Whirling Darvish

WHEN Yogi Berra , the famously quotable Yankees catcher of the 1950s, mused that a familiar situation was “like déjà vu all over again”, America’s Major League Baseball (MLB) had never employed a Japanese player. Yet Mr Berra’s turn of phrase seems more apt than ever following the announcement on January 18th that the Texas Rangers had signed Yu Darvish , a highly touted 25-year-old Japanese-Iranian starting pitcher, to a six-year, $60m contract —one month after they paid a further $51.7m for the right to deal with him to the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters , his Japanese club, which is named for the meatpacking company that owns it.
Just five years ago Daisuke Matsuzaka was 26 years old, recognised by common consent as the best pitcher in Japan, and had delivered a dominating performance in leading Japan to victory in the first-ever World Baseball Classic (WBC) tournament. Mr Matsuzaka was lured by the tougher competition and higher salaries available on the game’s biggest stage. In order to cross the Pacific and join MLB, he had to use the posting system , a mechanism agreed to between MLB and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball in 1998, which aims to protect Japanese clubs from losing their players to American teams without compensation.
Source: The Economist (blog)