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"Heartwarming Stories About America and Baseball You'll Want to Share"

Publish: October 12, 2018

Writer Profile

  • Makio Mukai

    School of Medicine Associate Professor, School of Medicine

    ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ alumni

    Makio Mukai

    School of Medicine Associate Professor, School of Medicine

    ÎçÒ¹¾ç³¡ alumni

Sixty-three years ago in 1955, the New York Yankees, known as a prestigious Major League Baseball team, came to Japan. The lineup was nothing short of incredible. After all, it included six men whose jersey numbers would later be retired by the Yankees.

I was eight years old at the time and watched the visiting Yankees play live, and I was shocked to my core. I thought, "So there are baseball players in America who play this wonderfully."

This was the beginning of everything. At age eight, I became captivated by the Major Leagues, and at the same time, I became strongly aware of the country called America. The Major Leagues and America suddenly appeared before my eyes as a set. This is why the Major Leagues are always in the background of my view of America. And I think of this view of America as "not bad at all." This is because I am convinced that the Major Leagues have had no small influence on American culture as a whole, including literature, film, painting, and music.

Being this kind of person, when I received an offer from the Asahi Shimbun to "write a serialized column about the Major Leagues for the evening edition," I decided, "I will write columns that talk about America in connection with the Major Leagues, not just columns about the Major Leagues themselves."

The column series began in April 2007 and continues today. It runs at a pace of roughly once a week under the general title "I Love the Major Leagues!"

This book contains about half of the columns published during the approximately 11-year period from the start of the series until April 2018. This means that about half have been omitted. In deciding which columns to include and which to omit, the basic policy was to prioritize "columns that talk about America in connection with the Major Leagues." I also tried to include as many columns as possible about places associated with Major Leaguers that I visited while on road trips in America.

Finally, I would like people who have no interest in the Major Leagues to read this book as well. You will encounter unexpected aspects of America that you did not know before, and your view of America will surely become a little different than it was.

Makio Mukai (Author)

Kodansha

304 pages, 1,400 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.

Writing Notes