Mashi: The Unfulfilled Baseball Dreams of Masanori Murakami, the First Japanese Major Leaguer

FITTS does a fine job of telling the story of the first Japanese major leaguer. Effectively relates his career in Japan, the minor leagues and the San Francisco Giants. Also describes the controversy over where Murakami would play in 1965 and his career after leaving North America. Fitts once again demonstrates his familiarity and knowledge of Asian Baseball.

A surprising, fascinating true story! And a good summer read about the first Japanese major leaguer. Baseball fans, put it on your summer reading list!

Interesting and enlightening on how the baseball environment was during the mid 60's and in general, the story of Masanori Murakami.

Jackie Robinson was not the only baseball player who was a pioneer for his race in the game. In 1964, a nineteen-year-old pitcher named Masanori Murakami, known as “Mashi”, was sent by his Japanese team to the minor leagues’ class A Fresno Giants. Later that season, the parent club, the San Francisco Giants, called up the young left-hander as a relief pitcher. As a result, Murakami became the first Japanese player in the major leagues. His journey to the major leagues and the subsequent squabble between the Japanese and American clubs is chronicled in this wonderful book by Robert K. Fitts.This book doesn’t read like the typical biography of an athlete. The reader is taken into the life of Murakami in both Japan and the United States. Mashi’s experiences in the Japanese baseball leagues and its training camps and methods are well researched and written in a manner that will inform the reader as well as entertain him or her. There are many stories that illustrate the passion that Murakami had for the game and yet he never wavered in his loyalty to family, even while pitching in the United States.The dialogue in the book about Mashi’s experience learning the culture and customs in America reads much differently than that in books about the struggles of African-American players in the early days of baseball integration. While there are a few instances of this type of discrimination documented, the focus is how he interacts with people while struggling to learn English. There are many more humorous stories about this than ones that will anger or upset the reader.One of the best ones told of Mashi’s teammates giving advice to him on what to tell the manager when he came out to the mound to take Mashi out of the game. When manager Herman Franks took the ball, he was greeted by some very colorful language from Mashi. Immediately Franks realized the prank played by Mashi’s teammates and everyone had a good laugh over it.However, this story doesn’t have a happy ending for Mashi, as a contract dispute between his Japanese team and the Giants will result in an ugly exchange that became a major sticking point for future opportunities in major league baseball for Japanese players. The Japanese baseball officials believed that they simply loaned Mashi to America in order to sharpen his game. Major League Baseball, concerned that the reserve clause would be threatened if they let Mashi return to Japan, claimed that he was under contract with the Giants and therefore was obligated to pitch for them. Like every other conflict he encountered in his baseball career on both continents, Mashi gets anxious to have it resolved but eventually makes the best of his opportunities, no matter where they occur.If a reader wishes to learn more about Japanese baseball and the differences in the way the game is run between the two countries, this book is a very good source for that. If the reader just wants to read a good story filled with humor and inspiration, this book does that too, thanks to the excellent writing by the author.I wish to thank Mr. Fitts for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

When I first saw this book in Library Journal, I instantly thought of Masanori Murakami's 1965 baseball card. I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1964-65 and remember seeing him pitch for the San Francisco Giants. He became a fan favorite and a favorite of his teammates. Because of a sense of duty and loyalty to the Nankai Hawks manager who had helped him make it to the American major leagues, Murakami returned to the Hawks for the 1966 season. Except for a tryout late in his career, he never pitched in the U.S. again.Kudos to Robert Fitts for writing this book on an almost forgotten ballplayer. Murakami was the Japanese version of Jackie Robinson, the first Japanese player in the American major leagues. After the 1966 season, the commissioners of the American and Japanese major leagues came up with the Working Agreement, which bound teams of each country's leagues to honor the reserve clause and contracts of the other league. This kept Japanese players from the American major leagues until Hideo Nomo in 1995 took advantage of a loophole which allowed him to retire from Japanese baseball and play in America.

" I just finished Mashi a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it. One of the goals of biography is to make the reader feel as though they know the person, and when I was done, I not only felt like I knew Mashi, I liked him a lot. “

Robert Fitts has given us a superb account of one of baseball's great stories: the Giants' pioneering efforts in making the game truly global by bringing Masanori Murakami to the big leagues. This is not only a well-researched chronicle of Murakami's interesting and complicated time with the Giants, but it is also a moving emotional story about a baseball player's conflicted loyalties to his family, his country and the game he loves. Fitts has a unique ability as an historian to offer analysis and context, while constructing a compelling and lively narrative.

Masanori Murakami's story is a fascinating brew of baseball, international relations, and cultural collision. Yet it's never gained the prominence it deserves as a remarkable piece of history. There is no more expert scholar and accomplished writer on the subject of the relationship of Japanese and American baseball and culture than Rob Fitts. This compelling tale at last promises to be properly and widely known, not just to baseball fans, but anyone interested in the ever-complex interplay between these foe-and-friend countries.