My friend Murray asked, "So who's the best non-gaijin player left in Japan now that Suzuki and the Matsuis are here?"

I did a little research and here's what I found:

Best non-gaijin player player left in Japan? How about (probably in this order):

Michihiro Ogasawara

Kosuke Fukudome

Kazuhiro Wada

Tadahito Iguchi

Nobuhiko Matsunaka

Of course, when you are comparing them to the likes of Tuffy Rhodes and Roberto Petagine they look amazing. The site I used for research is great, too, well worth the visit.

Following this topic, my friends Murray and Chris and myself got into a discussion on the excessive hand-wringing by the media concerning the Japanese series opening up the 2004 season. Quoth I:

I agree. I was going to post something on all the bluster about the series. They had the same thing scheduled last year but called it off because of the war (so why not cancel it this year?), but I don't remember any negative press re. it. Besides we're always complaining how baseball doesn't promote itself (at least I am). I wanted to say that there is an ever-going snowball of negativity in the media whenever anything baseball-esque is discussed. But I never did and I wrote about the game and then came off negative (or crying as you put it) about the series (though I tried to make light of it).

The positives are just too abstract for people to say anything positive. The negatives (the layoff between the series and the real season openers, games played at 5 AM, the difficulty in actually seeing the game, etc.) are what everyone sees. I'd prefer that it was an exhibition series, but then again what would compell the players to actually show up then? Mid-season is impractical. The offseason All-Star series seem to go well enough. How about played the MLB All-Star game out there one year? They would never go for it (the lost revenue), but that would truly promote the game. How about a week-long All-Star break with a round-robin tournament between the two American All-Star teams and the two Japanese All-Star teams with the revenue shared? How about we just take their best players and make them pay through the nose to watch them play here on TV?

And that's just what they did. And everyone lived happily ever after. The end.

Anyway, do you like the way that I half-A's-ed the topic by cannibalizing my own emails? Sweet, eh?