Baseball: A Two-Way Player-Chapter 491 - 96: A New Hero

Even after several continuous hours of high-intensity commentary, Takeshita Yohei in the studio still appeared quite excited at this moment:

"I never expected that in the very first game of the season, we would be fortunate enough to witness a complete game shutout—one must say, whether it’s the SoftBank Team or Lin Guanglai, both maintained their excellent preseason form today, excelling in both offense and defense!"

"The current score, SoftBank 11:0 Rode, top of the ninth inning, two outs, and next up to bat for the Rode team is—"

"Cleanup hitter, pinch-hitter, Tadahito Iguchi."

"Cleanup hitter, pinch-hitter, Tadahito Iguchi!"

When this name echoed once more beneath the stadium dome, the previously heated Yahoo Dome fell into a brief silence.

Watching the figure slowly walking from the on-deck circle to home plate, many elderly SoftBank fans in the stands showed rather complex expressions; some, more extreme ones, even booed fiercely in the direction of the batter stepping onto the field.

Seeing the scene unfolding on the field, Shiroyama Kenshi, a guest commentator in the studio, sighed, repeatedly shaking his head, murmuring, "It still came to this..."

As the first pick in the 1996 draft and having served the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks for a full eight years, Tadahito Iguchi was undeniably the darling of this stadium and these fans:

As the main second baseman for the Daiei team, he experienced the golden era of the Daiei team in the late last century, being the team’s indubitable core player at that time.

However, this superstar belonging to the Daiei team now seemed estranged from his home team and was even met with overwhelming boos from the fans who once loved him deeply in his former "home"—how did it come to this?

Rewinding to 2004, in that year, the 30-year-old Tadahito Iguchi decided to exercise his overseas free agent rights to challenge the Major League and eventually signed a 2-year, 4.7 million dollar contract with the Chicago White Sox; in the following years, he drifted between teams like the White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, and the Priests, but due to unsatisfactory performance, he was released by Major League teams and could only choose to return to Japan.

And after some negotiations, Tadahito Iguchi did not choose to return to his nurturing home team, the now Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks; instead, he signed a super contract with the Chiba Lotte Marines with a total value of 540 million yen, plus a 20 million incentive bonus—which was precisely such an action that led his once exalted status among the Hawks fans to collapse instantly.

To understand the intricate relationships within, one must mention an unwritten rule in Nippon Professional Baseball, namely the relationship between "gratitude and repayment."

Influenced by the social culture of the East Asian cultural sphere, Japanese professional baseball teams do not only treat their nurtured young players as employees but rather as long-term investments and family members.

Teams invest significant coaching resources, excellent training equipment, and high salaries in players, giving them time and opportunities to grow; and in return, when players achieve success, the home team chooses to let them go to MLB through the posting system, which is seen as an "act of grace."

After all, not everyone is a super talent like Matsuzaka Daisuke or Yu Darvish, leaving the home team with over 50 million dollars in cultivation fees; in most cases, teams letting their star players be posted face significant losses both on and off the field.

Take Tanaka Masahiro, who just got posted earlier this year, for instance, even though Rakuten received the maximum 20 million dollars posting fee, this figure practically couldn’t make up for their losses:

Over the past seven years, just in annual salary alone, Rakuten invested over tens of billions in Tanaka Masahiro, not to mention the costs for personal coaches and facilities—if it weren’t for Tanaka Masahiro’s earnest pleading to the team management and his promise to return to his home team unconditionally, Rakuten could entirely have opted to hold him to his contract.

Therefore, under the influence of strong moral and cultural consensus, an unwritten non-verbal rule emerged: the home team, having invested substantial resources in nurturing you, and having fulfilled your dream of challenging the world’s highest-level stage, you, as the player, should choose to prioritize returning to your home team upon your return.

But for the players themselves, the situation is even more complex: If the home team can provide the position and salary the player desires, then the player naturally wishes to return to the home team, creating a beautiful story; but more often, the star players from smaller teams receive large contracts upon returning to Nippon Professional Baseball, which their home team absolutely cannot offer.

Faced with such a situation, a dilemma is put before the players: to willingly bear some financial loss and return to the home team for honor’s sake, or to endure media criticism and fan reproach for the sake of tangible money?

Clearly, Tadahito Iguchi chose the latter path.

And what SoftBank fans found even more unacceptable was Tadahito Iguchi’s decision to join his home team’s league rival—this choice, especially contrasted with Shiroyama Kenshi (who didn’t return to SoftBank due to position conflict but chose to join Hanshin in the Central League), made SoftBank fans even more unable to accept it.