JAPAN BASEBALL 2005/ The wings of eagles
Asahi
`We have five No.1 guys (starters). Who else can say that? I honestly believe we can be among the top three.' The Pacific League's Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles enter the 2005 baseball season as the first expansion team in 50 years. General manager Marty Kuehnert has loaded the Sendai team with an ace staff of hurlers and expects the Eagles to be playoff contenders right from the get-go.
And so it has dawned, this Year of the Rooster_and it carries a powerful portent. While Marty Kuehnert is not normally one to place credence in omens, the general manager of the newly-established Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles sees the Rooster-Eagle-bird thing as much more than coincidence.
``I really do think that it's a good sign,'' Kuehnert told The Asahi Shimbun in a year-end interview. ``It's like the stars are aligning. I believe that we're going to surprise people.''
...snip...
How did you and Mikitani hook up?
A mutual friend introduced us and we went for dinner in February. He had recently purchased the J.League's Vissel Kobe franchise and wanted to learn my thoughts on the way pro sports are run in Japan.
I showed him a couple of books. One was a baseball book I had written in 1998 (English title ``Why Star Players Are Defecting'') and another was ``Moneyball'' (the baseball bible for Oakland GM Billy Beane, this book by Michael Lewis flew in the face of conventional wisdom by insisting that winning teams could be built with a minimum payroll).
Damn, I could have gone to Kinokuniya and picked up a copy and showed it to him.
