Tokyo Junkie by Robert Whiting

Author:Robert Whiting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press

April 4, 1972: The date I met my future wife, Machiko Kondo.

Dwight asked, “What the hell is she doing with you?”

I finally finished the book in the fall of 1974, 100,000 words in all. After xeroxing copies, page by page, at a stationery store on Broadway, I started shopping it around with the help of friends of friends who worked in publishing as associate editors and administrative assistants. Twelve publishers in a row turned it down.

But then, finally, a stroke of luck. I took my opus over to Sports Illustrated, to see if I could at least sell an excerpt. A young woman working there read it and said that the magazine would indeed like to publish one of the chapters.

Then she said something completely out of the blue:

“It seems you are having a hard time getting your book published. So here is what I will do. We will hold this until you find a publisher. You can tell the next book editor you show The Chrysanthemum and the Bat to that SI is taking first serialization rights. That ought to grab their interest.”

Then she gave me the name of a man to call at Dodd-Mead. That was on a Friday. By Monday I had an offer of a $2,000 advance, solely on the strength of the SI excerpt. It wasn’t exactly in the same league as winning the $64,000 question. But it wasn’t zero either and it ended my oh-for-thirteen schneid.

“That’s quite a coup you pulled off with SI,” said the editor there, a man named Peter Weed.

It was certainly not a coup of my doing. It was simply an act of kindness on the part of that young woman, whose name was Patricia Ryan. I have never forgotten it. Patricia went on to become the first woman managing editor of People magazine. No one was happier to hear of her success than I was. For my part, the experience taught me to have a little faith in people, and to keep swinging, even when you keep striking out.

***

I used the advance money to fly back to Tokyo the following February, when spring camp started, to do some follow-up research. Through introductions I was able to attend training camps for the Chunichi Dragons in Hamamatsu, the Taiyo Whales in Shizuoka, and the Yomiuri Giants in Tamagawa.

Camp was an eye-opener, seeing Japanese-style training up close in person for the first time. Fending off the freezing cold as best I could, I watched from the stands as Japanese coaches put their teams through a series of brutal drills from dawn until dark, yelling (mock) insults all the while.

Former Yankee star Clete Boyer, who was playing for the Whales at that time, invited me to a gathering at his Tokyo apartment several days later and introduced me to all the gaijin players in town. Included in the group were many who had made names for themselves in the US Major Leagues, like Roger Repoz, Jim Lefebvre, Charlie Manuel, and John Sipin.

The theme of the evening was familiar: “Nice people, crazy baseball.

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