Word: seibu
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...salaryman has followed the Seibu Lions since he was 8, back when his family lived near the team's stadium in Tokorozawa, a sleepy suburb 40 minutes west of Tokyo by train. Clad in a powder blue Lions jacket, with a Lions towel wrapped around his neck, Koike spends the entire game bobbing like a prizefighter in Seibu's official cheering section, where well-drilled fans in blue and white drum and sing personalized anthems every time a Lion comes to bat. One player is missing though--superstar pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who left for the Boston Red Sox this...
Auctioning off Dice-K for $51 million should have shored up the Lions' shaky finances. Instead, the Lions are in serious trouble. Earlier this month, the club admitted that its scouts had paid a pair of amateur players under the table, a clear violation of the rules. (Seibu turned down TIME's requests for interviews.) The Lions could be facing harsh penalties, like losing their spot in the draft for a year or more, but the greater damage is to the club's reputation and that of Japanese baseball. Former major league manager Bobby Valentine, who now helms the Chiba...
...Matsuzaka's Red Sox games. If Japanese pro ball can liberalize--perhaps by sharing revenue to add competitive balance--there's no reason it can't recapture Japan. After all, there are some aspects of the Japanese game that the U.S. will never be able to beat. "Seibu Lions fans are known for being very well-mannered," says Mitsuko Nakanomi, 67, a Lions supporter for more than five decades. "And we have a very clean stadium." Good luck finding that in Boston, Dice...
...Chengdu's main square, near the outstretched arm of a statue of Mao, sits a shopping center with Cartier, Zegna and Hugo Boss outlets. One night at the new Seibu department store, which opened last April, Italy's Missoni held a fashion show with Chinese models strutting to thumping reggae music. "Everybody who comes to Chengdu has a surprise," says an ebullient Antonino Laspina, the Italian trade commissioner in China, on the sidelines of the show. Living in Chengdu "is becoming like living in New York, Paris or Milan...
...legislature, he couldn't make the front-page lead of the country's national newspapers. That territory belonged to Daisuke Matsuzaka, a 26-year-old pitcher whose six-year, $52 million contract with the Boston Red Sox (plus another $51 million Boston paid to Matsuzaka's old team, the Seibu Lions, just for the right to negotiate with him) is the most lucrative deal ever for a player coming out of Japan. That may be a fitting tribute to the All-Star Matsuzaka, who goes by the nickname Kaibutsu (Monster), and whose fan base extends well beyond his own team...