It appears I have never posted the PDF of “The Eve of the Feast of Osiris” here. Now I have.
Kuma and Go
(Originally posted as a comment on this post, Hisashi Iwakuma agrees to deal with Dodgers, at Lookout Landing.)
Kuma is literally the only reason I developed an interest in MLB. I stumbled across livestreams of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, the sea rising incomprehensibly on the screen of my iPhone, a black video wipe across thousands of lives. I became depressed as the nuclear emergency was recognized and both incompetently handled and reported for over a week thereafter. Seeking hope and solace, I put my newfound expertise at navigating online Japanese media sources to work, and followed the 2011 campaign of the Tohuku-based Rakuten Eagles with pirate-stream 3 A.M. raccoon-eye enthusiasm.
They sucked. Kuma had tried to go MLB to Oakland after his seven years but an injury knocked him out of the contract negotiations and onto a long-ass stint on the DL. When he pressed his case to the MLB over the break in 2012 he was still recovering, no-one in the US (that mattered) knew who he was, and the M’s literally lucked into him.
He was benched longer than any other roster player in that season, sitting disconsolate and alone in the bullpen next to Antony Suzuki, the team’s translator. Suzuki literally sat between Iwakuma and his Mariners teammates, physically at the very end of the bench.
I was at a bunch of games early that year because opening day had produced a giant cluster-f in the concessions which led the Ms to offer freebie makeup tix to everyone who attended that game. The makeup tix were very cheap on Craigslist. I had a lot of opportunities to observe Kuma, shoulders slumped and isolated on the bench.
At one of these games, I was able to draw a smile and a hat tip as I waved my Eagles cap and called his name. A bit later in the season, on a Rainiers Turn Back the Clock day, he signed both my Iwakuma M’s jersey, purchased before his first start, and the Eagles cap. He included appropriate uniform numbers on each sig.
I was at his career-high strikeout game, 13, thrown immediately after returning from a whirlwind trip to Japan to say goodbye to his dying father. I was at his duel versus Darvish, in which he dominated the younger man. I’ll forever be denied my dream of Iwakuma vs. Tanaka, it seems. Last year, my wife and I adopted an aged black lab mix, formerly feral in Snohomish County. I attempted to name the 90-pound black behemoth Kuma. The dog over-ruled me, insisting on “Logan” instead. I was unable to attend Kuma’s no-hitter, as the unusual thunderstorms in the area that day ramped the big dog into a state of such fear and anxiety that he tore the door frame to my bath off as I attempted to shower in preparation for attending the game. We watched it together on the couch, my mild resentment at his neuroses growing with every whiff.
I would have to say, given my near total disinterest in the Mariners this spring during Kuma’s injury hiatus, it’s an unsettled question if my interest in MLB and Mariners baseball will survive his departure. I came to it late for reasons unrelated to family or tradition. I’m middle aged and don’t have kids. My dad is not a baseball fan. My next door neighbor, a senior who was a baseball fan and with whom I enthusiastically shared these past few years, died in his sleep the night before last. I can think of many other ways to spend my time.
Whatever happens, thanks, Kuma. You’ll always be my favorite ballplayer of all time. Ganburo!
Noooo
Ken texts me that Kuma’s been traded. God dammit.
I guess it will be interesting to see if I remain interested in Mariners baseball. Based on my attendance during his 2015 injury hiatus, I’m skeptical. I suppose I’ll still look into the gift cards, easily the best deal in tickets last year, but it’s entirely possible that my interest in MLB, uh, dies with Kuma’s trade.
Rest in Peace
(Originally posted in two parts on Facebook today)
My next door neighbor and good friend Dick Mitchell passed away at home in his sleep last night, December 5th, 2015. After I bugged him for a couple years, I finally got him to go to a game with us (and his family) at the tail of the 2014 season. He told me it was the first game at Safeco he’d been to in a long time (he said 14 years, but I think that overstates it). It was the last game he attended in person. RIP, Dick. I’ll miss you.
Dick was a real interesting fellow. He, along with Ken and Tod, are responsible for my interest in baseball. He was an enthusiastic Elk and a former national chair of that organization. He was born to a single mother before the war, and she raised him alone for the first period of his life. Later she married a man, Fred Mitchell, who Dick has described to me as the head of testing at Boeing during the war – he told me about getting picked up at school and driven to the site of the testbed B-29 crash into the Frye meatpacking plant as the plant burned. I thought that crash was just before the war, but in fact it was on February 18, 1943.
Later in the forties he had some sort of connection with Lloyd’s Rocket, the former service station at the foot of Capitol Hill where it shades into the ID. He told me that “they” had a sprint car and raced it, although he never drove it, which was somehow associated with the station.
He went into the service just before Korea and trained as a SeaBee, eventually helping to build the naval base at Guantanamo before coming home and starting his life and career. He was a construction electrician and a member of IBEW 77 until his retirement. I cajoled him into doing a little bit of lighting work on our deck about seven years ago, probably the last electrical project he ever did.
In the sixties and seventies, Dick has told me that he was active in civic efforts to bring an MLB team to Seattle. He was just old enough to remember the Rainiers’ first-season PCL championship, and I was pleased to give him a copy of the recent account of the Rainiers, “Pitchers of Beer”, and a replica cap for that team which was a stadium giveaway at at Mariners Turn Back the Clock night sometime in the past ten years.
After he read the book he told me excitedly about those efforts and how his group was able to meet with the aging diamond heroes of those Rainiers teams, who were included in the local organizing hoopla for obvious reasons.
He had both lost his first wife, Ruth, before I met him and found another partner also before I met him. Betty, his wife at the time he died, is still alive, but she is very strongly affected by dementia and it’s not clear to what extent she’ll process or understand his loss.
I’ve met two of Dick’s kids, possibly all of them, both daughters a bit older than me. One of them works at Safeco and I always stop and chat with her when I’m at a game.
He never met his biological father. He was very interested in my ongoing adoption reunion. I would call him in the middle of fun or interesting games and sometimes run over and watch them with him.
When my parents were here for Thanksgiving, we all paid a call together. It was the last time any of us would see him. He has been ailing, so his loss was not unexpected. He remained in his typical good spirits every time I saw him in the past few months.
I really will miss him. He was a good, funny, kind, and mischievous person.