(Retro) Meeting an NPB Player in my Hometown

from Daily Sports Online, July 2022

This is the story of a Canadian living in Japan interviewing a Taiwanese baseball star who plays indy-league ball in America. Japanese is not the native tongue of either participant, but was the lingua franca in their conversation and even in the minds of both the interviewer (yours truly) and the interviewee (Daikan Yoh).

You might recognize the latter name, as he had spent the previous five years playing for the Yomiuri Giants, and 11 years prior to that with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. A three-time all-star, four-time Golden Glove winner (in center field), Japan Series champ (2016) and two-time Central League pennant winner, Yoh is no stranger to success. And with his celebrity-like status in his native Taiwan, he is definitely accustomed to being in the spotlight and being surrounded by adoring fans.

Just how, and why, did he get to where he is today? Rewind to the year 2002, when 15-year-old Chonso Yang (Yoh’s original Taiwanese name) arrived in Japan to play and learn baseball at Fukuoka Daiichi High School. Not knowing a lick of Japanese, he quickly picked up the language through his schooling and baseball club. Even more impressive was his baseball ability, which was good enough to draw the interest of the Fighters and the local Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks in Round 1 of the 2005 draft. The Fighters ended up getting his negotiation rights, and before anyone knew it (yes, I’m simplifying here – Yoh worked hard and went through a lot of ups and downs), he was an everyday player for the Fighters, defending center for the likes of Yu Darvish, Shohei Ohtani and Kohei Arihara, all future major leaguers.

Long story short, after his time with the Fighters, he used his free agency rights to sign with the team that all Hanshin Tigers fans (including yours truly) love to hate, the Yomiuri Giants. His five years there did not go as he had hoped, not by any means, and when his contract expired at the end of the 2021 season (in which he played just 7 top-squad games) and the team did not sign him back, Yoh felt he still had something left in the tank. At age 35, he decided to sign with an expansion team in the American Association, the Lake Country DockHounds, who play in the small town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (population 16,000 and some change).

That still does not explain our encounter, though. Well, as a Winnipegger who was anxious to get back home from Japan for the first time since 2018, I had a flight booked for summertime and was looking for things to do while back in my hometown. But as I was procrastinating to make those plans, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, and came across this:

See the #LCvsWPG (Lake Country vs. Winnipeg) in there? So, now I knew that Yoh played in a league against my local Goldeyes club. The question was: would the DockHounds happen to be on a road trip in Winnipeg while I was there? A quick look at the Goldeyes’ schedule had me circling July 31 on my calendar and putting something on my “must do” list for my return home: introduce myself to Daikan Yoh, someway, somehow.

My original immature plan was to wear Hanshin Tigers gear and heckle him from my seat at the game, perhaps with a sign in Japanese to draw his attention from the dugout, even. Get under his skin a little, stick it in the face of the Giants (retrospectively?). Then something called human decency (or maturity?) kicked in, and I decided instead, at the very last-minute I might add, to contact the team on the outside chance that they would let me meet the man and interview him. All in the name of Japanese journalism, of course. The team was cool with it, and the rest is history!