Book Review: You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting (1989)

You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting, is an examination of baseball in Japan, and the difficulties that American players playing in Japan faced during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Published in 1989, You Gotta Have Wa is funny, insightful, and a great book about baseball. 

I owned You Gotta Have Wa when I was a kid (my parents were very kind in indulging my passion for the Japanese concept of tsundoku from an early age) and I definitely flipped through the photo section, but I didn’t read it at the time. Don't worry, I read plenty of inappropriate books that were baseball related when I was too young. I still remember reading Billy Martin's description of losing his virginity in his 1980 autobiography Number One, and how he was screwing this woman in her belly button. I was thoroughly confused by that. 

During the 1980’s, when I was growing up, there wasn’t much cross-pollination between American baseball and Japanese baseball. It was really a one-way street: American players would go to Japan when they couldn’t play in the United States anymore, but Japanese players didn’t play in the U.S. 

Masanori Murakami was the first Asian player to play in the U.S. major leagues. A relief pitcher, Murakami appeared in 54 MLB games for the San Francisco Giants in 1964 and 1965. Murakami had success in MLB, crafting a 5-1 record with 9 saves and a 3.43 ERA. He also fanned 100 batters in only 89 1/3 innings. But after the 1965 season, the Murakami experiment came to an end. The 1967 United States-Japanese Player Contract Agreement meant that MLB would not interfere with players in Nippon Professional Baseball. And that’s how it remained for the next 28 years, until Hideo Nomo made his MLB debut for the Dodgers in 1995. 

One of the big events of my baseball youth related to Japan was Cecil Fielder's success. He played for the Hanshin Tigers in 1989, then returned to the US with the Detroit Tigers and had a monster season in 1990, slugging 51 home runs. This put renewed attention on Japanese baseball in the United States. To have an American player become a star after playing in Japan was different from the usual trajectory. 

I was a passionate baseball fan, but I didn’t know that much about Japanese baseball. I knew about Sadaharu Oh, and his 868 home runs, a record that seems unbreakable, as no one in Japan or the U.S. has come within 100 home runs of Oh’s total. And I remember reading in Sports Illustrated about how Yutaka Fukumoto had 1,065 stolen bases, which was more than anyone in the U.S. had stolen at that time. (Rickey Henderson eventually surpassed Fukumoto’s total.) But beyond these records, I didn’t know much about Japanese players. 

There was a certain amount of cultural snobbery/racism in how most people thought of Japanese baseball compared to American baseball. They don't play as many games, the fences are shorter, and the pitching isn't as good. This was also comparable to how Japan and Japanese goods were generally viewed in the US in the post-war period: as cheap imitations. Eventually, this changed. The 1980's were a decade in which I think the US/Japan relationship changed a good deal. Japanese goods were starting to become more and more desirable, as consumers realized they were just as good, if not superior, to American products. For example, from 1980 to 1989, Japanese cars grew from 17.7% to 28% of all US auto sales. 

My parents are a great case study in how they embraced foreign cars, and Japanese cars specifically. Prior to 1973, they had always owned domestic cars. Then along came the oil crisis. At the time, my parents owned a Ford Maverick and a Mercury Cougar. By 1976, they owned a Datsun B210 and a Saab 99. They've never bought an American car since then. 

The Japanese economy was booming in the 1980's, and there was a sense of economic competition between the countries. I remember when people were nervous about Japanese investors owning so much land in Manhattan. The statistic I remember being bandied about at the time was that the Japanese owned half of Manhattan. Thanks to Google, I now know the true percentage was less than 10%, but for whatever reason this misperception was out there, and trickled down enough for a 9-year-old kid like me to hear about it. In 1989 Mitsubishi bought an 80% controlling stake in Rockefeller Center, which most likely inspired stories and set off this panic about a Japanese land grab. All of this panic became moot when the Japanese economic bubble burst in 1990. 

