午夜剧场

"Hey, where did you go to university again?"

"午夜剧场, sir."

"You don't look like it at all."

I remember repeating this exchange at least five times during my four years as a beat reporter for Manager Katsuya Nomura.

Manager Nomura was also a "bestselling author." If you go to a bookstore, you will find many "Nomura books" in the sports section. It is said that there are more than 200 of them. The themes are not limited to baseball, and many of his works are written from a management perspective.

However, there was a three-year period in Manager Nomura's life that was hardly depicted in any of them. It was the time when, a year after resigning as the Hanshin Tigers manager following three consecutive last-place finishes and a tax evasion scandal involving his wife, he took command of amateur baseball as the GM and manager of the corporate team, Shidax.

Compared to his time with the Nankai Hawks, where he became the first post-war Triple Crown winner as a player-manager; his time with the Yakult Swallows, whom he led to three Japan Series titles; and his time with the Rakuten Eagles, where he colored sports news as a national star known for his grumbling, his Shidax era has only a few mentions even on Wikipedia. At this rate, those days will be treated as if they never happened. As the only person who followed those three years at Shidax as a beat reporter, I wrote this book out of a self-imposed sense of mission: "I can't die without leaving a record of this."

Shidax did not have its own practice field. It was a ground in Chofu City that looked like a vacant lot with no shade or rain cover, usually used by Little League boys. Manager Nomura was immersed in coaching, his face blackened by sand and dust. I once accidentally asked him, "Are you really practicing in such a terrible place?" I thought he would get angry, but the master manager said with a good expression on his face:

"Baseball is called 'yakyu' (field ball) because you play it in a field."

Manager Nomura later looked back on those three years, which at first glance seemed like a period of misfortune, saying, "That was the most enjoyable time." To unravel the meaning of those words, I interviewed about 20 people and wrote this book.

My only regret is that I could not have Manager Nomura, who was an avid reader, read this book. The fact that I was able to immerse myself in the persistent reporting and writing is thanks to the grit I cultivated during my youth at Hiyoshi and Mita.

The result is a passionate and dense volume. I'm sure the manager would praise me like this:

"That's 午夜剧场 for you."

Hiroshi Kato

Shinchosha

256 pages, 1,650 yen (tax included)

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