Serious, sensitive, and unable to tell a lie. These are wonderful attributes for a human being, but they are not necessarily a good fit for baseball managers. Hanshin Tigers ex-manager Akihiro Yano says he very seldom got a proper night’s sleep during his four-year tenure at the helm.
“I’ve always been a light sleeper, but while I was team manager, I couldn’t sleep at all. Probably, my mind was still going a mile a minute. There were always things to think about, and I thought too much. I didn’t necessarily have problems falling asleep, but I often woke up within an hour. I honestly never even slept for three solid hours. Ever.” While on the road, when he woke up in the night, he would move to the sofa and even try to sleep on the carpet. “It was hopeless, so I would try putting on a movie or listening to some soothing music on YouTube to help coax myself back to sleep. When I saw those videos and how many playbacks they had, I realized that there must be a lot of people in this world who are also having problems falling asleep,” he continued with a painful smile on his face.
Baseball these days is not the same as it once was – a fanfare-filled public entertainment – and it’s not just about winning or losing. These days, there seems to be a need to go above and beyond that, offering the fans more bang for their buck. Naturally, the biggest thing you can do for fans is to win games. But on top of that, players need to run out their grounders at full speed, and stay positive during hard times, inspiring their teammates. Is there something to be said of doing these things? Do fans “get it”? Will the players themselves “get” something from this that they can apply to their post-career lives? These are the ideals, the policies, the qualities, that Yano has pursued these past four years.
That said, major league games are not evaluated on attitude and effort – it comes down to results. Games are lost on mistakes made by players who have practiced hard. And it was after seeing such scenes that it was hardest for Yano to sleep. Even if he tried to block them out, the critical voices swirled around him and entered his ears. Yano is not the type who is able to let those kinds of comments go in one ear and out the other, and it is easy to imagine that by the end of four seasons, he had reached his physical and mental limit. His straightforward personality was most clearly displayed when he did the unprecedented by announcing his resignation (effective the end of the season) on the day before spring camp started.
“I can’t lie. I felt like if the news of my resignation somehow got leaked and the players heard it secondhand, I would completely lose their trust. I was scared of that possibility.”
Yano led the team to four straight seasons finishing in the top half of the standings, but failed to deliver a pennant, so it is difficult to call his tenure a success. That said, on October 14th, the last day of Yano’s game as manager (a loss in the Final Stage of the Climax Series), Koji Chikamoto was asked about his thoughts on his departing manager: “We lost because we players did not hit the ball. We’re to blame for this,” he said tearfully. It was evident to all, especially the players, that Yano gave his all and went the extra mile for his players as well as for the fans.
When asked about his future, Yano replied with a sparkle in his eyes, “I always wanted to be a school teacher. I wanted to be the one who could give those confused kids a push in the right direction, giving them the courage to move forward. I want to do something that will put a smile on everyone’s faces.” Unfortunately, the vast majority of Yano’s time as manager required Covid protocols that prevented journalists from building a strong rapport with him, but I (Haruji Yamazoe) would still like to say, “Otsukare sama deshita” (a job well done) to him.