These are all digressions from U.S. baseball players in Japan, but it's all part of the cultural moment that was happening in the 1980's, and my memories of what I knew of Japan as a kid. You Gotta Have Wa is a very entertaining read, and I learned something new on every page of the book. The first chapter recounts the story of Bob Horner, who played in Japan in 1987. Horner had been a star in the U.S. for the Atlanta Braves, and he even hit 4 home runs in a game in 1986, becoming just the 11th player to ever accomplish this feat. Horner was a free agent after the 1986 season, and when no MLB teams came to him with offers, he signed with the Yakult Swallows. As we later learned, the reason no MLB team was willing to sign Horner was because all of the owners were colluding to not sign free agents an in effort to depress player salaries. 

Horner coming to Japan was a big deal. He was not a washed-up star trying to stretch out his playing career. He was a bona fide American star who was in the prime of his career—he was 29 years old when he signed with Yakult. Horner was treated like a deity when he first arrived in Japan, and his every move was documented by the Japanese press with a fervency usually reserved for pop stars or heads of state. Yakult expected Horner to hit 50 home runs, even issuing him the uniform number 50. Inevitably, Horner fever cooled, and he finished the season with 31 home runs. Not bad, but not close to 50 home runs. 

Novelist Haruki Murakami's favorite baseball team is the Yakult Swallows. I don't know what Murakami thought about Bob Horner, but I'm sure he could write a great short story about a chunky, blonde American third baseman coming over to Japan to play for the Yakult Swallows and igniting a fever throughout Japan. 

Speaking of Murakami, I was delighted that there was a page in You Gotta Have Wa about the experience that Dave Hilton had playing in Japan. As Murakami fans know, it was when Dave Hilton hit a double in a game for the Yakult Swallows in 1978 that Murakami thought "What if I wrote a novel?" Modern literature fans owe a great deal to Dave Hilton for inspiring such an important literary career. Hilton had great success in 1978, his first season in Japan, but struggled in 1979, as he had to deal with the almost impossible standards the Japanese had for American players. 

Whiting does an excellent job of detailing the differences between Japanese and U.S. training. In Japan, great emphasis is placed on repetition. In 1984, at the age of 38, infielder Koichi Tabuchi "capped off a day of workouts in spring camp by fielding nine hundred consecutive ground balls. It took two hours and fifty minutes before he slumped to the ground, unable to get up. Americans generally consider such training valueless." (p.65) Writer Kennichi Ishida explained the purpose behind such drills: "These drills are primarily mental. Yes, they do wear a player out, but that is necessary in order to develop his spirit. Athletics are essentially an act of will. You can always do more than you think you are capable of." (p.65)

While American society places a great deal of importance on the individual, one of the key credos of Japan is "The Nail That Sticks Up Shall Be Hammered Down." (p.70) Quite a difference. And of course, the American players stood out, since at the time there was a rule that there could only be 2 non-Japanese players on a team. (That has since been changed to 4 non-Japanese players.) 

Japanese fans take their baseball seriously, as evidenced by the Seibu Lions song "Lion on the Horizon." Here's a sample of the lyrics:

"The sun rises, the wind blows hot, the sky burns.

The Lion runs on the horizon.

Fierce, brave, beautiful;

His flying mane leaves the trail of a rainbow.

Ahhh...Lions, Lions, Lions." (p.115)

I would love to hear a fan song that was so entertaining sung in a U.S. baseball stadium. 

Siblings Leron and Leon Lee were emblematic of the way U.S. players were treated in Japan during the 1970's and 1980's. Both Lee brothers became star players in Japan, but they were never fully embraced by the Japanese media or by Japanese fans. Leron Lee recounted how "a Tokyo advertising executive told Lee flatly that the Japanese did not want black role models...In all his years in Japan, Lee had no commercial endorsements." (p.266) And this was a player who at the time had the highest lifetime batting average in Japan.  

If you're a baseball fan, you need to read You Gotta Have Wa. It's fun, entertaining, and very informative. 

Book Review: Stranded in the Future, by Robyn Hitchcock (2026)

Stranded in the Future, published earlier this year, is Robyn Hitchcock’s second memoir, following 2024’s excellent 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left. Stranded in the Future picks up the story after the Day-Glo marvelousness of 1967 and takes the reader through the next decade of Hitchcock’s life. 

One of the main characters in Stranded in the Future, besides Robyn, is a reclusive rock star, referred to as both Mr. A during his rock star period, and Mr. B after he gave up the spotlight. It’s no shock to reveal that Mr. A/B is Syd Barrett, formerly of Pink Floyd. Hitchcock is a huge Syd Barrett fan, and he’s often covered Barrett’s solo compositions in concert. 

