Review You Gotta Have Wa Prepared By Robert Whiting Presented In Ebook

up a big baseball fan, I always knew the sport was popular in Japan, I also always knew it was played differently but I didnt know why, Not necessarily played differently ruleswise though there is some of that, like ties for example, but culturally, there were different expectations of the players and the clubs.


Robert Whiting smoothly lays the differences out in this book, I worry sometimes that westerners dont always have a sensitivity to the nuanced differences in respective eastern cultures but he does.
Despite things that made my eyes pop out of my head, there was no condescension towards the Japanese for their strict training regimens and outdated way of playing the sport basetobase.
He talks about the history of the game, the way it grew, the significance it eventually took in Japanese society, and the protective nature many in Japan feel towards it.


Whiting doesnt shy away from criticizing the prejudicial nature Japanese teams and fans have towards “gaijin”, aka foreigners.
This is apparently goes double for the many black American players who played in Japan, as well as Japanese who are of African descent.
However, theres never a sense of selfrighteousness God knows, America has plenty of racism, He clearly lays out the different ways Japanese and Americans view the game and manage it, while passing no judgments.
Its a respectful take on the game and the people of the country,

Theres an updated version that came out inand I wish I read it, My copy is fromand no doubt many of the references and likely practices are dated thirty years later.
Japan was economically dominant in thes in a way it is not today and that plays a factor in some of the analyses.
But I appreciated what Whiting did with this subject and I feel far more knowledgeable as a result.
Injured players who "pitch through their pain", Fans who politely return foul balls, This witty and incisive book by the author of the acclaimed The Chrysanthemum and the Bat gives us an unprecedented look at Japanese baseball, as seen by baffled Americans from Babe Ruth to Willie Smith.
Blackandwhite photographs.
Robert Whiting image from The Japan Times

You Gotta Have Wa is a wonderful baseball book.
It has mucho information about the history and practice of besuboru in Japan, Some of the differences to the Western approach are stark, Whiting offers interesting bits on MLB players trying to survive in a very different sports culture, this is a mustread for anyone seriously interested in baseball, Whiting has written six other books on Japanese baseball, Domo arigato.

You can find a lovely profile of Whiting and his work sitelinkhere A fantastically wellresearched book about the idiosyncrasies of besuboru in Japan, particularly from the perspective of American baseball players and fans.
I know a hundred times more about Japanese baseball than I did before: good work, book! I felt, however, that Whiting could have written half as much as he did and I'd still know just as much.
Perhaps he felt that every single thing he researched belonged in writing, So it got boring in the middle, But theupdates preface and epilogue were fascinating bookends, with modern names that I recognized and updated context and developments in the system.
Ironically, it appears that the cookiecutter approach and fabled "team spirit" philosophy that helped make Japan a flawless manufacturing, moneymaking machine may not really suit baseball.
Japanesestyle quality control means that everyone has to do everything the same way, No one is allowed to think for himself, Nothing

is left to chance, or individual need, Managers and coaches demand blind obedience to traditional methods, and the players who don't go along are weeded off the assembly line.
The result is a passive approach to playing baseball, or as Reggie Smith once said, "They play as if they are punching a clock.
" You Gotta Have Wa is a comparative study of the cultural differences between American and Japanese baseball.
These differences are just in the style of play but also the role baseball plays in the wider culture of thesecountries.



Theres lots of history about when thesecultures inevitably meet on the field, A lot of the book though is delivered by explaining an element of the Japanese game, the history around such an element and the lengths Japanese baseball goes to venerate the practice.
Then the author goes into interview material from MLB players who played in Japan, Its an interesting method but by the last few chapters you get the point the Japanese like to practice baseball to death often to the detriment of their players health and always against the advice of MLB players whos opinions are dismissed out of hand by Japanese baseball management.



One of the most interesting elements in the book is the degree to which Japanese baseball culture plays a role in enforcing Japanese nationalism.
There are a lot of sour grapes about MLB players ability to smash records in Japan as well as scapegoating of American players when the overall team doesnt too well.
This was really interesting stuff but stopped short of calling out what was clearly a racial element in this discussion.
As the book progresses you can only eye roll as yet another black baseball player is shat upon by his team for disrupting team Wa.
I dont know why the author skirts around this, It seems very obvious by the time the book is over and if anything, this unaddressed notion kind of encroaches on your reading as you get to the lastchapters.



A good book though would be perfect for any baseball fan going to Japan and thinking about taking in a game.
Lots of interesting information, if you love baseball in general, Or Japanese baseball, specifically. Or Americans playing baseball in Japan, I'm peripherally interested, so this felt like the longest book I'd ever read, But it's well researched and full of interesting stories about "Japan's favorite pastime, " Whiting conveys a fascinating story of national identity through baseball, Perhaps the most interesting societal idea is to see how besuboru lives as an invented national sense of identity more than a complete reflection of true Japanese society.
Of course what a society chooses to project can be as important as how it actually lives, because it hints at where it would like to go.
In some ways the same type of struggle can be seen in the outsized patriotism of todays NFL.


But beyond the larger social constructs the book is simply a fun look at a crazy world of baseball crossed with ultramarathons.
Though I also admit the focus on practice reminds me of my college rowing career which consisted of an extreme ratio of practice time to race time.
While we would consider it insane not to think the former served the latter, the shaping of ones approach to life may be similar.


Additionally the book provides an entertaining time capsule ofs baseball that was just before my time.
It was amusing to read stories of men I think of as wrinkly old managers depicted as home run smashing barbarian gaijin, particularly Charlie Manuel who apparently went by Chuck in those days.
It seems like the stories that lead to Americans going ballistic are the funniest, because the sense of losing your mind bashing your head against some of the silly rules is so wonderfully told and brings to mindmashed up with Ball Four.


On a side note, I would love to see an afterword on how Japan has dealt with the Sabermetric revolution.
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