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| Tanaka at The Boss, 3/1/14 |
The
song has been loosely translated to mean “only one more” — that is, one
more for a victory. Tanaka said the song meant a lot to him, and vice
versa: He is featured on the CD’s cover wearing his old Rakuten hat.
On Saturday, he was touched that the Yankees
played the song for him at George M. Steinbrenner Field. It played when
he entered his first game as a Yankee, even if it was the fifth inning
of a spring training game against the Philadelphia Phillies,
not the final inning of a complete game. Based on what he showed
Saturday in the Yankees’ 4-0 win, there will be plenty of time for the
latter.
Hearing
the song helped Tanaka feel a little more at home — that and the fact
that three Japanese television networks were broadcasting the game for
their baseball-hungry viewers. The game was shown live in Japan even
though Tanaka did not throw a pitch until 4:15 a.m. Sunday there.
Not
even Tanaka expected his family and friends to watch his scoreless
two-inning performance. “They are all asleep,” he said through his
interpreter.
But
in Tampa, everyone was wide awake in anticipation of Tanaka’s first
appearance in a game of any kind since the Yankees committed $175
million to sign him in January. What made the game even more compelling
in Japan was that it also featured starting pitcher Hiroki Kuroda,
perhaps the most consistent Japanese pitcher in major league history,
and Ichiro Suzuki, the veteran outfielder who has attained legendary status in Japan.
“It’s
funny that a spring training game can get this kind of attention,”
Suzuki said through a translator. “It just shows that it keeps
happening. Someday a new player will come along, and it will happen all
over again.”
C.
C. Sabathia started and pitched well with a fastball that never reached
90 miles per hour, and Kuroda followed him. Each threw two scoreless
innings. Manager Joe Girardi said some Yankees waited to leave until
after Tanaka had pitched. He threw 31 pitches, and his teammates wanted
to watch Tanaka, the imported mystery man who went 24-0 with a 1.27
earned run average last year in the regular season for Rakuten.
“I played catch with him the other day,” said Sabathia, who called Tanaka’s split-finger fastball “dirty.”
There
was so much focus on Tanaka and the two other Japanese stars that Derek
Jeter became an afterthought. (Jeter went 0 for 2 with a walk and a run
scored, and he played well in the field.)
Tanaka
allowed two singles and had three strikeouts, one of which came on his
signature splitter. His straight fastball registered 92 to 94 m.p.h.,
and he also threw a couple of impressive sliders and cutters. In fact,
he threw all six of his pitches, and he listed them in English to
reporters: four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, slider, splitter,
curveball, changeup.
His
first pitch elicited a small gasp of excitement from the announced
sellout crowd of 10,934 as Phillies first baseman Darin Ruf swung
through a 94-m.p.h. fastball. Ruf also flailed at a breaking ball, but
on the next pitch, another 94-m.p.h. heater, Ruf singled to center.
Tanaka retired the next three batters and had a similar inning in the
sixth to finish his spring training debut.
In
the sixth, he struck out Ben Revere on an 0-2 splitter that dived under
Revere’s bat at 87 m.p.h. Ronny Cedeno singled on an 0-2 fastball, but
Tanaka struck out Domonic Brown on an 89-m.p.h. cut fastball and got
Kelly Dugan to pop up to shallow center. Girardi was encouraged by how
Tanaka handled it all.
Girardi had seen Tanaka throw batting practice, but other than watching videotape, he had not seen him in a game.
“He
got in the stretch, he gave up an 0-2 hit, and it didn’t fester,”
Girardi said. “He just went back to work. I thought it was all good.”" Image above, caption: "The Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka pitched two scoreless innings against the Phillies, allowing two singles and striking out three.
Credit
Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via Reuters"
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