In November 1982, South Korean boxer Duk Koo Kim was killed as a result of injuries sustained in his bout with Ray Mancini. Kim had been a star boxer in his homeland and wanted to fight against the American heavyweights, but in only his second international fight found himself toe-to-toe with Lightweight champion Ray Mancini. The bout lasted 15 rounds with each fighter refusing to admit defeat despite heavy damages. After Kim’s last knockdown, he managed to make it to the ropes before falling into a coma from which he would never recover. Generally speaking, the moral that most sports fans have received from this incident is that an Asian champion that had never seen the real strength of the West was killed in almost his first time encountering it.

Re-enter Hideki Irabu, the “Japanese Nolan Ryan,” who came to America under great fanfare, failed, and entered a destructive life before dying ignominiously a decade after the world forgot him. His story has been covered quite well by The New York Times and ESPN writers, the former pointing out that Irabu had not lost his passion for the game even in 2009 and had been hoping for a comeback at the age of 39. For most of his post-Japan career, however, he suffered a fate worse than simply being a bad pitcher–that of being a comic tragedy–as ESPN writer Rob Parker closes his article, Irabu was remembered as the epithet ‘fat toad,’ and perhaps worst of all, immortalized as the butt of a Seinfeld joke.

What happens, though, if we try to study Irabu and see what he might have meant for the larger game of baseball or Japanese-American relations outside of his anecdotal career? Irabu was indisputably a good story for the media, a man that could never live up to the hype of being the next Nolan Ryan, making it easy for the New York media to slam the Irabu for any fault. In some games he was spot-on, and in others he was a tremendous burden to the team, and this seems to be how his teammates remember him.  Fans, meanwhile, remember him for not living up to the value of his contract, which was a 4-year contract for about $3 million a year. In 1997 he was the 8th highest paid player on the Yankees, falling to 9th highest paid in 1998 (archived salaries available at www.baseballchronology.com). He wasn’t breaking the Yankees bank, certainly, and arguably wasn’t even the biggest waste of money–that might well have been Chuck Knoblauch, who acts as an interesting comparison to Irabu.

Chuck Knoblauch played several strong years with the Minnesota Twins before arriving with the New York Yankees in 1998, starting at $6 million a year. Entering his 8th year of professional baseball in 1998, Knoblauch had 4-All Star appearances, a Rookie of the Year award, and had been hitting well above league average for most of his career. In his first year in New York, everything started to fall apart. While hitting league average in 1998, his defensive prowess quickly disappeared, ranking 38th in the American League in defensive ability, a ranking lower than a slew of part-time and fill-in players making pocket change. In the following years, Knoblauch would come close to setting records for terrible defense–in 1999, he put up the second worst performance at second base in the American League behind Ray Durham. After his uneventful time in New York, Knoblauch would go on to be charged with domestic abuse and steroid use. Generally speaking, despite similarities in ‘failing,’ Knoblauch has been remembered as simply a bad investment, but not in the in the same infamous fashion as Irabu.

I bring up these numbers because a similar analysis of Irabu’s numbers shows that he actually wasn’t that bad, but just overpaid. Looking at his advanced statistics, he was not a great pitcher, but actually closer to league average. Contrary to many reports, his statistical best year seemed to be 1999, when he made improvements to his game in all categories and was ranked in terms of playing value in the mid-50s of all pitchers in the league. The advanced statistics show that he had terrible luck throughout his career, with hitters consistently lucking into hits. When ballpark and defense are adjusted for (remembering that Chuck Knoblauch’s terrible defensive glove stood about 45 feet behind him during every start in 1999), Irabu’s overall numbers were only slightly worse than the average pitcher.

Maybe most telling is that Baseballreference.com shows the players that most closely match Irabu in career statistics are not considered complete busts. Andy Sonnastine–the pitcher most similar to Irabu–continues to play in the MLB for the Tampa Bay Rays while making less than a million a year. Meanwhile, Jason Hammel–the pitcher 4th most similar to Irabu–maintains a workman-like status for the Colorado Rockies and is paid $3 million in the 2011 season. While each pitcher certainly fights to keep their job, their relatively cheaper cost, low profile markets, and lack of a storied pedigree dissociates them from the likes of Irabu.

As a player, Irabu was not a complete failure, but actually just not that good–at least in the Major Leagues. At home, he played well before and after his time in America, but little of this time that made him the ‘Japanese Nolan Ryan’ seems to count in the larger baseball media. A major question, then, is this: among all the failed players for the Yankees, why does Irabu stand out as such a tragic comic character? Why didn’t he just fade away into obscurity like Knoblauch? Why does a Google search of ‘Irabu’ bring up ‘fat toad’ and Seinfeld jokes?

