Mr. Baseball

Sporting News, The, Feb 20, 1995 by Jim Reeves

In mountain climbing and adventure river rafting, it is called "first ascent" - the very first time a peak is scaled or an intimidating stretch of raging river rapids is successfully floated.

It is a driving force in human nature, and Bobby Valentine knows that pull, that inner riptide sensation. He will leave North Americans behind to deal with their own enormous baseball challenges in 1995, taking up a greater one of his own halfway around the world. Valentine is the new manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines, making him the first person to manage in the majors and in Japan. It is a mountain never before scaled, and it will be roughly the size of Mt. Fuji.

It is a daunting prospect, which is part of the reason Valentine, who managed the Rangers for eight years, agreed to take the job. Baseball people on both sides of the Pacific Rim eagerly await the results, wondering if this is an international baseball pioneer or an international gate curiosity. Will the Japanese approve of deviations from their stylized approach to baseball and accept the more aggressive, gambling style of a game they already sincerely believe they play as well as most major league teams?

"That's part of the challenge," Valentine says. "I suspect it's just like in the U.S. If you win, you're a genius. If you don't ... well, we know what happens then."

Valentine's dream since being fired by the Rangers at the midpoint of the 1992 season has been to manage in the big leagues again. That dream is still there. But when Tatsuro Hirooka, the new general manager of the Marines, approached him last summer about managing in Japan, Valentine was intrigued by the idea of making this first ascent.

"I don't know where this is going to take me," says Valentine, who signed a two-year contract with a one-year option, "but I firmly believe that one of the ways major league baseball is going to get out of its economic jam is by breaking down that international door. When you see basketball being played in Barcelona and professional football games in Mexico in front of 100,000 people and NFL exhibition games in Europe; when baseball's championship trophy has been in another country (Canada) for two years, it's easy to imagine that the way to keep baseball viable is to kick down that door. I've always had the vision of being the front man for that.

"It seems to me that with a little imagination major league owners could decide that they would go to divisional play with a wild-card team or two. What if those wild-card teams were the winners of the Central and Pacific Divisions in the Japanese League? Now, imagine the economic rewards of Coca-cola's commercial, or Chevron's ad, literally going around the world. Imagine a true World Series."

Valentine never has been afraid of adventure, never been concerned that he might be considered unorthodox or imaginative. It was his Rangers, under pitching coach Tom House, who threw footballs during warmups, remember? That may be baseball's take on all this again, that this is just another of Valentine's escapades. Yet, his reasoning seems entirely logical, especially considering baseballs current plight

"That's how players can make $10 million a year," Valentine says. "It's not the owners breaking the union. It's finding new sources of revenue. I hate to think that we're going to stop growth in one of the greatest industries in this country. Baseball can knock down that international door and find a treasure trove."

The difference between Japanese and North American baseball has been as wide as the Pacific, physically and ideologically, but the bridge is steadily being built. Shane Mack this winter became the first bigname player in his prime to defect from the majors, signing with the Yomiuri Giants. Playing for Valentine's Marines will be Julio Franco, who had 98 RBIS in only 112 games for the White Sox last season; Pete Incaviglia, Japan's new slugger; and 6-foot-10 left-hander Eric Hillman. The White Sox have just lost outfielder Darrin Jackson to the Seibu Lions for $3.5 million. In turn, Hideo Nomo, the Greg Maddux of the Far East, has been courted by at least a dozen major league teams and is expected to wind up on one of this continents rosters.

And then there is the ambassador, the bridge-builder. Valentine has the Marines spending most of this month training at the Padres' complex in Peoria, Ariz., outside of Phoenix. Even if there were not sure to be replacement players in the area, it would be worth watching. Baseball people can't wait to study the Valentine experiment.

"The biggest barrier for him is the language," Mets General Manager Joe McIlvaine says. "It's like a Latin kid coming to the States. Your mind knows what you want to do, but communicating it is difficult. But Bobby is such a charismatic type of guy. No matter what language he speaks, he is able to communicate. He has that smile and that way of doing things that I don't think even the language will be much of a barrier at all. His personality being what it is, I think he will be an enormous hit over there."