Sushi and Home Runs

Takamatsu, Japan

By Yas Mamemachi

Shepherd at bat (Photo by Yas Mamemachi)

t was a Saturday afternoon in late October. The members of the Kagawa Olive Guyers, the champions of the Shikoku Island baseball league (presently, Shikoku-Kyushu Islands baseball league) were in a practice session at their home ground in Takamatsu.

The Shikoku Island league is one of two independent professional baseball leagues in Japan (a third independent league will start in 2009). That evening, the third game of the Grand Championship to decide who would play against the other independent league champion team was scheduled.

The practice session was efficiently thorough, and both batting and fielding practice were being carried out in the small baseball stadium. A tall African player was taking part in the fielding practice at first base, simply catching one ball after another thrown to him by the in-fielders.

He is Shephard Sibanda, 21, from Zimbabwe. Although there are very few baseball players in that African country, he learned the American ballgame from a young Japanese aid worker when he was 11and has been captivated by it ever since.

He was had fun at practice, and his playing skills improved more quickly than expected. He was chosen to be a member of the first Zimbabwe national baseball team, which was established several years after he started playing. Unfortunately, the national team was dismissed due to the country’s socioeconomic destabilization.

With support from some Japanese aid workers and a former leading varsity baseball player in Japan, he participated in the 2004 tryouts for the independent league and signed with a team in Kagawa for two years.

About one hour had passed since the practice session started. Finally, Shepherd was “free” from his back-up roll and asked to take part in batting practice.

“It’s usually like this. The starting members and the better players are first. Simple as that,” says Shepherd. He focused on each ball thrown by the batting coach and hit them very hard, as if he were trying not to waste a second of his time in batting practice. Or it might be his only chance to express his emotion in Japan.

“When I received the call from Japan, saying ‘Congratulations, you are going to play baseball in Japan next year,’ I thought it was a Japanese aid worker’s joke and almost hung up saying thanks, anyway,” recalls Shepard. After he realized it was not a joke, he became busy with many parties to celebrate his move to Japan.

Once he was in Japan, the challenge on the field became more intense than what he and his family had expected. In terms of baseball skills and tactics, most Japanese baseball players were far better than he.

“Many young Japanese players have been trained in catching and throwing almost perfectly, which are the important basics of the game. They move quickly and their bat control is also on a different level, compared to mine,” Shepard continues

“Moreover, I had to learn some tactics of the game. For instance, I had never thought about how I should approach a count of two strikes and one ball, or two strikes and two balls. Back home everyone thinks baseball is simple because you just throw, catch and hit the ball, and then run from one base to another. There is no strategy in baseball in Zaimbabwe.”

Consequently, his baseball life in Japan started by observing how his Japanese teammates played and thought in practice. He tried to apply what he saw to his performance in the field, in hopes of accelerating his technical improvement in baseball.

During his first season, except for the trainer, none of the Japanese coaches or players could speak much English. “In the second season, which was last year, I could speak Japanese better than I could in the first season and some coaches could pick up words related to baseball and use them for communication with me, in addition to using body language, when they gave me some technical advice,” says Shepherd.

However, it was still not easy for him to improve for the Japanese professional baseball league. During the second season Shepherd played in 20 of 45 games, mostly as a pinch hitter, though he improved significantly and hit one home run.

Also, he later realized that part of his attitude adversely affected how the team’s manager and some of the coaches thought about him. According to the manager, he was especially disappointed when Shepherd took a day off from practice because he said some parts of his body were in pain. Such incidents caused the manager to form a distorted image of the African player, that he lacked the guts to play baseball seriously and might have been spoiled in Japan, with its far better socio-economic environment.

Such a distorted image easily led to politically incorrect jokes about Shepherd among some of the Japanese. They said, for instance, that they heard African players usually eat giraffe so McDonald’s in Japan is the great place for him to eat.

In truth, his breakfast is bread and a cup of tea or coffee, and his lunch is his staple food, sadza and beef. For supper, he eats sadza and beef or chicken with vegetables. Sadza is made with ground white maize and it looks like thickened oatmeal.

He loves sushi, too, especially after he’s had a good day in the field with his team.

“I am trying not to be bothered by such stories. They don’t know much about Zimbabwe and my life, just as many friends back home have no idea about Japan, except TOYOTA, HONDA, and the made-in Japan stuff. So, I don’t want to blame them,” says Shepherd.

The weak image of the African player and his batting average of about .100 in the second season were discouraging to the manager of the team, who always places top priority on making the team better in the coming season, from keeping him on the team. Shepherd was released soon after the last season ended.

Another opportunity knocks (Photo by Yas Mamemachi)

However, the many gods of Japan (In the indigenous religion of Japan all natural activities are managed by gods- wind gods, ocean gods, mountain gods, forest gods, water gods, and so on) may give him a second chance, perhaps because of his spirit of challenge.

He participated in tryouts for the other independent league and signed with a new team from Fukui, one of two teams to join the league in the 2008 season.

Some say the signing of the African player with the low batting average is part of the new team’s publicity plan. However, Shepherd will not listen to such backbiting, and says, “I believe the new team wants to see my potential baseball skills, and all I have to do is prove it and show my gutsy play in the field.”

During the previous two years in Takamatsu Shepherd had fun learning Japanese customs and the Japanese way of thinking off the field. “What impressed me the most was that many Japanese people care about others, regardless of whether they know the people or not. In Zimbabwe the situation is completely different. It is something like--I don’t care about you because I don’t know you--that kind of norm is accepted by most people,” he says.

That’s not to say that most Japanese are full of humanity, he knows. “I think most Japanese know that by helping others they help them become more comfortable in their lives, and that’s a smart way of living.”

“Moreover,” Shepherd continues, “I, like many Japanese, tend to respect my elders. I think it is another good way of living because, if someone is older than you, he or she may know more than you do because of his or her experience.”

The modest African says he knows himself in the ball park. His ultimate goal is not to play in the Japanese major leagues or the Major Leagues in the United States, but rather to establish a baseball academy and the first Zimbabwe baseball league back home someday.

He might be the first president of the Zimbabwe baseball association, too. “No, no, no,” says Shepherd with a smile. “I am not a managing type of guy, you know. I am comfortable practicing with young players or children in the field, with lots of sweat.”

“Let’s say, it would be great if I could still run with young players when I am 40-something. I keep practicing with children for hours. And one of the young players, let’s say, at age of 15, might say, ‘If the old man can do it, I can do it,’ and he continues to work hard. That kind of situation is what I am dreaming of,” says Shepherd.

No matter who and where you are, you are always waiting for an exciting moment to come. It is the moment to hear the umpire yell, “play ball” in the spring if you love baseball. That’s how Shepherd feels in Fukui, Japan.