Fujiko Suda: Worklife

Understanding Ichiro’s words through American master coaches lessons

Mar 26, 2009 18:23 pm / Add a comment

My friend and I were hav­ing lunch on March 24th, and she showed me that the World Base­ball Clas­sic final game was being played in Los Ange­les as we were hav­ing our lunch in Tokyo.  Dur­ing my teenage years, with an Amer­i­can step-father who loved to watch sports on TV, our fam­ily watched some kind of sports match with him prac­ti­cally all day on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, and Mon­day evening in the US.  But some­time in my early twen­ties, watch­ing sports match started to become painful to me, because I begun to feel sorry for the losers, felt like cry­ing think­ing of pain and dis­s­a­point­ment of losers.  As result, even my favorite team’s vic­tory did not bring me hap­pi­ness.   I stopped watch­ing any sports match alto­gether.  So when we started to watch the WBC final between Korea and Japan teams, I begun to dread how I would feel at the end, espe­cially since the stake was so high for both teams.  The pain would be excru­ti­at­ing for the los­ing team.

But then some­thing curi­ous hap­pened.  As the game pro­gressed and the pres­sure mounted higher and higher, I started to think, glory from win­ning this par­tic­u­lar match is only tem­po­rary for the win­ners, but the losers will have learned val­u­ble les­son, will have pas­sion in their heart to over­come the loss, and will have some­thing to live for until they over­come this loss in some way.  All the words, the lessons I read about win­ning and los­ing, suc­ceess and fail­ure in John Wooden’s Wooden, George Leonard’s Mas­tery, was going through me.

Remem­ber­ing about John Wooden and George Leonard’s words released me from the dread, and I was caught up in the excite­ment of the par­tic­i­pat­ing as an audi­ence to wit­ness the great match by great atheletes.  I con­tinue to watch the WBC finals game in the train and at the end in Star­bucks via dig­i­tal broad­cast­ing on my mobile phone.   At the cli­max scene of the top of 10th inning, two outs when Ichiro was at the bat, I felt tremen­dous joy and excite­ment for the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the both teams.  Tem­po­rary but rap­tur­ing hap­pi­ness, sat­is­fac­tion for the “win­ners”, pas­sion, learn­ing and growth along with sweeter win the nex time for the “losers”.

The match ended with Japan win.  The cre­ation of the supreme excite­ment and joy were result of each mem­ber of both teams giv­ing their all.  But I will remem­ber it by Ichiro’s words at after the match interview.

About hit­ting the 2 run hit at the bot­tom of the 10th, two outs, two strikes, “.….  I have it [the abil­ity].  At that moment, god descended on me.  I thought, all those peo­ple watch­ing me.  All the peo­ple in Japan, every­one here at the sta­dium.  I imag­ined each one of their faces.  Let­ting it sink in.  Usu­ally, that would not work.  But I wanted to do it for them, to put smile on their faces.”

I’ve heard these words through the fil­ter of what I per­son­ally expe­ri­enced par­tic­i­pat­ing as a com­peti­tor at ten­nis, vol­ley­ball match, hors­back­rid­ing shows, busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tions, and from what I learned from great atheletes in the past, from John Wooden and George Leonard.  “I have it”.  The con­fi­dence com­ing from being pre­pared, from know­ing you did the best in prac­tice and hard work.  “I wanted to do it for them, to put smile on their faces.“  How much more we can achieve by focus­ing on doing things for oth­ers, in pure giv­ing sence.

What tremen­dous hap­pi­ness to once again enjoy watch­ing the com­pet­i­tive sports!  It’s about time, it’s been nearly 30 years!  But how amus­ing that being born, and liv­ing most of my life in Japan, the learn­ings about the val­ues Japan­ese embrace com­monly came from books writ­ten by a leg­endary Amer­i­can col­lege bas­ket­ball coach and an Amer­i­can Aikido master.

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