Syd Barrett is quite a legend in rock and roll circles. One of the founders of Pink Floyd, Barrett was a key artistic voice during their first album, 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and then left the group in early 1968. Barrett released two solo albums, both in 1970, and then largely disappeared from public life and performing. Hitchcock was fascinated by Barrett, and a continuing theme of Stranded in the Future is Hitchcock’s near misses with encountering Barrett. 

The Robyn Hitchcock that we encounter in Stranded in the Future is a young man who wants to be a singer-songwriter. The book follows his maturation as an artist and the first recordings he makes with his band The Soft Boys. Hitchcock had a relatively long gestation period as a rock musician. His debut long-playing record was The Soft Boys’ first album, A Can of Bees, released in 1979, when Hitchcock was 26 years old. That’s not old by lifespan standards, but in terms of rock and roll, it’s on the later side. Syd Barrett had already been in and out of Pink Floyd, made his two solo albums, and was on the train to nowhere by the time he was 26. Paul McCartney had just started recording the White Album when he was 26. I could give a dozen more examples, but you get the point. 

Hitchcock is an excellent writer with a vibrant, impressionistic style of writing. There are great quotes throughout the book. One of my favorites was from Robyn’s father, the painter and novelist Raymond Hitchcock: “My father, however, was fond of saying that we were given speech in order to not communicate with each other.” (p.26) That’s food for thought.

Just as Robyn is always missing Syd Barrett, he also just misses connecting with Bob Dylan on a kibbutz in Israel in 1971. Crazy, man. Speaking of Dylan, there’s another type of near miss when Robyn buys Dylan’s new album Planet Waves. However, the record inside the Planet Waves sleeve is actually Brian Eno’s solo debut, Here Come the Warm Jets. “They were, briefly, label mates at that stage, and the record pressing plant had, in delicious error, put Eno albums in Dylan sleeves.” (p.118)

Robyn eventually forms a band called The Soft Boys, which is a fantastic name for a band. It’s a bit silly and non-threatening, especially during an era when testosterone reigned supreme in rock and punk. 

Stranded in the Future also covers Robyn’s romantic relationships, which are complex. His on-again, off-again relationship with “Ms. C” is an example of two people who are constantly being drawn towards each other, even though it doesn’t seem as though they like each other very much. 

Stranded in the Future is an interesting book, chronicling an often difficult time in Hitchcock’s life. I hope he writes a third volume; I’d be fascinated to read about his emergence as a solo artist in the 1980’s, and his success touring America. 

The Minnesota State Fair

The Agriculture Horticulture building at the Minnesota State Fair, August 28, 2026. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor) 

It’s the end of August, which means it’s time for one of my favorite things: the Minnesota State Fair. 12 days of food, fun, and lots of people, ending on Labor Day. The State Fair has always been a bridge between the seasons: the last gasp of summer, and the entrance to fall and the beginning of the school year. 

The Minnesota State Fair boasts an amazing array of fried foods, animals, and events. There’s something for just about everyone, in my opinion. I am biased, since I’ve been going to the State Fair since I was a kid, and it’s a strong family tradition. I know the Fair doesn’t change much from year to year. Yes, the corn dogs and the pronto pups still taste the same. But there is a certain amount of comfort in the unchanging aspects of the State Fair. The giant pumpkins and the crop art are still in the same places in the Agriculture Horticulture building; the games on the Midway remain largely unchanged from season to season. But things do change at the Fair, and these gradual changes at the Fair seem to me an apt metaphor for life itself. Life usually doesn’t change rapidly, but most often the changes happen slowly, almost imperceptibly, not always measured day to day, but rather year to year.

