Man of Iron Steals Show

Ichiromania, already at feverish levels, reached a zenith this morning as the All-Star game was broadcast here live.

Everyone, it seemed, carried a Walkman or clustered around a television, be it in an office, a restaurant, a town hall or a department store, transfixed by their hero, Ichiro Suzuki, the top vote-getter in the game at Seattle.

Ichiro, as he is known, crossed the Pacific to join the Seattle Mariners this year and has been a national icon since, topping the zeal that even pitcher Hideo Nomo roused in his home country when he joined the Dodgers in 1995 and became the National League’s rookie of the year.

At the Baseball Cafe at the Tokyo Dome, where the popular Yomiuri Giants play, about 100 fans gathered to watch the game shown at 9:30 a.m. They munched special $8 “All Star” breakfasts featuring a bagel, hash browns, a hamburger and macaroni salad, while two televisions broadcast highlights of Ichiro’s first season in the U.S. before the game’s start.

Then they got down to business.

When Ichiro led off for the American League with a ground ball near first base that looked like a sure out--but he managed to outsprint pitcher Randy Johnson--the fans cheered wildly.

“Ichiro, Ichiro, Ichiro,” they chanted, slapping high-fives and raising fists in the air. That play would be shown over and over here throughout the game. When he stole second base shortly thereafter, they took their shoes off, stood on a couch and shouted, “He’s great, he’s great.”

By lunch the crowd had swelled to 250.

“He’s like bright sunshine for the Japanese world,” said rabid baseball fan Masaru Ikei, a professor emeritus at Keio University, who was glued to his television set at home.

Ichiro is good medicine for Japan’s malaise, brought on by a dismal economy, a stock market in a 10-year skid and rising crime rates and other social ills. Said Ikei, “He gives Japanese people hope every day.”

About 50 members of the local fan club in his small hometown amid the rice paddies of Toyoyama in central Japan, population 13,000, crowded the town hall to watch around a big television set. “Our Ichiro is just so great,” Shoji Masuda, who heads the local fan club, said in a phone interview before he cut the call short to get back to the game.

But Japan’s pride in seeing one of its own succeed also was tinged by a touch of sadness. Ikei and others forecast that the rising interest in Ichiro and the U.S. major leagues here will ultimately spell the demise of Japanese baseball.

About 10 Japanese players play for U.S. teams these days. But until this year, when Ichiro joined the Mariners and Tsuyoshi Shinjo joined the Mets, all the Japanese players were pitchers. They include Nomo, now with Boston; Kazuhiro Sasaki, an all-star reliever for Seattle; and Hideki Irabu of Montreal.

“Even Shinjo is just above average, but he’s enjoying the American baseball atmosphere, and many will follow Shinjo’s style,” Ikei said. “We will be like ice hockey in Russia, losing stars, one after another, to America.”

Many Japanese fans say they’re noticing that U.S. games tend to be far more exciting than the slow-paced, methodical Japanese games, where bunts, walks and ties are encouraged, cheering can be loud, mechanical and irritating, and most of the games are played inside on artificial turf.

Unlike in the U.S., where families and children often attend, Japanese bleachers are mostly filled with “salarymen” in suits and ties. No one ever brings a glove, because Japanese ballparks never give away foul balls.

Shintei Teshima, 55, who took the day off from his job at a hotel to watch the All-Star game at the Baseball Cafe, says he never would have bothered watching the U.S. major league games except for Ichiro. Now he’s hooked.

“American games are just so great,” he said. Why? “Because American fans know how to make it exciting and American players are great and know how to play baseball.”

In the absence of big stars such as Ichiro, attendance has slid 30% for Ichiro’s former team, the Orix Blue Wave of Kobe--and overall 1.3% in his Pacific League this year compared with the same time last year. In the rival Central League, attendance has skidded 6% this year.

Part of the problem: weak farm-team systems, says Robert Whiting, author of “You Gotta Have Wa,” perhaps the quintessential book on Japanese baseball.

The Japanese teams are owned by corporations that have other core businesses. “The [New York] Yankees feed much of that back to promoting the team, into new players and fans,” he said, “but the Tokyo Giants send the money back to the Yomiuri Shimbun [newspaper] to cover regional losses.”

As a result, there are only about 35 players in the Giants’ farm system, whereas the Yankees have 200, Whiting said.

Whiting estimated that only two dozen to three dozen Japanese players, mostly pitchers, would make it in the U.S. major leagues.

For now, however, Japan is undoubtedly euphoric about its stars’ success, particularly Ichiro’s.

Ichiro has long been a star in Japan, where he was a seven-time batting champion, ace right fielder and national heartthrob. But when he left, no one was quite sure how the comparatively small 5-foot-10, 170-pound speedster would fare abroad.

The fans here contributed to his being the top-vote getter in the All-Star game, stuffing the real and virtual ballot boxes with endorsements. Five million of the 72 million All-Star ballots were shipped to Japan, and others voted over the Internet. The Asahi newspaper estimated that 680,000 Japanese cast ballots for him and made up a big share of the 1.2 million people who voted for him over the Net.

Before the All-Star game, a reporter asked whether Ichiro had anything to say to Japanese audiences. He replied calmly, with a slight smile: “It’s been only three months [in the U.S.]. I’m doing fine.”

Those at the Baseball Cafe nodded and said to the television, “Yeah, you’re doing fine, Ichiro.”

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Rie Sasaki and Makiko Inoue of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.