White Sox might bring in popular Japanese mascot to pinch hit

 

Kumamon, at his birthday party in 2016

     Readers make suggestions. Some are anatomically impossible and best ignored. Some are for stories that deserve consideration. This idea immediately caught my attention, even though it is not only about sports — never my strong suit — but about the White Sox, specifically, their rookie first baseman.
     “I noticed that Munetaka Murakami was born and raised in — Kumamoto! Home of your favorite mascot,” Peter Erdelyi wrote in mid-July. “Kumamon is almost all black — a Sox logo would look great on him. Kumamon Night with free little Kumamons to the first 20,000 attendees, along with a mascot race with Kumamon, with the person behind it all with his brilliant suggestion to the Sox, Neil Steinberg, throwing out the first pitch.”
     Never heard of Kumamon? He is, to quote Tom Waits, “Big in Japan.” Kumamon is what the Japanese call a yuru-kyara — or “loose character.” That traditionally gets translated as “mascot,” though it doesn’t do the reality justice. They’re far more complicated. Kumamon is to Southpaw, the White Sox mascot, as Anna Karenina is to Raggedy Ann.
     Ten years ago, I traveled to Kumamoto, in southwestern Japan, to attended Kumamon’s birthday party, along with 50,000 other guests. It was nuts.
     As if reading my mind, the team held a bobblehead night for the slugger, bringing his parents over to throw out the first pitch. I thought that might moot my reader’s idea. But there’s always next year. I reached out to Brooks Boyer, in charge of marketing for the Sox, who I found in a good mood. The team is doing great this year, particularly compared to the three previous, especially-awful, 100-plus losing-game seasons.
     “I can expect us to be fighting for a division in late October,” Boyer said, “These guys are super likable and competing their butts off. So it’s been a lot of fun.”
     Fun is the operative word in baseball lately. As illustrated by the recent Banana Ball phenomenon, fun is very big at the old ballpark. As are Japanese players. In case you’re paying even less attention to sports than I am, the biggest star in baseball is the insanely skilled Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I told Boyer that keeping far-from-home Japanese players happy seems a challenge for teams.
     “You try to keep all of your players happy,” replied Boyer. “When we signed Murakami, we asked him if there are things from Japan that maybe we don’t have here that would create a more comfortable experience. We were thinking about rice cookers. But the very first thing he said was, ‘Could we get a washlet — a bidet — in the clubhouse?’”

To continue reading, click here.