Of course, the State Fair does change. One of my favorite areas of the Fair was called Heritage Square. It was built in the mid-1960's as a temporary area, but somehow it survived. Probably because no one cared about it. There were train cars full of circus and sideshow histories, a building about the history of the Fair with random memorabilia—it was truly a random catch-all area. You had to want to go to Heritage Square—because it was so hidden away, it was highly unlikely that you would just stumble across it. But eventually progress came for Heritage Square, and it was torn down and replaced by the fancier West End Market. The West End Market is pretty, smooth, and shiny, but for me it will never have the funky charm and odd character of Heritage Square. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story about the Minnesota State Fair. “A Night at the Fair” is one of a series of stories detailing the adolescence of Basil Duke Lee. Fitzgerald’s beautiful talent for description is on full display, especially in this passage:

“The first lights of the evening were springing into pale existence; the afternoon crowd had thinned a little, and the lanes, empty of people, were heavy with the rich various smells of popcorn and peanuts, molasses and dust, and cooking Wienerwurst and a not-unpleasant overtone of animals and hay. The Ferris wheel, pricked out now in lights, revolved leisurely through the dusk; a few empty cars of the roller coaster rattled overhead. The heat had blown off and there was the crisp stimulating excitement of Northern autumn in the air.”  

What a lovely passage. You can see everything that Fitzgerald describes. What I love about this passage is that Fitzgerald was calling it up in his memory bank at a time when he hadn’t lived in Minnesota for years. But it was all there in his brain, ready for use at any time. In the story, Fitzgerald describes a ride that Basil takes on “Ye Old Mill,” a “tunnel of love” ride that is now the oldest ride at the State Fair. You can still take a ride on “Ye Old Mill,” more than 100 years after Fitzgerald did so.

I still enjoy the State Fair, and now I get to see the Fair through the eyes of my children, which is quite enjoyable. Now they have their own favorite foods they must have, and their own things they want to do. And so, the cycle of the State Fair spins on, like a Ferris wheel, slowly rotating against the brilliant blue of the late summer sky. 

Book Review: A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf (1929)

Since Virginia Woolf’s domination of The Guardian’s list of the 100 best novels of all-time—she scored 5 books on the list—I’ve thought “I should read more of her work.” I picked up A Room of One’s Own at a used bookstore, thinking that I had read it in college, but as I was paging through it, I thought “Hmmm, this has 6 chapters and 125 pages? I think I only read part of it.” Now I can say that I’ve actually read all of A Room of One’s Own. 

First published in 1929, A Room of One’s Own is Woolf’s examination of the hurdles that women face in writing fiction. 97 years later, it’s still a very relevant book. One of the parts that struck me the most is the passage in which Woolf is describing how much power and control men exert over public life at that time. “With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry...it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry.” (p.42-3) Yes, that’s it exactly! Think of today’s “manosphere,” which is just spewing toxic anger and vitriolic misogyny. For decades, maybe even centuries, white men have been terrified of losing power, either to non-whites or to women. And Woolf captures that ridiculous anger perfectly. 

Woolf famously wrote that in order to write, a woman needs 500 pounds a year, and “a room of one’s own.” How much would 500 pounds a year be in 2026? According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, which can calculate how prices have changed going back to 1209, 500 pounds in 1929 would be 28,375 pounds in 2026. That’s $38,707 in US dollars. $38,700 is a good amount of money, but it wouldn’t necessarily be enough to support yourself if that was your only source of income. It might be able to support you if you were a single woman living in a small town, but if you’re trying to live in midtown Manhattan, $38,700 won’t last you very long. But $38,700 would certainly be a nice cushion if you were getting that much money from, say, an inheritance. 

Woolf comes down a little hard on Charlotte Brontë. Woolf clearly loves Jane Austen, and while she appreciates Brontë, she can’t help but compare the two authors. Woolf writes of Brontë: “she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely...She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?” (p.81) Yikes. It’s hard because our brains always compare two things. Thing A is like this, so Thing B is the opposite. Writer A is like this; Writer B is like that. Two writers will always be different because they are different people, so they will inevitably produce two different works of art, even if they are trying to write about the same subject matter. Some people write calmly, and some people write with fire and fury. 

At the end of Chapter 5, Woolf writes of her fictional female author Mary Carmichael, “Give her another hundred years...she will be a poet...in another hundred years’ time.” (p.106) We’re almost 100 years past Woolf’s book. I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on the current state of women writing fiction, so it would be fascinating to read a leading contemporary female author tackle the same subject that Woolf did, 100 years later.

I’d highly recommend A Room of One’s Own; it’s a fascinating and engaging read.