How amazing has
Taki Arakawa been?
His latest start came on Friday night in Canberra. His Mumbai Vipers, a game behind the Rattlers for 1st place, were confident they'd emerge from the snake battle with a win. After all, Arakawa was starting.
He pitched eight innings, scattering seven hits while striking out eight and walking two.
Han-Soo Park, Canberra's star outfielder, tagged him for a solo home run with two out in the bottom of the 8th inning, an ultimately meaningless run as the Vipers hung on to win. It was the second run Arakawa allowed that night, and just the second home run he'd allowed all year.
None of that is the amazing part.
No, the truly amazing, astounding, astonishing part is that the 8 inning, 2 ER performance
raised his season ERA to 1.02. It's the first time all season it's been above 1.00.
"I was fine tonight," he said. "Nothing special."
That's how much he's raised the bar. He's still thinking about two pitches he made to Park, both with two outs and no runners on. In the fourth, he fell behind in the count 1-0 and tried to get a fastball on the outside corner. It ran over the plate instead, and Park sent it to the right-center field fence on two hops. The next hitter, M.J. Chandra, singled him home.
Arakawa retired Park on a grounder next time up, but in the 8th the Korean slugger muscled a slider to the opposite field over the fence for Canberra's second run. It wasn't a bad pitch, and there's a good reason Park is the frontrunner for Australasian League MVP. But Arakawa is a perfectionist.
"If I make better pitches there I can get him out," he said. "And then I lost my focus for the next hitter both times [Chandra followed up Park's double and home run with singles]. Take those away and I can stay in the 9th, finish the game. It could have been 9 innings, 3 hits, no runs."
He's well acquainted with the feeling. In ten starts this year, he's thrown three complete game shutouts. In another start, he pitched 9 innings and allowed only an unearned run. In
another start he pitched 9 innings and allowed one earned run, but the Vipers went on to lose in 14 innings.
The work ethic runs deep in his family. His older brother
Yoshihiro is also a pitcher, currently with the Tampa Pirates of the North American Silver League.
"A lot of parents didn't want their kids playing baseball," the elder Arakawa said. "They thought it was a waste of time. Our parents didn't mind us playing but they made sure we understood that whatever we did they wanted us to do it right."
Yoshihiro signed the first professional contract in the family with the local club, the Fukoka Fury (the Fury are now a minor-league affiliate of the Hong Kong Claws). Yoshihiro is a decent player in his own right, to be sure, but even he realizes that he was signed in part to increase the Fury's chances with his younger brother.
Taki was quickly becoming a legend not just in their home city of Kitakyushu but in all Fukoka Prefecture [Editor's note: Kitakyushu didn't become an official city until 1963, but what can you do?]. Sure enough, two years later the Fury were able to sign him to play with his brother and the two enjoyed several successful seasons playing for their local team.
But it wasn't long before Taki's talents caught the eyes of the larger baseball clubs in Japan, and the Tokyo Tsunami won the bidding war for his services. Arakawa became a superstar in his country.
"I figured I'd be there forever," he said.
But then four years ago the idea for the World Baseball Alliance was hatched. India's representative to the council was Raj Sidhu, one of the country's wealthiest citizens. He grew up as a rabid cricket fan but, like everyone else, got caught up in the explosion of baseball's popularity in his country in the '50s. India was awarded two major-league teams, and Sidhu quickly purchased a majority stake in the Mumbai Vipers.
(Editor's note: I suggest taking 30 seconds to read the "Let's Talk Money" section of
this post before continuing)
He wasted little time getting to work on putting a prospective roster together for the 1960 season. Money, it seemed, was not an object. The Vipers sport the highest payroll in the Australasian League and have seven players earning at least 15,000,000. Number one with a bullet is Arakawa, earning 37,000,000 for this season and the next before it increases to 39,500,000 through 1964. Only one player in the AL is earning more this season.
"It showed me how serious he was about putting together a team that could win," Arakawa said of Sidhu's offer. "He made it very clear that he wants the Vipers to go down in history as the first champion, and it was very appealing to me that he'd spend the money to do that.
"It was a hard decision to decision to leave Japan, to leave my home, but it's been a great experience to come to India and be one of the first to help grow the game. And the fans here have been great, too."
Mumbai has one of the largest season ticket bases in the Alliance. They have nearly 2,000 more season ticket holders than Tokyo despite tickets that are more expensive.
Arakawa has been worth the price of admission by himself. He's allowed just four earned runs in five starts at home. He isn't overpowering like rotation-mate and fellow countryman
Hidenosuke Kataoka -- in fact, it was Kataoka who started on Opening Day. But he keeps hitters off-balance with his ability to throw a curveball
and a screwball.
"It's so hard facing him," said Canberra shortstop
Logan Cook, who went 0-4 against Arakawa. "You can have him right where you want him, you can know a breaking ball is coming... but it doesn't matter because you don't know if it's going to break down and in or out and away. And if you guess wrong you have zero chance."
Arakawa enjoys making hitters guess wrong. Even the ones who guess right haven't found much success this season. Overall, he's holding opponents to a .196 average. Lefties fare a little bit better: they're hitting .206 off him.
And as he showed on Friday night, he doesn't even have to feel like he pitched especially well to be dominant. For Taki Awakara, the amazing has become the ordinary.