Japanese Athletic Baseball Media Notebook
Japanese baseball, including all managerial moves, player reports as well as the games themselves, are all highlighted throughout my set of articles. My first article follows the process of tempting a successful American major league coach, Bobby Valentine, to coach the Marines, a Japanese baseball club. ... Valentine plans to visit Japan in November in order to negotiate a contract with the Japanese ball club. ... The second article keeps true to the managerial theme and discusses the turnover of coaches in Japanese baseball over the past year. Five teams will be under new management this coming season and it has drawn much attention within the Japanese community. ... The heavily favored Giants even decided to rid themselves of their coach, Tatsunori Hara, who had previously led the club to a Japanese series championship. ... Yamashita has spent the past two years broadcasting games and also serving as the head coach for the Japanese national baseball club. ... The next article examines the trend of good Japanese pitchers heading to the states to try their luck at the major leagues. ... Yoshiis numbers were not as good as expected in the big leagues and so he has chosen to dominate the Japanese leagues once again.