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Gabriel commented on Giancarlo Stanton Monster Homerun Sunday Versus the Cubs:
“Amazing home run. Few players in baseball can hit that ball so hard and far. Can't wait for Stanton to earn freedom from the glorified AAA team Marlins and play for a real MLB club.”
Honestly, I really can't figure out if Bobby Valentine is joking here.
Speaking to reporters about the tendency of Japanese pitchers to nit pick in and out of the strike zone, Valentine offered up a bizarre explanation. The Red Sox manager spent 2004-2009, as well as 1995, managing in Japan. And now in Boston, he's managing notorious Japanese nit-picker Dice-K Matsuzaka. Yu Darvish has also shown a similar tendency this season.
Here's the Valentine video, and then we can talk about what the hell it may or may not mean:
On one hand Valentine seems sincere. On the other, he also seems a little tongue-in-cheek, and then he's got that shit-eating grin as he starts laughing at the end.
On one hand, the mentality of Japanese baseball is way different than here in the States. On the other hand, this explanation really doesn't make any damned sense at all.
There's just so much odd cultural translation to make here. I can imagine a world in which a 3-2 count equates to a moment of reckoning that would appeal to a Japanese sense of propriety. But Bobby Valentine has to be pulling our chain with that stuff about the "literal translation" of the rulebook, right?
Valentine is so strange. And Japanese baseball is so different. I have no idea what to think of this.
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