Ah, Shigeru Takada. Our esteemed manager. Regular readers of Tsubamegun will know that he’s not too popular around these parts, what with our “Takada Count” (currently at 14) keeping a tab on all his boneheaded exploits throughout this season.
For quite some time we’ve suspected personal issues/sheer idiocy have been getting in the way of team selection, particularly in the case of Aaron Guiel (whom Takada has a habit of continually benching against lefties) and also infielder Hiroyasu Tanaka who has been treated pretty badly at times during this season.
In fact let’s have a look at the justification for the last invocation of the Takada Count (from the October 2nd loss to the Carp):
TAKADA COUNT: 14. For continual unnecessary tinkering and abuse of the kind of players that really don’t deserve it. This is for the continual Guiel benching and treating Tanaka (one of the brightest younger players on this team may I add) like your personal bitch throughout a lot of this season. Even if Tanaka was injured, this one stands for repeated misdemeanours and due to the fact that it’s late in the season and I’m pretty much sick to the back teeth of your perpetual cluelessness not to mention your soulless overly blinky expression while watching your team eff up yet again. GET THE F*CK OUT OF MY BALLCLUB!! NOW!
But of course, up until this point it was simply our speculation, along with rumours amongst the Jingu faithful, that Takada let personal issues cloud his judgement. But the events of this week have got us thinking that there may be some truth to it.
A few nights back, a few of us decided to go out for dinner at a central Tokyo eatery and lo and behold, who should we see sitting across the room but a certain Jamie D’Antona, Tokyo’s power-hitting first baseman.
Now unlike some of the fans we know at Jingu, we’re no stalkers, so we didn’t really want to disturb Jamie while he was out enjoying a nice relaxing meal with some friends. But we did manage to grab a few words with him on our way out.
Is D'Antona being treated fairly?
Jamie was in good spirits, and we asked him if he was still suffering from his leg injury that had kept him out for a large chunk of August and he said he had been in fine shape for the last month or so. He was also looking forward to seeing more playing time and was hopeful of Tokyo reaching the Climax Series.
That was about all, and we then left him to get back to his evening sans a bunch of gawping Tokyo fans.
But the few words we had with him got us thinking. The official story is that Jamie has been struggling with a niggling injury that has been keeping him from starting more games, but according to the man himself, he’s fighting fit. What gives?
Since returning from his injury at then end of August, he’s started in 14 games in September, featuring as a pinch-hitter in 6 games and not featuring at all in 6 games. The continual benching of him by Takada in the latter half of September must have been due to injury, right?
Now remember, this is the player that:
- Won the monthly MVP award for July, and a guy that played a large part in Tokyo’s excellent first half of the season. It could be argued that the sharp decline in the Swallows’ fortunes and form started with D’Antona’s injury.
- Is still hitting .279 for the year (the 3rd best average among Yakult’s top team regulars).
- Still leads the team in RBIs with 80.
- Has the highest average on the team with runners in scoring position at .338.
- Has a slugging percentage of .484, second only to Aaron Guiel on the team. His home run total of 20 is also second only to the Canadian outfielder.
Surely this is the kind of guy you would want on your team, especially given the horrific slide the Swallows were in during that month. So if he wasn’t struggling with an injury (as was reported) then there must have been some other reason for his sporadic appearances for the top team.
But it gets worse in October. After starting the first three games of the month against the Carp, Tigers and Giants he has not started a game since. He was used as a 9th inning pinch-hitter in the 10/6 game against Yokohama, didn’t feature in the 10/7 game against the same opposition, was a late inning pinch-hitter again for the 10/8 against the Tigers before not featuring at all in the decisive game against Hanshin on 10/9.
A few observations:
- Jamie’s October fall out of favour coincides with Takada’s announcement that he was returning to the Swallows’ managerial seat in 2010. After the announcement was made after the loss to Yomiuri on the 4th of October, Jamie hasn’t featured at all. A sign that Takada doesn’t fancy him and won’t be bringing him back next year as he’s now concentrating on the players he wants playing for him in 2010?
- Bear in mind the absolutely terrible injury problems faced by the team during the final stretch of this season. In the infield alone, Aikawa, Tanaka, Keizo Kawashima and Miyamoto were all suffering from injury. We also thought Jamie was amongst them, leading to inexperienced/backup players such as Kajimoto, Noguchi and Hatakeyama being inserted into the starting lineup for some hugely important games. At first base alone, we’ve seen Hatakeyama and Noguchi feature in the field during this last week, all of them inferior first basemen, both with the bat and the glove, to D’Antona. Fine if he was injured, but he wasn’t. It would appear that Jamie’s exclusion is personal.
- As I mentioned earlier, he did not feature at all in the decisive game against the Tigers. Only Hanshin’s starter that day was the lefty Iwata, against which D’Antona has gone 3 for 5 against this season. Now, the starting lineup for that game included the likes of Hatakayama and Noguchi, both of whom went hitless in the game. Why on earth leave a healthy player on the bench for such a key game who has such a good record against the opposition’s starter, unless it’s personal?
Now with the Climax Series against the supremely strong Chunichi Dragons a week away, surely we want our strongest available lineup on the field to stand any chance of winning. And that strongest lineup includes D’Antona, but if the manager is benching a player for personal reasons to the detriment of the team, it just confirms what we’ve always thought: this is a man who should be no where near the managerial seat of a professional baseball team.
So to Jamie (though I doubt he’s much of a Tsubamegun reader…), we hope you see more playing time this year as boy could we do with the help against the Dragons. We hope you earn yourself a new contract and will be back with the team next year as (to the eyes of this writer at least) you deserve it.
If not, then we wish you all the best in the future, wherever it may be. In an ideal world we’d like to see you back and Takada out in 2010. But the Swallows have never been the smartest of organisations (that’s putting it mildly), with a history of undervaluing their foreign talent.
And to Takada: F*uck off. Please. We don’t want you anymore. Climax Series or not, you’re still, and will always be, a chump.
About David Watkins
