monopoly vs. proliferation?

underappreciated power

Hoping to see you online at 5-6 pm eastern for our discussion of Saudi Arabia with AMB Jim Smith.

It’s been a pretty crappy summer between the OceanGate debacle, a former president of the United States accused of mishandling highly classified material as revealed in a federal indictment, utterly unseen temperatures across virtually every portion of the northern hemisphere, and the Canadian wildfires sweeping repeatedly into our lives.

The one unquestionable bright light that is not the sun burning through the clouds is the performance thus far of Shotei Ohtani. The Japanese-born Los Angeles Angels' star of the past five seasons is truly astonishing in his season thus far. I am amazed we are discussing much else in light of how obsessed we are with sports in this country. Before Yankees’ home run machine Aaron Judge fell prey to injury at the end of last month, the Yankee’s productivity over the last several years had to remind fans of Babe Ruth or perhaps Henry Aaron decades ago.

Ohtani is even better, however, because he is both an offensive and defensive star for the Angels. A fortnight ago tomorrow Ohtani threw ten strikeouts while hitting two runs batted in and stealing a base. Oh, and that was the week before the All Star break (where he, of course, was a star during the event) so it was well into the grueling season.

As of last night, Ohtani led the major leagues (30 teams) in home runs and triples. Yes, he is still a regular in the pitching line up as well with a 7 win, 5 loss record at present. We listen to a lot of baseball in the evenings but so much of the chatter (and that is certainly what we seem to hear) focuses on the number of pitches each guy tosses from the mound as if there is a physical limit that cannot be breached nor underachieved. Ohtani does that while he also regularly comes to plate to lead in the sexiest of categories (home runs) and one of the toughest (triple bag hits). Who is this guy?

Wait. Wait. He is Japanese? No, don’t I mean Japanese-American, you’re asking. Japan is the land of golf where the space is at a premium but the draw of that majestic sport seems to consume men in that country as well as some other parts of the world.

No, Shotei Ohtani hails from Ōshū, Iwate, Japan. He came up quickly through the amateur leagues before becoming a minor league figure a decade ago. He most definitely, however, is a Japanese native.

I cite this factoid because it reminds us of the power cultural connections bring the United States overseas. No questions need arise about the pain Japan faced in reconciling with its World War II actions, though a distinct minority still reject culpability. The United States has been intricately involved in Japan since the peace treaty signing ceremony on the USS Missouri in September 1945. Few of our veterans from that conflict still have the chance to remind us of its brutality but generations of subsequent Marines, Sailors, Air Forcers, and Army personnel have deployed across Japan, initially as occupiers after war. Soon, after combat appeared on the Korean peninsula in 1950, Japanese and American men and women collaborated to create one of the enduring symbols of the post-World War II world in the Japanese-American Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954.

The U.S. armed forces and subsequent business personnel who arrived in Japan brought baseball among a raft of cultural items. They took the game elsewhere also, such as Taiwan, the Philippines, and Korea, but it has been in the Home Islands and Okinawa where it now provides a striking and deep link between our two peoples.

When I visited Tokyo for several days in 1972, we attended a baseball game. I was enthusiastic as I had listened to Houston Astros games in the late 60s when my city had no team of its own yet. I loved baseball with its intricacies, its up and downs, and its integration of Hispanics, African-Americans, and Whites.

I was blown away by the enthusiasm at the Tokyo baseball field. It was absolutely overwhelming, I mean shockingly so; nutso, infact. The chants, the raucus crowd, the complete engagement by those in attendance put every baseball game I’d been to anywhere else to shame. (Taiwan’s embrace of the game, especially in the south is nearly as complete). It’s no wonder that a Japanese boy born in 1994 as our two countries reached the fifty year mark of our intertwining would have become so committed to it.

We so often think of our interactions overseas as military or diplomatic or economic. Military actions fall into the category that the political scientist Joseph Nye called ‘hard power’ while economic, information, and cultural links are soft power in his thinking. (Diplomacy seems to fit, in fact, based on where the person thinking about the categories wants to make it fit). Nye pointed out roughly (as Ohtani was beginning his treks to various batting practices and pitching cages) that we had distinct advantages in soft power over other adversaries (we didn’t say the China part out loud back then) because the rest of the world embraced so many cultural icons from the United States.

Baseball certainly fits that description and Shotei Ohtani embodies the result better than anyone. He’s not the first Japanese baseball player in the U.S. majors but he’s currently the one absolutely redeeming success and victor in sports during a pretty crappy summer otherwise. Yes, Alcaraz won Wimbledon Sunday which elevated his stock and the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team is going for their third World Cup in the next few weeks but Ohtani plays both offense and defense so well that he boggles the mind. He’s not perfect but everyone else seems rather mortal right now.

Baseball doesn’t win wars but it is a significant bond between us and a country we admit we need ally with into the foreseeable future. No one in the national security field takes that alliance for granted nor should they. And in an era when we say China does not play by the normal rules, seeking to undermine our position in Asia, we ought be especially thankful that baseball is yet another strong a link, especially for the young who make up the future.

It’s a case where prolifeerating our national sport overeas rather than monopolising it was a brilliant move. Wonder if there are other possible exports we might consider as well?

We had rain this morning, unexpected rain, so it’s a brilliant afternoon here with or without the sun. In fact, it’s a lovely day on the Chesapeake. Life is good in at least some places for which we need be so thankful.FIN