"Heartwarming Stories of America and Baseball You'll Want to Share"

2018/10/12

Sixty-three years ago in 1955, the New York Yankees, known as a prestigious Major League Baseball team, came to Japan. The lineup was nothing short of incredible. After all, it included six men whose jersey numbers would later be retired by the Yankees.

I was eight years old at the time and watched the visiting Yankees play live, and I was deeply amazed. I thought, "So there are baseball players in America who play this wonderfully."

This was the beginning of everything. At age eight, I became captivated by Major League Baseball, and at the same time, I became strongly aware of the country of America. Major League Baseball and America appeared before my eyes as a set. This is why Major League Baseball is always in the background of my view of America. And I think of this view of America as "not bad at all." This is because I am convinced that Major League Baseball has had a significant influence on American culture as a whole, including literature, film, painting, and music.

Being this kind of person, when I received an offer from the Asahi Shimbun to write a column series about Major League Baseball for their evening edition, I decided, "I will write columns that talk about America in connection with Major League Baseball, not just columns about the league itself."

The column series began in April 2007 and continues today. It runs at a pace of roughly once a week under the general title "I Love Major League Baseball!"

This book contains about half of the columns published during the approximately 11 years from the start of the series until April 2018. This means that about half have been omitted. In deciding which columns to include and which to omit, my basic policy was to prioritize "columns that talk about America in connection with Major League Baseball." I also tried to include as many columns as possible about the places associated with Major Leaguers that I visited while on road trips in America.

Finally, I would like people who have no interest in Major League Baseball to read this book as well. You will encounter unexpected aspects of America that you did not know before, and your view of America will surely become a little different than it was.

"Heartwarming Stories of America and Baseball You'll Want to Share"

Makio Mukai (Author)

Kodansha

304 pages, 1,400 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.