle took the lead, and the Yankees came back and tied the game, but then Seattle went ahead for good on a home run that really wasn't a home run.

My kids, surprisingly, insisted on staying to the very end of the game (and were bleary-eyed for school the next morning), and Ichiro, as a matter of fact, did get another at bat, and so I was able to witness a minor historical event: the first hit by a Japanese player at Yankee Stadium. It was a little roller that went halfway to the mound and stopped. Ichiro eventually came around to score the first run scored by a Japanese player at Yankee Stadium. Sasaki came in and saved the game for the Mariners. After the final out, as always, Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," was played over the public address system as the remainder of the crowd filed out and headed for the subway for the ride home.

Shukan ST: May 25, 2001

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