Re-enter Duk Koo Kim, who fought to the top and wanted to challenge the West, only to die trying. It’s too much to push a concrete connection between this East-West dialect, and I hesitate to even use such language in fear of solidifying some sort of sporting hierarchy between the geographical regions. But what other reasons or analogies can be made to understand why Irabu is a ‘fat toad’ and Knoblauch is just gone? We must consider the analogy to Duk Koo Kim–that the East just can’t compete with the West.

The Western media seems to constantly remind Asia that while they’re invited to play, they’ll never truly win. The greater question for media, writers, bloggers, and academics, then, is to ask how Asian sports players can be dissociated from the ignominy of ‘failure’ and put into the category where so many Western sports players find themselves: that they tried their best and just didn’t make the team.

My history with blogging is entirely relevant to my greater point: after writing a surge of generally well-received blog entries in 2008-2009, I left the scene entirely. I used Twitter haltingly and no longer read the works of other bloggers. I erased all of my blog entries, leaving the only backups in Archive.org. Why did I eliminate all of my words on the internet, even when others appreciated and learned from them? Because I couldn’t figure out what being an ‘expert’ meant. That thought alone silenced me, at least on the internet.

Is There a Map to the Road of Expertise?

The reason I wrote blog entries from 2008-2009 is because I actively lived in Japan. I was physically immersed in Japanese culture, and could talk to my Japanese friends and neighbors about their culture. I felt a sense of objectivity to my knowledge, like an embedded reporter stating only the facts and leaving the analysis to pundits somewhere else in the world. In Japan, I spoke the local slang, imbibed the regional brews, and took the national transportation system. I was an expert by means of experience. My words on the internet were then, in many ways, words crafted by an expert. The experience of living in Japan put my message on par with many bloggers across the globe that had similar experiences. The community was giving, understanding, and willing to accept new members. In reality, the bloggers about Japan were really more of a collaborative collective, building knowledge bit by bit through social interactions.  But very few could be considered ‘experts,’ and many could be considered ‘downright wrong.’ It was really hard for me to abruptly abandon the blogging realm, but mentally I couldn’t understand how these socially constructed statements about Japan were to be considered the words of experts.

After returning to America in 2009, I landed back in academia, studying Japanese history at a major university. I was surrounded by people who made a living on being nationally and internationally respected experts on Japan. My academic writing now served to further my career, and while it competed as a statement of truth with and among other academics, these words crafted by expertise could not be rendered open to the public for a number of professional and career reasons. Among academics, blogging was a useful tool for communication, but blogs also subtly (and overtly) outlined the perceived levels of expertise. Among many academics, the academy is seen as the gatekeeper of expertise–those who are inside of it are either experts or on their way to being experts, and those outside of it are, at best, qualified, but most likely not an expert. The old school of academia is often seen as exclusionary–the path to expertise is exclusively through the ivory tower.

I’m starting to think very differently about the road map to expertise. Drawing my personal map has been complicated and complex, but the road I see ahead is a productive and collaborative one.

Different Kinds of Mapmakers

The word ‘expert’ often connotes that once somebody achieves ‘expertise,’ they will always be an expert. Academically speaking, often the connotation is that expertise runs into everything. This is not so in a number of other fields, say for instance, music. An expert drummer is not necessarily an expert at all forms of percussion, but is nonetheless has a good chance of at least being competent. Very few expert drummers make a band all by themselves, and rely upon the competence and expertise of other musicians to produce songs. In many ways an analogy can be made to the knowledge statements of blogging and academia: rarely is there an expert in everything, but rather there are a lot of experts in certain aspects.

For example, I am at least very competent in Japanese history, particularly the modern era in respect to technology and baseball. I am not competent in Japanese fashion, anime, and the scene around Akihabara. However, the average non-Japanese person will hear that I study Japan, and ask me, “What do you know about anime?” The truth is, I know a few things. But imagine saying that because I’ve watched the entire Aliens and Matrix series, that makes me an expert in the sci-fi movie genre. In reality, I’m actually just a person that knows a bit more about anime than my inquisitor. It’s not that I have nothing to say about anime, I’m just not an expert. As for the path to knowledge about Japanese fashion or anime, the knowledge map I provide people should lead to other experts more competent than me. But just where are these experts?

The Road Ahead

In The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Jacques Ranciere began with the argument that the French working class were not allowed into the University system because they were never properly prepared for the entrance examination. In this situation, the experts deemed who could be an expert and who could not. The workers truly ‘could not know what they did not know’–in other words, all there was only University knowledge, and they were not allowed to access it.

Blogging changes all of this. Academics and business people and common citizens alike enter a similar playing field. There will be better players of course–leaders and followers, superstars and bench players. Access to knowledge is as easy as asking, but there remains the necessity for continued investigation of statements.The road ahead is drawn by many mapmakers, and while some might be better users and makers of knowledge than others, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind that amateur mapmakers need to know that they can know.

Where, then, are the experts among the bloggers about Japan? They are everywhere, and they are being made all of the time.